Who’s actually doing the work?

Contic’s own team designs and builds your product, and we don’t subcontract the build. AI is part of how we work, because it makes good engineers faster. A senior engineer still reads, approves and answers for every line that ships.

Who you’ll work with

A first product needs several kinds of work happening at once. That means product thinking, design, engineering, testing and someone keeping delivery on track.

You won’t have to manage all of that. You’ll have a named technical lead, responsible for how the product is built, and a named product lead, responsible for what gets built. They’re the people you talk to week to week.

The same people stay with you from Discovery to launch. You shouldn’t have to explain your customers twice because the project moved to a new phase.

How we use AI, and who’s accountable

AI coding tools can produce an app by lunchtime. By teatime, nobody can explain how it works. What matters is who reviews the output and who answers for it.

Architecture means the big structural choices: what the app is built with, where data lives and how the parts talk. Someone always owns it. On a LaunchPad, a senior engineer does, by name.

Why senior matters

The common agency complaint is that senior people sell the work and junior people do it. We’re built the other way round.

Contic’s founder was the founding engineer at AI Music, which Apple acquired. Senior engineers stay hands-on in the work, not just in the pitch.

The evidence is in who keeps us. We became Vault’s engineering team, from its reporting app to the security underneath, and took it through SOC 2 and ISO 27001. When Diligent acquired Vault, it kept us on.

Who else is involved

We build on platforms from partners including AWS, Databricks, Stripe and Secureframe. They supply the cloud, data, payments and compliance tooling. They don’t do your build.

Where your product needs a third-party service, such as maps or email, its costs up to launch sit inside the fixed price.

What happens if someone leaves

People move on in every company. A team spreads that risk where a single freelancer can’t. If one engineer leaves, others already know the code.

We also keep the technology common, ideally one language across the product. That way more people can work on every part, including your own hires later. And because the code, IP and accounts are yours at launch, you’re never tied to any one person, including us.

After launch, the same people

The team that built your product is the team that looks after it, if you want us to. Nobody new has to learn your code from scratch at the worst possible moment. Do you offer ongoing maintenance covers what that looks like.

Questions to ask us, and anyone else

Use these with every builder you speak to:

• Who exactly will work on this? Are they employees or subcontractors?
• How do you use AI, and who reviews what it writes?
• How often do you put changes live, and how often does that break something?
• Can I see a live product you built, and speak to that client?
• If you stopped replying tomorrow, what would I have?

A good supplier answers without hesitating. Can I see past work shows ours.

If you’ve been burned before, what if an agency has let me down before is worth reading. And if you’re weighing us against a cheaper option, see why not choose a cheaper freelancer or offshore team.

For a side-by-side look at agencies, freelancers, fractional CTOs and AI app builders, read who should build your app.