# Custom software development with a production bias

I design and build custom software for companies that need a production system, not a demo. The work is full-stack: product surfaces in React and Next.js, services and APIs in Node.js, data, CI/CD, and the operational path that keeps the system predictable under real traffic. I take end-to-end ownership — discovery, architecture, implementation, and reliability — so you are not coordinating a designer, a frontend vendor, a backend vendor, and a 'DevOps person' who never met the domain. This is boutique delivery: one senior engineer (and, when needed, a small circle you already have) instead of a large bench. I will also tell you when you should buy a product or write a boring script instead of commissioning software.

## Who this is for
- Startups and scale-ups that need a product path owned by someone who has shipped before.
- SMEs whose internal team cannot absorb a new system without senior help.
- Companies integrating payments, CMS, CRM, or AI into an existing product.
- Teams that have a design or a vendor and need the engineering to actually land.

## Build, buy, or integrate
Custom software is expensive. The job is to spend that cost only where uniqueness actually pays.
### Buy when the workflow is a commodity
Auth, billing, email, feature flags, and most CRMs are products. Building them from scratch is rarely the constraint your company will win on.

### Integrate when a vendor already owns the domain
Payments, CMS, and LLM inference are better consumed as APIs — with your contracts and observability around them — than reimplemented.

### Build when the workflow is the product
If the user-facing path, the data model, or the orchestration is how you compete, that is the custom work. Keep it thin at the edges.

### Delete when the feature exists to impress a slide
If no one can name the constraint it removes, it should not be in the backlog. I will push to remove it.


Canonical: https://ihar-ivaniuk.com/en/services/custom-software-development