United States
Mountain View, California
1049 El Monte AvenueSte C #684
Mountain View, CA 94040 +1 202-992-5235
Commercial and contracting. Working hours Pacific.
About
About Zeki Experts
We put one senior engineer next to the person who owns the problem, and remove everything that used to sit in between. That is the whole company. Everything below is a consequence of it.
Model
Forward deployed
Engineering
Islamabad
Commercial
Mountain View, CA
Clients
Mostly US
Your code
Yours from commit one
Why we work this way
The chain was the problem, not the people in it.
The standard way to buy software puts four roles between the person with the problem and the person who can fix it. A business analyst writes down what was said. A project manager schedules it. A solutions architect decides how. A coordinator keeps everyone informed. Every one of those roles exists for a reason, and every one of them is a place where meaning is lost and time is spent waiting.
We tried the other shape. One senior engineer, sitting close enough to the business to argue with the brief, who scopes it, builds it, ships it and is still the person you call six months later. No translation layer, because there is nothing to translate between.
It does not suit every engagement, and we say so on the first call when it does not. What it suits is the large category of work where nobody is quite sure what the right answer is yet, and finding out is most of the job.
What we hold to
Five commitments, all of them awkward for us at some point.
These are worth writing down precisely because each one costs us something. A principle that only ever helps the company is a slogan.
You interview everyone
Every engineer we put forward is interviewed by you, with your questions, and you can say no. We publish the questions worth asking on each role page, including what a weak answer sounds like.
Costs us: the shortlist gets rejected sometimes.
Your code is yours from the first commit
In your repository, under your licence, with no component that stops working when we leave. Nothing is held back to make the next conversation easier.
Costs us: no lock-in to fall back on.
We say when we are the wrong answer
Sometimes the honest recommendation is a smaller engagement, a different role, or nothing at all. That conversation happens on the first call rather than in month three.
Costs us: the engagements we talk ourselves out of.
One person owns the outcome
Not a pod, not a delivery manager, not a shared inbox. A named engineer who is accountable for whether the thing works, and who is still reachable after it ships.
Costs us: we cannot hide a weak hire behind a team.
No line items for coordination
A flat monthly rate per engineer, billed for the time they are deployed, with a notice period rather than a lock-in. No separate charges for project management or handover, because there is no project management or handover.
Costs us: a revenue line most firms rely on.
How the bench works
Ten roles, vetted on work rather than puzzles.
Everyone on the bench has passed four exercises drawn from what that role actually does in a normal week, run by somebody who does that job. No algorithm riddles, because we have never once needed an engineer to reverse a binary tree under time pressure.
The exercises are published. Each role page lists exactly what was tested and, where it is interesting, what share of candidates fail it. A claim of "rigorous vetting" that does not say what was tested is not a claim at all.
The ten rolesWhat each one does, how we tested them, and four questions to ask in your own interview.Browse the bench →
Forward deployedThe engagement this company was built around. One engineer, end to end.Read more →
What we have builtThree products our engineers scoped, shipped and still support.See the work →
Where we are
Two offices, one working day.
Commercial in California, engineering in Islamabad. In practice that means a live overlap with US mornings and a written handover for everything outside it.
Ste C #684
Mountain View, CA 94040 +1 202-992-5235
Pakistan
Islamabad
Kickstart, 189 Korang RoadI-10/3
Islamabad +92 331-111-0214
Engineering. Overlaps US mornings and European afternoons.
Questions
The things people ask about the company.
Small enough that Umer still takes the first call on every engagement, and large enough to hold a bench across ten roles. We will tell you the current number on that call rather than put a figure on a web page that goes stale.
You do, in your repository, from the first commit. No escrow, no licence back to us, and no component that stops working when the engagement ends. This is not a negotiating position, it is in the contract.
You keep the code, the documentation and the deployment. We stay reachable for questions, and if you want continued support that is a separate, smaller arrangement rather than something bundled in to make leaving awkward.
No. Every engineer deployed on your work is ours, interviewed by you, and on our payroll. If we ever could not staff something ourselves we would say so rather than quietly broker it.
Because that is where the company is from, and because the talent is genuinely strong and considerably less expensive than the Bay Area equivalent. The honest trade is timezone: you get a live overlap with US mornings, and a written handover culture for everything outside it.
Next step
Bring us the problem, not the spec.
Thirty minutes with the person who runs the company, and a straight answer about whether this shape of engagement fits what you are trying to do.