We build software. That's it.
AxionLab is a small engineering consultancy. We help companies build products—usually when their internal teams are stretched thin or need expertise they don't have in-house.
Why we started this company.
We kept seeing the same pattern: companies would hire a big consultancy, get a 200-page strategy deck, and then have no idea how to actually build the thing. The consultants would leave, the deck would gather dust, and the company would be back where they started—minus a few hundred thousand dollars.
Or they'd hire an agency that promised "full-stack development" but actually just had a sales team and a rotating cast of offshore contractors. Six months later: a buggy MVP, no documentation, and engineers who'd moved on to other projects.
We started AxionLab in 2019 because we thought there should be a middle ground: a small team of experienced engineers who could both figure out what to build and actually build it. No handoffs. No "discovery phases" that drag on for months. Just working software.
Who we are.
We're a team of about 25 people. Here's who started it.
James Whitfield
Spent 8 years at Stripe building payment infrastructure, then led engineering at a fintech startup through Series B. Started AxionLab after seeing too many companies burn money on consultants who delivered PowerPoints instead of products.
Priya Raghavan
Former principal engineer at Datadog. Built observability systems that handled 2M events/second. Joined James after they kept bumping into each other advising the same startups on the same problems.
Tom Brennan
Ex-McKinsey (yes, we know), but spent most of that time in implementation roles rather than strategy. Left because he wanted to build things, not just recommend them.
San Francisco
All senior engineers
Since founding
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Our principles.
Not values we hung on a wall. These are the things we actually do.
Ship Working Software
Strategy decks don't create value. Software in production does. We optimize for shipping—not for looking busy or covering our tracks with documentation.
Teach While We Build
We won't be here forever. Every engagement includes pairing sessions, code reviews, and documentation so your team can maintain and extend what we build.
Say What We Think
We'll tell you if your idea won't work, if your timeline is unrealistic, or if you should build something simpler first. Honesty saves everyone time.
We're hiring.
We hire slowly. Most of our team came from referrals or people we've worked with before. But we're always interested in meeting good engineers.
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