Python Powerhouse - Web & Mobile development teams
We are Europe’s largest Python software house. We have over 200 Python, JS, React Native and full-stack developers ready to supercharge your project with extraordinary code, the Agile way.
Based in Poland, we employ a total of over 370 people including Product Designers, Manual QA and QA Automation, DevOps, Machine Learning, Data Engineers and business communication experts ensuring smooth cooperation with our partners.
With 16 years of experience under our belt, we can provide full-stack web development and cross-platform mobile app solutions to clients across all industries using Python Django, Flask, Go, Angular, ReactJS, React Native, NodeJS and more. Moreover, we are proud to work with long-term technology partners throughout the US, Canada, Western Europe, Scandinavia, South Africa, Australia, and the Middle East.
Great software begins long before the first line of code is written. That’s why we start our development process with Discovery workshops, UX/UI, web graphic design and deep analysis of your business needs.
At STX we can easily translate your ideas into successful digital products. Want to learn more? Contact us.
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Portfolio
Mastercard, Decathlon, Tiqets, Seerene, Verve, Hogarth WW, Pixomondo, Unity Technologies, Blocktrade, IMD Optimad, Wunderman, Vyze, Coras, Realface, BetBright, KNMP, Paze, Decernis, Scurri, Buildfax, Newable, and more.
Decernis—regulatory expertise on product safety compliance
ABOUT
Based in Washington DC, Decernis provides regulatory expertise and systems to manage food, consumer, and industrial product safety compliance across more than 180 countries. Decernis gives clients a complete regulatory intelligence on the market through unique, fully integrated, patented technology platforms covering over 80,000 regulations.
CHALLENGE
Decernis’ application was based on a fairly old technological stack. Supporting the technology was a growing challenge, and Decernis saw the need to push the project into a direction where they could switch to newer technologies with better support. Another challenge for Decernis was finding a partner who could work with their multiple offices in various locations around the globe and across multiple time zones.
meet.mba—an MBA social networking platform
ABOUT
meet.mba is an online networking and communication tool designed for MBA admits, students, and alumni. It was created by Matthew Brooke-Hitching, an MBA who noticed the need to improve communication and collaboration throughout the business school journey. The resulting online platform now connects almost 4,000 MBAs and Executive MBAs around the world.
CHALLENGE
The reason to create the meet.mba platform was the lack of an appropriate tool that would allow MBA students and alumni to effectively communicate with each other.
Matthew Brooke-Hitching chose STX Next on account of the knowledge, tools and experience we could provide. We had a tight deadline for completing the product, but managed to stand up to the challenge.
STX Next delivered a full Scrum team with support from a PO, advised on the scope of the MVP, and helped prioritize tasks. Our tech stack included Django, React, PostgreSQL, Docker, and more.
The MVP allowed meet.mba to gain 500 users in the first 3 months from launch. Its features include intuitive private and group chat, user profiles with deep privacy customization, and a global board for requests for help, all tailored specifically to the MBA experience.
Vyze—financing platform for retailers, acquired by Mastercard
ABOUT
Vyze is a leading financial technology company for retailers and manufacturers, acquired by Mastercard in 2019. By combining a comprehensive lending supply, technology, and support under one roof, Vyze is able to deliver businesses simpler, more satisfying financing experiences for their customers, wherever and whenever they shop. Formerly known as NewComLink, Vyze raised $13 million in series B funding in 2016, bringing the total funding to $35 million.
CHALLENGE
The main challenge for Vyze was scaling up their internal development team—bringing resources on board with the right skill set, who could hit the ground running and be able to execute on their strategy. They required qualified developers with extensive knowledge and prior experience.
STX Next is meeting the challenges of the project head-on. Firstly, simultaneous dedication to two platforms alone is quite demanding. Secondly, certain solutions implemented in these products could not be found in other financing platforms, meaning the developers had to design the solutions from scratch. Finally, as the project progresses, the team is not only developing a cutting-edge fintech application, but also working together with Vyze to implement the best Scrum practices.
STX Next Delivered
- On-site financing platform for retailers
- Fulfilling eCommerce financing experience
- Advanced and robust API
- Full automatic test coverage with Behave and Selenium
- Secure online credit applications and payments
- Quick credit assessment
- Intuitive front-end design
Unity—BuildBot-based continuous integration tool
ABOUT
Unity Technologies is the creator of a flexible and high-performance end-to-end development platform used to create rich, interactive 2D, 3D, VR, and AR experiences. Unity’s powerful graphics engine and full-featured editor serve as the foundation to develop beautiful games or apps and easily bring them to multiple platforms: mobile devices, home entertainment systems, personal computers, and embedded systems.
CHALLENGE
Due to their large scale of operations and specific needs, Unity Technologies decided to create in-house tools for software development. Unity Technologies asked STX Next for assistance in maintaining and steadily improving one such tool called Katana.
Katana is a fork of BuildBot—a continuous integration tool written in Python using the Twisted framework. With one master server, Katana is able to use an unlimited number of slave machines to perform builds.
STX Next helped create Katana to meet the demand of more than 10,000 builds per day. With its scale, Katana is crucial for Unity’s daily operations, as any downtime would affect hundreds of Unity’s developers. Challenges included resolving memory leaks, dealing with race conditions, and adding new features to the highly sensitive system.
BuildFax—property intelligence solutions
ABOUT
BuildFax provides business-critical property condition and history data to the largest insurance and financial institutions in the world. Based in Austin, Texas, the company delivers detailed data on remodeling, solar installations, major systems, new construction, maintenance history, and more. Their database encompasses over 84 billion data points on commercial and residential structures. In 2019, BuildFax was acquired by Verisk—a leading data analytics provider in the US.
CHALLENGE
Our goal was to provide BuildFax with modern tools for handling big data. Before working with STX Next, their speed of receiving data sometimes took up to four times longer than the maximum time business logic allowed.
Our solution to BuildFax’s challenge was using the Spark technology; or, more specifically, its Python implementation: the PySpark and Databricks tools.
To accomplish this, STX Next provided a team of three developers whose task was supporting the BuildFax team throughout that difficult and trying process.
BuildFax were very happy with our services and expanded their team as time went by, most notably with 24/7 maintenance and monitoring.
Tiqets—a ticket-booking platform
ABOUT
Tiqets is an innovative platform for booking tickets to museums and attractions around the world. Since it was founded in 2014, the company has sold over 10 million tickets to more than 2,000 venues in 60+ countries. Headquartered in Amsterdam, Tiqets employs over 200 people and has offices in various locations globally. It’s raised €54 million in a recent funding round led by Airbnb.
CHALLENGE
The main challenge for STX Next was to find ways to integrate the Tiqets platform with as many ticket providers as possible, so that users would no longer need to register with each of them individually while planning their trip.
We were able to meet the client’s expectations by moving from a monolithic system to a microservice-based architecture, which was able to make direct contact with ticket suppliers via a variety of APIs.
To make sure that the platform was fully integrated with vendors at all times without disruptions, we also delivered round-the-clock, real-time monitoring services. They allowed us to have a full picture of the integrations at any given moment and step in to fix any issues before they escalated. Where vendors didn’t provide any API for us to integrate with, we created web crawlers that went through their pages to purchase tickets.
NOTA NOTA—personal fragrance-mixing system
ABOUT
NOTA NOTA allows designers and creators from all over the world to design and share perfumes. It’s a new concept of mixing perfumes as part of your daily routine, just like using your coffee machine. NOTA NOTA received the iF Design Award in the Product category in 2018.
CHALLENGE
NOTA NOTA wanted to build an app that would streamline the user flows and interface, as well as expand the social functionalities.
STX Next worked in continuous feedback mode, adjusting features and screens to the client’s needs as quickly as possible. We put a great deal of effort into making the product easy to develop and maintain by using automation and containerization, static typing and static code analysis support, and automated unit testing.
To reduce the costs both during and after development, we built the new NOTA NOTA app from scratch using React Native for cross-platform mobile development. We also used tried-and-tested, out-of-the-box solutions to limit the cost of features such as analytics, push notifications, or crash and error reporting.
Product Design played a key role in the development process, working hand in hand with the development team to create a seamless experience. All the core app functionalities were redesigned by applying new user flows and interactions for designing, producing, and sharing perfumes.
Lamden—speeding up the process of creating blockchains and apps
ABOUT
Lamden is a suite of developer tools that speed up the process of creating new and custom blockchains and apps. The Lamden Tau token connects these new projects together to create the first ever blockchain enterprise solution. The Tau token has a more general use as a universal swap token between most existing cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others. This will allow TAU to exchange seamlessly between endless cryptocurrency pairs.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
Clove, which we are working on, is a decentralized application that makes atomic swaps between chains easy. Most Bitcoin-based and Ethereum-based chains, including ERC20 tokens, are compatible with the protocol. Clove enables decentralized payment channel swaps and facilitates trustless communication between compatible blockchains on the network.
Seerene—a code and people management platform
ABOUT
Seerene is a code+people management platform that sets a new standard for how CIOs manage their most important resources – their codebase and engineering capacity. The company is based in Germany with additional offices in Hong Kong and the US.
CHALLENGE
The biggest challenge for the multiple product teams in this project has been finding the right way to implement deep analytics algorithms that transform low-level code-related metrics into KPIs and insights for C-Level users, Seerene’s target group. The team is constantly developing new features and machine learning capabilities into the product to make the raw data more consumable and full of value for decision makers of large corporates.
STX Next tackled the challenge by providing 2 full Scrum teams (+ Product Design support) and integrating their work with Seerene’s internal teams.
Zappi—a platform supporting supply teaching
ABOUT
Zappi is a new company on the UK supply teaching market. They come with 20 years of experience in recruitment and education and a strong focus on positive user experience and employee happiness. Their new app effortlessly connects teaching and support staff with local schools for supply work—making the process faster, easier and more transparent. Zappi teachers lead to happy kids!
CHALLENGE
Zappi approached us with the need to design and build their application almost from scratch. But they knew they wanted Python, as they were well-versed in its advantages. They emphasized developing the application following good practices. We used the design thinking process to shape the solution and agile methodology to implement it. Thanks to our joint efforts, the Zappi idea of creating freedom of choice for schools and supply staff is live.
Signal Kit—smart communication tools for the K-12 community
Signal Kit is a complete communication suite for the K-12 community. With cloud-based mass communication, internal collaboration, business intelligence and industry leading oversight.
STX Next delivered:
- Discovery workshops followed by a UX Audit of the existing web system to understand the potential risks, test usability and accessibility, find friction points, and recommend improvements.
- A full-featured React Native mobile app.
- Web App Improvements. We took an existing system and improved its design coherency to create or adjust the features that met the requirements of the users and business partners. We also prepared the product for future improvements.
- Product recognition support through various design tasks, from product marketing materials, through motion and interaction designs and vision, to small interface tweaks.
Newable—easy business loans
ABOUT
Newable Limited is a leading SME lender in the UK. Newable Limited and Liberis Limited. Newable Business Finance is focused on enabling growth of UK SMEs through the provision of finance to those who feel they are unable to access finance through mainstream providers (such as banks).
CHALLENGES
Newable reached out to us with a complete idea for the product’s MVP and a very short deadline. They were faced with the task of transferring their whole loan application process from paper printed documents to the Internet. The system had to be easy to understand and use and reduce application time for end-customers while still including several levels of approval.
STX Next delivered the entire platform along with automatic payments/payouts, integration with external tools, and additional mentoring services.
Blocktrade—a crypto trading platform
ABOUT
Blocktrade is a state-of-the-art crypto trading platform that prioritizes speed, reliability and safety. It allows retail users, brokers, professional traders as well as institutional money managers to trade with crypto assets and indices in a fully audited and highly secure way.
CHALLENGE
Blocktrade’s challenge was to build a top-of-the-line trading portal in the shortest possible time window and build an internal team of experts who will take over the development of the solution provided by STX Next. Working with Blocktrade, we created a web application that will allow retail users, brokers, professional traders as well as institutional money managers to trade with crypto assets and indices in a fully audited, highly secure way, performing similarly to Nasdaq.
TBSeen
ABOUT
TBSeen is a startup run by 12 British female celebrities, including the founder Kate Thornton. TBSeen.com brings together money-saving deals, offers, and rewards from 500 carefully-curated brands, blended with original, entertaining and helpful content.
CHALLENGE
TBSeen is a unique start-up case. Due to celebrities bringing in followers that immediately converted to sales, the site is making money from day one. The problem was scaling up: with a London agency of just a few devs, TBSeen could not keep up with the pace of their business growth. The need to scale rapidly and within budget brought TBseen and STX Next together.
STX Next provided TBSeen with discovery workshops, a full Scrum team, full-stack development, automated testing, business analysis, continuous integration and product design services.
Verve
ABOUT
Verve (Formerly known as StreetTeam) is the world’s leading peer-to-peer sales and marketing software for live entertainment. Verve enables its customers to turn their most influential fans into ambassadors who promote their events, selling more than 300,000 tickets in 14 countries since 2012.
CHALLENGE
Verve came to us with an original product built in PHP and a long list of reasons why they wanted to switch to Python going forward, referring to it as a more modern solution. Their current development team is well-versed in PHP but not Python, so they were looking for a provider to manage development in the midterm while their own developers got up to speed on using Python.
STX Next Delivered
- A global platform that enables advocates to experience the products that they love with their friends
- A unique SaaS application for brands, campaign managers and ambassadors
- A system that builds a strong relationship between events and their fans
- Advocacy driven model that can work in almost any vertical that has a shared experience at its core
Coras
ABOUT
Connecting the world to tickets. Based out of Dublin, Coras allows customers to purchase tickets for any event or activity, through whatever online channel they choose.
CHALLENGE
For Coras, the challenge was releasing a working MVP of their product in a short period of time in order to secure another advance of their financing. They were looking to create an app from scratch to serve as a ticket distribution platform for cultural and entertainment events from many content providers. One of the main issues was finding a common solution for all stakeholders of the project and integrating it with one of the major European airlines.
STX Next Delivered
- 2 Full Scrum teams to meet the designated goals of the project.
- Manage the mark back of tickets from one seller to the other for both general admission and seated events
- Track ticket sales across all allocated sellers with a complete audit trail from allocation to sale
- Create events and allocate tickets to ticketing agents or through user’s ticketing system
- API that allows any ticketing system to integrate with Coras, helping to adjust the process to meet specific needs
Realface (Acquired by Apple in 2017)
ABOUT
RealFace was a company whose mission was to revolutionize the way people are recognized. They were creating A.I software with the aim of bringing back human perception to digital process, delivering to customers the technologies needed to connect with their consumers in the digital era. Acquired by Apple in 2017.
CHALLENGE
RealFace was looking for a tech partner who could integrate their library written in C and take over development from a previous company. Their real challenge, however, was to find developers who could understand the logic of the AI face recognition system and deal with GPUImage and the dlib face detector.
STX Next Delivered
Using the most advanced technologies in A.I, developed in-house, STX Next created a user centered authentication service. Meet the first anti-spoof application tailored for everyday use on your device.
FEATURES
- iOS and Android
- Face detection functionality
- Libraries: OpenCV, dlib
- Mp4 with av-Foundation
- Connections with Amazon S3
Pixomondo
Pixomondo is an international visual effects company with a global network of studios in Los Angeles, Toronto, Stuttgart, Beijing, Vancouver, Frankfurt and Shanghai. The company is revolutionizing its industry offering visual effects production and supervision, CG character creation, 3D animation and pre-visualization for the feature film, television, and commercial industries. Among their projects are Game of Thrones, Star Trek Discovery, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., X-Men, Fast and Furious and Wonder Woman.
CHALLENGE:
Pixomondo receives video frames from their clients in different formats with different naming conventions and file structures. Each asset requires specific preprocessing which until now was done semi-automatically with console tools. Their challenge was to create a configurable desktop application with a UI for automating the preprocessing step, allowing Pixomondo to implement further image processing.
SOLUTION:
To achieve this goal, STX Next used sophisticated logic combined with regular expressions. It led the team to create a variety of unique processors dedicated to transforming the required files. All of the logic is easily configurable through a dedicated desktop application. This allowed us to retain the flexibility of console tools, but also greatly speed up batch operations and minimize the manual work behind repeatable tasks.
finstreet
ABOUT
finstreet GmbH provides consulting services to banking and financial services organizations in Germany. Their focus is on the conceptual design, as well as the development and distribution of digital products and business models.
CHALLENGE
finstreet’s biggest challenge was the race against time. They needed to create a banking application in less than 4 months. The app required fully responsive web design while providing the highest quality of user experience. At the same time, server-side app security was a top priority for this banking project.
STX Next Delivered
- 1 Full Scrum team
- Backend Development
- Frontend Development
- UI Design
- Automated Testing
- Automation of deployment processes
FusePump
ABOUT
FusePump is a strategic partner for brands, helping them understand and apply technology to succeed in digital commerce. Established in 2009, FusePump started by offering technology that scrapes websites and returns organized, high-quality, real-time data. In 2011, the company launched the first ever BuyNow solution which uses the same data-retrieving expertise to connect customers with live retailer prices.
CHALLENGE
The client came to us with an idea for the product’s MVP. The system needed to be easy to use and flexible enough to build different types of advertisements. The biggest challenge for FusePump was to provide a common solution for all clients who had different needs.
STX Next Delivered
- One permanent and one temporary Scrum Team available exclusively to the client
- A set of features and tools extending the basic functionalities of the platform (e.g. providing a data validation tool and a data mapping tool)
- Analysis and ideas for improvements to the development process – delivered as a workshop in the spirit of Lean process management
The Outplay
ABOUT
Analytics, DMP and DSP solutions based on cookie-less technology. Myntelligence helps companies put their customers first, to transform these customer’s digital model into a user-centric business and manage audience buying independently.
CHALLENGE
TheOutplay was looking for a tech partner to create an MVP of their product. Their goal was to present the MVP to potential clients and investors and secure further rounds of funding. They were looking for a quick and cost-effective solution to have a presentable prototype as soon as possible.
STX Next Delivered
- User’s data visualization with interactive charts
- Ability to group unique users into segments
- Online campaigns management module
- Campaign efficiency analysis module
- Admin panel for platform management (creating accounts, managing permissions, etc.)
- “Demo account” for sales presentations purposes
- Marketplace functionality for trading the segments
T Dispatch
ABOUT
T Dispatch was a progressive software development company which has built a unique dispatch system for passenger transport fleets.
CHALLENGE
Due to T Dispatch’s diverse, global customer base, there was a demand for localized customer features and payment service provider integrations. The development team also had to focus on improving the performance of the overall system in order to handle an increasing number of end-users.
STX Next Delivered
- New search engine, over 10 times faster than the previous one
- Increased performance which eliminated system outages
- Security improvements related to booking and payment processes
- Integration with payment providers in 7 countries
Inteligo (PKO Bank Polski)
ABOUT
Inteligo Financial Services S.A. is one of the first online banks in Poland. It is owned and operated by PKO Bank Polski, Poland’s largest bank by market value and listed among Forbes Global 2000 in 2016.
Completed in 2014.
STX Next Delivered
- A proprietary (open-sourced) module stxnext. staticdeployment enabled generating a static version of the content
- Existing infrastructure was integrated with a CMS Plone system
- A reliable ‘storing data in relational database’ architecture was created which enabled the CMS application to operate in a hot standby mode
- Integration with Google Maps to enable search of ATM locations
- The portal was linked with tracking systems and forms to open accounts and deposit money was created
Key Ingredient
ABOUT
Founded in 2005, Key Ingredient is based in Austin, Texas, and features more than 2 million recipes that have been shared by cooks over the years. With about 3,000,000 unique visitors per month, their largest demographic segment consists of millennial home cooks.
CHALLENGE
The website, despite its long existence, was poorly optimized for SEO and the design required some refreshment, especially on the mobile site, because the majority of the users access the website from a mobile device. Another issue was that the page loading time was highly insufficient. The code itself contained a lot of legacy code, with outdated libraries and unused features.
STX Next Delivered
- Site speed improvement (4-5x faster)
- The highest SEO ratings due to front-end, back-end, and sitemaps improvements
- Streamlined technical stack by moving categories to elastic search (removing Oracle), moving pages to site (removing Unbounce)
- Moved ad code to site for better targeting, and higher revenue (managing ads and vendor in Doubleclick)
- 4,5 TB of unused stored data cleaned
- Secure https protocol, instead of previously used http
- Fully responsive web design (still in progress)
- Food industry articles available to users
- Admin Panel, redesigned and upgraded with new tools (such as image management)
- Automated tests (Selenium, Behave) to increase site quality
Key Ingredient Mobile
ABOUT
Key ingredient is a social networking application for cooking enthusiasts. The application contains over 2 million recipes, which users browse, share and collect into personalised cookbooks. Key Ingredient offers text recognition system for digitizing recipes as well as text to speech engine, allowing to list the recipes.
FEATURES
- iOS and Android platforms
- Text recognition system
- Text-to-speech engine
- Internal currency system (Key NotesTM)
- Mobile ads platforms: Amazon Ads,
- MoPub, TapJoy
- Mobile payments: Google Play, Amazon, iOS In-App Purchases
Polish State Forests (Lasy Państwowe)
ABOUT
Polish State Forests (Polish: Lasy Państwowe) is a Polish governmental organization that manages state-owned Polish forests on behalf of the Polish State Treasury. The agency is among the top 20 companies in Poland based on revenues from sales. (This project was Completed in 2014)
STX Next Delivered
- Portal based on a modern CMS that allows intuitive and convenient content management accompanied by a new graphic design.
- Due to performance requirements, modern caching techniques were employed.
- We used tools, such as Munin and Nagios, allowing for the monitoring of the server status and alarming the agency in the event of problems.
Paze.me
ABOUT
Paze was founded on the premise of eliminating the dependency on short-term credit and encourage working people to save. It is a next-generation consumer finance company that lets customers get the money they’ve already earned without waiting for payday. Paze does this by paying customers their salary on a daily, weekly, or on-demand basis and collecting from the employer at the end of the month.
CHALLENGE
Paze needed to scale up their development team quickly while ensuring that they bring software engineers with the right skills on board. They were about to launch their service and needed more resources for support and future development.
STX Next Delivered
- Every day reports about reconciliation
- Tab for checking statuses of disbursements
- Using cards for paying installments after opt-out
- Tab for employers to manage their employees
cielo24
ABOUT
Cielo24 delivers searchable captions, media data and media intelligence for large media platform partners in the online education, enterprise, news, and entertainment markets. Their clients turn to Cielo24 to meet the growing demands on their multimedia including compliance laws, discoverability, reach and user engagement.
CHALLENGE
Due to limited internal bandwidth, Cielo24 sought a qualified technology partner to support their inhouse development team on a series of complex projects. They were looking for skilled developers who could develop and maintain their product.
STX Next Delivered
- User requirements validation
- Project scoping
- Data preparation and migration
- Custom functional development
- User Interface/User Experience
- Performance testing, maintenance and support
KNMP
ABOUT
KNMP (The Royal Dutch Pharmacists Association) is a Dutch umbrella organization for both professional pharmacists and the pharmacy in general. It promotes both the interests of its members and the interests of the pharmaceutical sector in the Netherlands.
CHALLENGE
The goal was to create a viable product that would help KNMP manage shortages and inform specialists about supply forecasts. The ambitious goal was to be completed within a fixed price/fixed scope project. Despite very thorough documentation, the final product needed to evolve to fit the needs of the end users.
STX Next Delivered
- A custom Content Management System that allows the management of medicine shortages
- An application design that enables the user to easily update content
- A system that quickly notifies doctors, pharmacists, and patients of the availability of a particular medicine
BetBright
ABOUT
Based in Dublin and founded in 2012, BetBright is an online UK sports betting and gaming operator. BetBright takes an innovative and disruptive technology-based approach to winning on the product, which delivers the very best user experience possible.
CHALLENGE
With three internal teams already working on their project, BetBright found themselves with a need to scale up their development rapidly. In order to do so, they were looking for capable and affordable developers with the ability to make an immediate impact.
STX Next Delivered
- Casino “Quick Deposit” allows users to continue to deposit money during the game without interruption
- Mobile page redesign including Blog & Widgetisation allows BetBright customers to stay updated with current events
- “Recall” adds personalized bet recommendations based on the customers’ bet history. (15+% conversion)
- “Automated Bonus” feature potentially adds 10% to every new customer LTV
- Live Casino for Mobile enables users to place bets using mobile devices
Reviews
the project
Offshore Python Development Leading Marketing Agency
"Their whole management and development process is very transparent."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Could you provide a brief description of your company?
We specialize in what's called market implementations, so we do the production work for sister ad agencies in the [organization's] group. Those ads are print, video, and digital advertisements. In the process, during the last five years of doing production work, we've developed a number of software products. We now have a software division of about 150 people. I run that software division. We've got three main software products.
What was your position?
I'm the managing director.
Could you describe the business challenges that you were attempting to address when you first approached STX Next?
Obviously, there are challenges when you start a relationship. First of all, you've got to educate the vendor as to your software stack and the way in which you work. You need to test their ability to follow instructions and examine their capabilities. We accomplished that task by spending time in their offices with their key developers and project leads. We have very particular technology needs, so we needed to ensure that our vendor had the technical chops required to complete our work.
How did you select STX Next as your solution partner?
We use Python pretty much exclusively. The first and foremost criterion was having deep expertise with Python. I've done a lot of outsourcing around the world and I've had a lot of success in the past, in Eastern Europe, Bulgaria, Poland, etc. That's originally where I was looking for vendors. STX Next emerged as the biggest Python development shop in that space. Their reputation really preceded them, so they ended up being the number one choice on my list.
As I mentioned, we traveled to their office to interview their developers and project leads. We wanted to get a better feel for their expertise and their development process. I admit that we were very impressed by their previous work, and it was made clear to us that their engineers were well versed with Python.
Could you describe the scope of this project?
We operate spring teams with their developers. They work on any number of development initiatives. The types of project they work on really depends on our client and what their needs are. On the whole, most of their work is custom development, bug fixes and troubleshooting, and ad hoc testing and quality assurance.
Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in monetary terms?
We spend roughly $500,000 a year with STX Next.
You retain them for ongoing projects, correct?
Yes.
In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they've delivered?
One way to measure it would be the number of storyboards completed through our sprints. In the beginning, we were operating two sprint teams for one particular project. One team was from a separate vendor, based here in the United Kingdom; and the STX team was working from Poland. After a few sprints, STX Next quickly overtook the U.K.-based team in terms of development quality and turnaround. We were very surprised, but also very impressed. After that project, we transitioned our development initiatives over to STX Next. More importantly, perhaps, was the fact that STX was also much cheaper than their U.K. counterparts.
When working with STX Next, is there anything you'd consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguishes them from other vendors?
I like the management information around who's working on what and how long. Their whole management and development process is very transparent. I can see the detailed breakdown of the amount of time spent on each of our various tasks. You know you're getting genuine data. There's no hiding how long it took to accomplish something. That really stood out to us.
In retrospect, are there areas in which you think STX Next could improve upon?
There's a definite cultural difference between United Kingdom and Poland, which we're getting still coming to terms with. There are a few communication issues here and there. We've been working with them for over a year now. Most of those have gone away but, at the start, there were a few communication issues. We've addressed them successfully. There's always some kind of learning curve.
the project
Offshore Plone Development IT Solution Provider
"Their demonstrated knowledge of Python and Plone is bar none; they're wizards in that area of expertise."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Could you provide a brief description of your company?
We’re an information system company based in the Washington, D.C., area. Our offices are in Rockville, Md. We help clients, large and small, in the area of food and product safety. We basically help the companies comply with the changing and complex regulatory environment. We also provide consulting services and supply chain management services where a lot of the process is document management where you need to get questionnaires and get feedback. We cover about 170 countries in terms of our regulatory database. We’ve got clients all around the world. The latest count was something like 60 countries. We’ve got teams of people located all around the world. My team is located in about seven countries.
What is your position?
I’m a project manager.
Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you first approached STX Next?
The primary challenge was searching for qualified talent. We use a content management system (CMS) called Plone, which is a Python-based platform. It’s a very specific, niche tool. The major problem we confronted was finding experts in the field that could help us solve some of our technical hurdles. I was the lead developer for a long time. We were originally looking to hire a permanent resource, but could only seem to locate qualified contractors. STX was one of them.
At the time, we were looking for administrative type help. We needed help speeding up our services, performing data caching, performing backups, and monitoring our processes. We had a very specific and limited project in mind when we first began. Our experience with them and the success of that first project really set the precedent for moving forward. We’ve been using them as our development partners ever since.
How did you select STX Next as your solution partner for this endeavor?
They responded to our posting. I posted in a variety of places, like Stack Overflow, newsletters, job boards, things like that. They responded to the ad, got in touch with our HR [human resources department]. HR got in touch with me because I’m the project manager. I then vetted them. We deal with regulations and compliance. We work in a very high-pressure environment. If we do something incorrectly, bad things can happen. We wanted to make sure that if we did choose a contractor, that that contractor had that kind of experience. STX Next has worked with many Polish banks. I believe the largest bank in Poland is one of their major clients. The fact that they dealt with sensitive information, such as banking data was a great reassurance to me.
Could you describe the scope of work they’ve delivered to you over the course of the relationship?
We’ve been contracting with them for a year now. We started at end of July or August of last year. As mentioned, a lot of the original work was Plone troubleshooting and administration. They developed some custom add-ons based on optimization of our code base. They had done some general server management as well, improving and monitoring of our servers. I would say the bread and butter of our relationship has been the deployment of new modules, and new add-ons.
Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?
Over the last year, we probably spent between $100,000 and $200,000.
You retain their services on an ongoing basis, correct?
Yes. In fact, I’ll be visiting their office in Poland this August [of 2014] to meet them.
In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?
In terms of their work, they’re spot on. They always deliver excellent code the first time around. Bugs are very minimal. If a bug does come up for whatever reason, they fix it immediately. In terms of all of my technical criteria, they exceeded everything. Then, in addition, I got this management process that made us deliver more effectively, more efficiently. We’re more in touch with what the client wants. If the client wants to change something, we can change rapidly. With the previous process before, we were far more in the waterfall model, and so changes were harder to take on, especially late in a project. This, I think, has increased customer happiness as well. All around, it’s been a great working relationship and I’ve been very pleased.
When working with STX Next, is there anything you’d consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguish them from other vendors?
We also do a lot of work with object-oriented databases as well as relational databases, which these guys really excel at. That’s a unique skill set to have. They can also build add-on products and do server administration. When we were approached by STX Next, and we told them about our area and what we did, they were actually saying that what we were doing was quite smart, and exactly what they would have recommended. I was glad that they understood our field. They understood the importance of confidentiality. They understood the importance of our high-pressure environment and delivering on time and also the technical challenges that we face. Their knowledge of Python and Plone is bar none; they're wizards in that area of expertise.
In retrospect, are there any areas in which you think STX Next could improve upon as a service provider?
I was talking about this with them a few days ago. They have an internal SCRUM Board. The SCRUM Board is quite adequate. It works well. Internally, we’re talking about maybe moving to a newer platform because it’s adopted by industry, it’s standard. We’ve been talking about how they may be able to improve some of their internal tools, their SCRUM Board, and bug tracking system. That’s probably the only think I could recommend to them in terms of improvement.
the project
Custom Development European IT Firm
"They’re thought partners first and foremost, developers second."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Could you briefly describe your organization?
We’re developing sophisticated, in-depth portal for large companies. We build websites, of course. We also build apps, and we’re now into the Beacon technology, the Bluetooth 4.0 technology.
What is your position?
I’m the director.
Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you began the relationship with STX Next?
Before STX Next was founded, I was one of the co-founders of STX Poland. I started it up about nine years ago. At the time, I needed some Plone and Python developers, so we began sourcing them from Poland. Even though I don’t work there anymore, I remain close with pretty much all of their leadership. We have a very good relationship. They’re a development firm almost exclusively dedicated to Python/Django/Plone development, and that’s exactly what we needed. We needed a cohort of qualified and professional developers to augment our own internal development team. We were running into capacity and scaling issues, but we had to ensure that whomever we put on the projects would be extremely capable and competent.
Could you describe the scope of work delivered to you during the course of this relationship?
They’ve been heavily involved in the technical aspects of our projects. The majority of their work is custom development with Python. They’ve done everything from basic code reviews, bug fixes and slight modifications and enhancements to all the way to complex integrations with multiple unique systems. They handle the testing and quality assurance, and they configure and optimize all of the deployed systems.
Could you provide a sense of the size of these various initiatives in terms of their financial cost?
We’ve invested around $900,000 to $1 million, but this is, of course, during the last three years. It’s grown exponentially. We’ll definitely be well past the $1 million mark this coming year.
In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?
I really don’t have any kind of figures or statistics to share with you. I can tell you that our customers and stakeholders remain consistently pleased with the quality of their deliverables. For instance, STX Next has worked alongside us with one of our priority customers for almost six years. This particular client has made it patently clear that they want STX developers working on their assignments. They’re very confident in what STX Next can bring to the table. That’s just one illustrative example, but there are a number of others, too. On the whole, we’ve experienced issues with STX. To the contrary, they deliver such high-quality development services that they’re deliberately sought out by firms so that they can guarantee technical excellence to their own customers.
When working with STX Next, is there anything you’d consider unique about their approach or development methodology that you think distinguishes them from other vendors?
The thing that impressed me most about STX Next was how proactive they are with their clients. They don’t approach a project in a linear fashion. It’s not A, B, C, and then project complete. It’s less about them meeting our deadlines and checking items off our wish list. They’re much more focused on isolating the problem or problems and then brainstorming any number of viable solutions, depending on what results are most important to the client. They’re thought partners first, and then they’re code monkeys. Their meticulous about this approach, too. I believe it’s one of the primary reasons they’re able to deliver such high-quality work so often. They really perform their due diligence before dedicating their resources to a possible solution.
the project
Offshore Development for IT Solutions Firm
“We’re allowed to be part of the process, and keeping that open communication is ideal for us.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Could you briefly describe your organization?
Our organization offers web application design and support consulting services. It is mostly geared towards the Plone content management system (CMS). However, we also work with other platforms depending on the client project. We primarily do system development, application development, and application integration, but we also perform systems optimization, environmental setup, and custom development.
What is your position?
I’m the director of operations.
Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you initiated the relationship with STX Next?
We needed to find developers with expertise using Plone CMS. Finding resources locally is extremely challenging because of the specialized skill set that’s required in understanding not only Zope and Python. We needed developers that understood the structure of Plone and how to utilize its infrastructure in the most efficient way possible. We needed a reliable and qualified set of developers to incorporate themselves into our own development teams. We need to ensure they’d be competent and capable of contributing significant value to our development projects.
Could you describe the scope of work that they delivered during the course of the relationship?
In terms of STX, they have been involved in everything from not only helping us with minor bug fixes, but all the way up into managing entire projects, specifically those that require complex migrations, custom enhancements and optimization services. A lot of the work has been custom development alongside our internal teams, but they also help us with testing phases and strategizing our overall Web presence.
How did you select STX Next as your solution partner for this endeavor?
I’m not sure I know the answer to that question. It was actually a colleague of mine who’s no longer with the company that identified them. I’m not sure how they got to us, but once I was aware of their skill sets and once I had the package of information they sent us, I quickly latched on. I saw the value in having them help out with some of the specific projects we had at that particular time. At this point, they’ve demonstrated to us that they can handle almost anything we throw at them. When I know that I have a challenging project coming up, or that our capacity is somewhat limited, I know I can rely on STX Next. They add significant bandwidth to our development capability, and also add significant quality to the work we deliver.
Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in monetary terms?
That’s difficult to say because the cost varies depending on the amount and complexity of projects going on at any given time. We’ve had multiple projects going on simultaneously with them, and single, very large ones. Some of the smaller projects have been around $25,000; some of the larger ones have been around $200,000.
This is an ongoing relationship, correct?
Yes, it is. We have a number of ongoing projects with them.
In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback you’ve received that would demonstrate the effectiveness their work?
They’ve collaborated with us on a number of high-priority projects, and the end customers have been consistently impressed with our deliverables. For us, the fact that our client has continued to bring us more work, and we’re now approaching half a million dollars in the last year and a half with that same client, the return of business, I think, is indicative of our good work and how much they appreciate it. They continue to see us as their main developing arm. As a matter of fact, they had an internal developing arm that was based in the U.K. and they’ve since dropped them. We’re now their primary development team.
In terms of your own internal evaluation of their performance, how satisfied is your staff and executive team with the overall flow of these various initiatives?
We’re extremely content. There was a period about two years ago when they informed me that they were going to be reaching their maximum capacity and that we might not be able to utilize their services for a few months. That was when I realized how much we’d come to rely on them. I brought it up as a major point with our executive team, explaining that we simply had no way of replacing them for the interim. The fact was that they provide such high-quality work with such consistency that it’d have taken us months to simply find a viable replacement, let alone get them hired and up and running. We had to convince them to remain active on our behalf so we could keep our own customers happy.
When working with STX Next, is there anything you’d consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguishes them from other vendors?
They’re very big on having scrum teams and they manage their projects and iterations to make sure that when we are receiving updates, it’s not at the end when it’s too late to make any adjustments. We receive very timely update from them. There are updates that provide feedback during the development cycle so that, again, we can catch things quickly and often. That kind of meticulous process and attention to detail is definitely one of the primary reasons why they’re so effective at what they do. Moreover, we’re allowed to be part of that process, and keeping that open communication is ideal for us. It’s one of the reasons we’re such a good fit because both of us really appreciate and exercise good communication.
In retrospect, are there any areas you think they could improve upon as a service provider?
If I think long enough, I’m sure I can come up with something. I feel like everybody has something they need to improve on, or else you don’t have that continuous growth, and you’re not really challenging yourself. Of course, I wouldn’t want them to take any holidays, that’d be number one, not allow them to have any time off, but I know that’s not reasonable. My only wish was that they had more resources. As I’d mentioned, when they end up with too much work, we might end up losing some of their developers to repurposing. Of course, that then diminishes our own internal development resources, and then we’re forced to make do either without them for a specified period or temporarily search elsewhere for replacements.
the project
UI Design Services for Software Startup
"They're a very good design team with a strong understanding of the startup world."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
CEO and Founder
For what projects/services did your company hire STX Next?
We were starting a software company and required some assistance of putting together some user flow and UI interfaces
What were your goals for this project?
A helpful presentation and UI design project for our team.
How did you select this vendor?
Reviewed a number of vendors and clutch.co reviews as well. Ultimately, my friend gave me the recommendation to this team.
Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.
UI details and project design for our software.
What was the team composition?
The team on their side comprise of 1 head of UI and 1 consultant. Other members we interacted included two software engineers.
Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?
We ended with a very good working document that lend itself to our internal customer and investor presentations. It also gave us some ideas around the backend development.
How was project management arranged and how effective was it?
It was primarily managed through weekly calls and emails. No software GitHub or Asana needed. Our calls were through Google Hangouts.
What did you find most impressive about this company?
They're a very good design team with a strong understanding of the startup world. They also spoke perfect English which made the conversation very clear and effective.
Are there any areas for improvement?
The costs seem a bit high for some of their services relative to peers. That being said, great service and great end product.
the project
Roadmap Development for Lifestyle Company
"They are a responsive team."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
Lifestyle
For what projects/services did your company hire STX Next?
Outsourced developers
What were your goals for this project?
Transformation roadmap
How did you select this vendor?
Used before
Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.
Roadmap delivery
What was the team composition?
Python + angular
Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?
We have implemented key areas thanks to them.
How was project management arranged and how effective was it?
We do the project mgmt and we have an account manager. works well
What did you find most impressive about this company?
They are a responsive team.
Are there any areas for improvement?
None - we work collaboratively
the project
Platform Migration & Algorithm Dev for Data Analytics Co
"Their machine learning developer most impressed us."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
A data analytics based company, providing data analytics and insights in both a B2B and B2C manner.
For what projects/services did your company hire STX Next?
Technical debt work and devops
What were your goals for this project?
We hired STX Next to help without technical debt moving us to latest Python and Django versions and ultimately get our backend up to date for a migration to a react.js front end.
How did you select this vendor?
We selected this vendor based on their reviews here on Clutch, so we thought we best give back to the community and provide our feedback.
Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.
Migrate from python 2.7- python 3. Migrate to latest version of Django. Reduce technical debt of all backend to enable us to focus on a react migration.
What was the team composition?
1 Backend developer, 2 Devops and a Project Manager
Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?
Unfortunately, I am here to report that the project was not a resounding success. Costs ran away from us and we are still cleaning up a lot of issues after we ended their engagement with us.
How was project management arranged and how effective was it?
Project management was ad hoc at best. Multiple times I was asking their PM for updates with nothing back. Also, we were sold on a final terraforming project, which was not fit for our purpose.
What did you find most impressive about this company?
Their backend developer was very good, he worked tirelessly to fix the backend of the system. He was very accountable and responsive.
Are there any areas for improvement?
Communication, and properly qualifying project requirements before going down that route. As businesses, we do not want "yes men" we want to be challenged if a particular path is not correct or not fit for purpose.
The terraform project has had to be completely rewritten to be compatible with our react branch. We are still trying to eliminate daily downtime caused by STX next.
BACKGROUND
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the director of an analytics firm.
This review was updated by the client on August 31, 2020. The original star ratings were: Overall – 2, Quality – 2, Schedule – 2, Cost – 2, NPS - 2 New content is below:
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
We engaged STX Next to improve our Django backend, updating it, and removing all of the technical debt. We also engaged them in a data analytics project.
SOLUTION
What was the scope of their involvement?
For the first project, the goal was to remove technical debt and upgrade our platform to the newest extension of Platnum Django. After that project, their team came to the table again and engaged in a data analytics project for us. They helped to build essentially a machine learning algorithm.
What is the team composition?
I worked with three people from STX Next. It was a tight-knit team, which I preferred because it was a technical project. I worked with a delivery manager, a developer, and a data analytics teammate.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
I originally found them on Clutch.
How much have you invested with them?
At this point, we’re probably knocking on $50,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
We began our collaboration on the data analytics project in March 2020, and it’ll come to a close soon.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
STX Next came back to the table to rectify the relationship, and they’ve done a good job with the data analytics project. We’ve definitely seen improvements. Their team tried to grasp our technical problems and solve it in the best way possible. While it’s too early to provide quantitative metrics, their work’s promising. They set up a framework for our data analytics to improve and evolve going forward.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
There was clear communication about their progress and availability. They sent routine emails, and we had meetings. As we worked across different time zones, they often recorded video presentations of their progress during which their team explained their decisions. Those videos were probably half an hour long and definitely a value add.
What did you find most impressive about them?
Their machine learning developer most impressed us. His grasp of the problem as well as his ability to effectively communicate his solutions to us was impressive. While it’s difficult, he managed to communicate highly technical ideas in completely understandable terms.
Are there any areas they could improve?
They could schedule more calls. We probably needed slightly more meetings to keep the project moving forward at the right pace.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
Communication’s key to any engagement. Written emails may not be as effective as meetings, especially if you’re working across time zones. If you meet, it’s more efficient than 50 emails back and forth. It would be helpful to hold STX Next to a meeting schedule where you review their work.
STX Next quickly outperformed the client’s UK-based development team in terms of quality and turnaround for the number of storyboards completed. The team offers detailed breakdowns of work hours spent on specific tasks and is capable of meeting very specific technology needs.