we build it, we run it
A small senior team that builds large systems and then runs them, for government programmes, enterprises and growing businesses. The people who design your system are the people keeping it live years later.
- 40+countries on the funding platform we helped take international
- 2,200+public commits by one of us to Innovate UK’s grant platform, 6th of 76 contributors
- UK + USGoodFlexi, which we build and run in the UK, California and Oregon
- 2003the year we started building and running large systems
Latest
selected work
The funding platform, taken international
The platform behind UK innovation funding, adopted by an intergovernmental R&D network to run cross-border funding programmes such as Eurostars. We helped take it there.
Innovate UK · GOV.UKInside Innovate UK's Innovation Funding Service
Years as one of the core engineers on the open-source GOV.UK platform that runs Innovate UK's grant competitions — applications, assessment and project setup, at national scale. The contribution is public and verifiable.
GoodFlexi · UK, CA, ORThe platform behind quality flexible work
We build and run GoodFlexi — a labour marketplace offering flexible work with real protections across the UK, California and Oregon. Here's the engineering behind it.
Polymorphism took over development of our GoodFlexi platform as it became increasingly sophisticated. Their team consistently deliver enhanced functionality demanded by the diverse range of public agencies, commercial employers and worker groups that we serve.
…
The Poly team are a constant pleasure to work with.
what we do
We turn complex requirements into software that keeps changing as your business does, which is the idea behind our name, polymorphism.
build and run
We design the system, build it, and stay to run it in production.
As we do for GoodFleximodernise in place
Legacy systems moved forward one slice at a time, while they keep running.
Modernising without a rewritejoin your team
Senior engineers working inside your team, alongside your other suppliers.
As on Innovate UK’s platformJava & Spring · AWS, GCP, Azure · data engineering · AI-assisted delivery · distributed databases · web & mobile · all services
writing
Working paper The Heat Death of the Codebase? How many AI coding agents to run, and why review sets the limit. A working paper, revised as the evidence comes in.Spring Boot 2.7 end of life: what the upgrade to 3 costs
Two estates reported the same unsupported Spring version and needed very different work. The version number tells you that you are behind but not what it costs to catch up.
EssayModernising legacy systems without the big-bang rewrite
Why the from-scratch rewrite usually fails, and how a system gets modernised in place — one slice at a time, while it keeps running.
Papers: The Seven Hills of Sheffield · Why Seven Hills? Rome, Sheffield, and four thousand books
All writing → · Atom feed
tools we build
Alongside client work we build the developer tools we wanted ourselves, and open-source most of them, with pgman (Postgres) on the way.
Have a system to build, or one that needs work?
Get in touch