Smaller is faster.
We cap projects at seven people. Smaller teams ship more, argue less and remember what they built.
§ About — 01/06
A studio for software
that ages well.
We are 38 engineers, designers and security specialists working from a single studio. We build the kind of software you want to forget about — because it just runs.
§ Origin
Founded by people who'd shipped enough bad software to know how.
SUNSCREEN & DOOR began in 2016 as a reaction to the agency model — endless layers, junior implementation, opaque hand-offs. We wanted a studio where the engineer in the kickoff meeting was also the engineer paged at 3am.
Ten years on, the structure has held. We've kept the studio small, the team senior, and the work focused on systems that matter.
§ Principles
Four rules we don't break.
Boring on purpose.
We pick proven tools. Novelty is a tax our clients pay; we minimise it deliberately.
Security is design.
Threat modelling sits next to component design. It isn't a phase we bolt on at the end.
Code outlives us.
We write for the engineer reading it in three years — and that engineer is often us.
§ Milestones
A decade in the studio.
- 2016
Studio founded as a two-person practice in a small office above a bookshop.
- 2018
First long-term platform partnership; team grows to nine.
- 2020
Security practice formalised; SOC2 attestation programme begins.
- 2022
Applied-AI group spun up; first agentic workflow shipped in production.
- 2024
Cloud cost-optimisation practice launches; saves clients $14M in year one.
- 2026
Studio reaches 38 engineers; remains structurally flat.
38
Studio members
210+
Engagements
97%
Retention
11y
Median tenure
