About
On one side, you've got enterprise agencies. Armies of junior developers managed by project managers who've never written a line of code. They'll bill you £150/hour, staff your project with graduates, and deliver something that technically meets the spec but misses the point.
On the other side, you've got freelancers. Brilliant individually, but they disappear. No process. No documentation. No accountability when the project runs long or the scope shifts.
The middle is empty. Senior engineers who actually build things, with a process that actually works, at a price that doesn't require board approval. That's what Vanguard is.
The team
We've spent over a decade shipping production software. Enterprise automotive platforms. Large-scale ecommerce migrations. Payment systems. Healthcare tools. AI integrations before "AI-first" was a pitch deck buzzword.
We've worked inside enterprises and watched six-figure budgets evaporate into agency overhead. We've rescued projects from offshore teams that shipped code nobody could maintain. We've been the senior engineers that startups needed but couldn't afford to hire full-time.
Vanguard exists because we kept seeing the same problem: companies that needed genuinely senior engineering but had nowhere to get it without overpaying or compromising.
Every project at Vanguard is built by senior engineers — personally vetted, with production pedigree we'd stake our reputation on. No juniors. No offshore handoffs. No bait-and-switch.
UK & Europe · GMT+0/+1
UK & US business hours coverage
10+
Years in production
50+
Projects shipped
40K+
SKUs migrated in largest ecommerce project
< 1wk
From first call to project kickoff
How we think
01
We'll tell you if your idea needs work. We'll flag technical debt before it compounds. Honest feedback saves months and thousands of pounds. We'd rather lose a deal than deliver something we know will fail.
02
We don't bill by the hour. We scope, price, and deliver outcomes. You're paying for working software, not for someone to be busy.
03
Every hour you pay for is a senior engineer's hour. No bait-and-switch. No 'the architect designed it but the intern built it.' The person on the call is the person writing the code.
04
Proposals are specific. Timelines are realistic. Status updates are honest. If something's going wrong, you hear about it the day we find out — not the day before launch.
05
We don't rely on testimonials and case studies alone. We build working prototypes and publish them. If you want to see what we can do, click something. Try it. The proof is in the product.
Technology
Polyglot by nature. The right tool for the problem, not the tool we know best.
Track record
2014–2018
Our founding team cut their teeth on high-traffic production systems — e-commerce platforms, hosting infrastructure, and server fleets serving millions of customers across Europe.
2018–2022
Moved into engineering leadership at scale — managing teams of 20+, setting technical direction for enterprise clients in automotive and fintech, and rescuing projects that other agencies had failed to deliver.
2022–2025
Senior consulting engagements across healthcare, SaaS, and e-commerce. Architecture reviews, platform migrations, fractional CTO work. Learned exactly how the agency model fails clients — and how to fix it.
2026
Founded to close the gap between expensive agencies and unreliable freelancers. Senior engineers only. Outcome-priced. Serving clients across the UK, Europe, and US.
Tell us what you're building. We'll tell you how we'd approach it, what it'll cost, and whether we're the right fit — straight answer, no fluff.