Our engineers apply simple, well-tested solutions to our customers' problems.

Blocky, the Ad Hoc mascot, pushing a new database into place.

Ad Hoc's engineering team focuses on reliable, observable systems that we can experiment with, update, and improve quickly at scale. Ad Hoc was founded by two engineers, and we have a track record of successful delivery within complex environments.

Many software development firms focus on application development — code, product, and user experience. We train our engineers to operate with a more expansive view of digital services that includes monitoring, automated testing, and capacity planning.

We expect our engineers to maintain the systems they develop in production environments. This means on-call rotations and staff with enough knowledge of deployment pipelines and automation to respond to problems.

Engineering principles

01
Deliver confidence and a problem solving process. Software is a byproduct.
02
Operate with a validated understanding of the problem, with minimal, repeatable, and scalable processes.
03
Develop simple, observable, resilient, accessible, and secure systems by leveraging the combined experience of the team, but focusing on individual responsibility.
04
Customer data is sacred. Protect it.
05
Embody stability by studying failure and practicing for emergencies.
06
Grow as people, colleagues, teams, and leaders while not forgetting our engineering roots.

Engineering team skills

  • Legacy application modernization
  • Platform design and development
  • Modern cloud infrastructure
  • Cloud migration
  • Mainframe modernization
  • API design and implementation
  • Continuous integration and deployment
  • Incident response management
  • Capacity planning and testing
  • Monitoring, alerting, analytics
  • Independent code review and acceptance testing
  • Penetration testing and security analysis
  • Identity and authentication services
  • Custom software integrations

Our Engineering team

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Recent Engineering posts

Setting the right benchmarks for site speed in government

April 12, 2022

As we think about ways in which government sites meet the needs of their users, speed is an integral part of what makes a site inclusive and accessible to more people.

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Examining the covidtests.gov architecture

January 18, 2022

A day early, the Biden Administration has quietly launched the new website that allows households to order four COVID-19 rapid antigen tests.

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Crafting our leadership teams for fast, effective information flow

January 04, 2022

As people within Engineering take on new responsibilities, and new people join our teams, they are entering an intentionally-structured way of operating.

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Threat modeling: a journey of hypothetical nuances

August 04, 2021

Threat modeling at Ad Hoc often starts early in the process of designing a system, and can involve product managers as much as it does any of the engineering staff.

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Embarrassingly automatable as the first step of legacy modernization

July 20, 2021

Perhaps it’s time for an equivalent of Maslow’s classic hierarchy of needs, but for legacy modernization projects.

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A path to transforming the nation’s unemployment insurance systems

June 11, 2021

The time is ripe to rethink how the nation’s unemployment systems, many of which still rely on manual and paper-based processes, can be improved through new technology and approaches.

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