Company
A small company that takes engineering seriously
We started Altus Labs because we kept meeting good companies with software that did not work, built by teams paid to produce hours rather than outcomes. We wanted to run the opposite of that.
Origin
How we got here
Altus Labs began in 2019 with four engineers who had spent years inside outsourcing firms and had grown tired of the model. The pattern was always the same: a strong team wins the work, a weaker team delivers it, and the client discovers the difference around month four.
We built the company to remove that gap. The people who scope your project are the people who build it. We stay deliberately small so that is possible, and we turn down work when we cannot staff it properly. That has cost us revenue more than once and it is the single decision we would not change.
Today we are a team of engineers, designers and delivery leads in Kathmandu working with product companies, enterprises and funded startups across fourteen countries. Most of our work arrives by referral from someone we shipped for.
The team
Senior by design
We run a deliberately high ratio of senior engineers. Juniors join through a structured apprenticeship and pair for their first year rather than being billed out as experienced.
38
Engineers, designers and delivery leads
8 yrs
Median engineering experience
3.5 yrs
Average tenure at Altus Labs
6:1
Ratio of senior to junior on client projects
How we operate
Six commitments we hold to
Tell the truth early
Bad news does not improve with age. If a milestone is at risk you hear it the week we know, with options attached.
Write it down
Decisions live in architecture decision records, not in someone's memory. New engineers get productive in days because the reasoning is on file.
Own the outcome
We do not close a ticket because the code compiles. It is done when it works in production for real users.
Build for the team after us
Every project is written so someone else can pick it up. Clever code that only its author understands is a liability we do not ship.
Protect focus
Two meetings a week, long uninterrupted blocks, no expectation of replying after hours. Good engineering needs quiet.
Pay attention to cost
We treat your cloud bill and your engineering budget as if they were ours, because getting invited back depends on it.
Working with us
What the first month looks like
Week one
Kickoff with everyone who will touch the project. We read your existing code, your tickets and your support inbox before proposing anything.
Week two
Architecture sprint output: a written technical plan, a risk register, cost bands and a deployed skeleton application you can click through.
Weeks three and four
First real feature in staging behind CI, with observability wired up. You see working software before you have paid for a full month of build.
From then on
Two week iterations, a demo every second Thursday, a written status note every Friday and direct Slack access to the engineers.
Come see whether we fit
The fastest way to judge an engineering partner is a real technical conversation about your actual problem. That is free and there is no obligation on either side.
- A senior engineer reads every brief
- NDA signed before you share anything sensitive
- No sales sequence, no automated follow ups