AI used as leverage, not as a pitch
Models get applied where they measurably shorten work: migrations, test coverage, log analysis, documentation, code review. Where they do not help, we do not use them, and we will tell you which is which.
Krakem Tech, LLC
Release the Kraken on your hardest technical problems.
Senior engineers across the whole stack: AI integration, cybersecurity, cloud and infrastructure, and the software that runs on top of it. No account managers, no handoffs, no middle layer between you and the work.
Books closed
- AI engineering
- Cybersecurity
- Cloud & infrastructure
- Software delivery
Approach
How the work is different
Security is part of the build, not a phase after it
Hardening, least privilege, secrets handling and audit trails go in while the system is being designed. Retrofitting them later costs more and works worse.
Accountable engineers, start to finish
The people who scope the work are the people who do the work. Nothing gets lost translating a problem between a salesperson, a project manager and an offshore team.
Built to be handed over
Infrastructure as code, changes in version control, runbooks written for whoever is on call at 3am. An engagement that ends with your team dependent on us is a failed engagement.
Services
Every layer of the stack, one point of contact
Engagements usually cut across several of these at once. That is the point of hiring generalists with depth rather than assembling three vendors who each own a slice.
AI & AI-Enhanced Delivery
Put language models to work on real workflows, with the guardrails to trust the output.
- LLM integration against Claude, OpenAI and self-hosted models
- Retrieval pipelines (RAG) over your own documents and databases
- Agentic automation and Model Context Protocol tooling
- Evaluation harnesses so quality is measured, not assumed
- map[AI-assisted SDLC:review, test generation, migration and documentation]
- Cost, latency and model-selection tradeoffs mapped to your budget
Cybersecurity & Hardening
Reduce the attack surface you actually have, then prove the reduction.
- Threat modeling and architecture review
- Host and container hardening against CIS and STIG baselines
- Identity, access control and secrets management
- Log pipelines, detection rules and alert triage
- Vulnerability management and remediation planning
- Incident response readiness, runbooks and tabletop exercises
Cloud Engineering
Architecture that fits the workload, the team and the invoice.
- Greenfield builds on AWS and Google Cloud
- Migrations from on-prem, colo or another provider
- Landing zones, account structure and network topology
- Infrastructure as code with Terraform and Ansible
- Cost analysis and rightsizing
- Hybrid and repatriation strategy when the cloud is the wrong answer
DevOps & Platform Engineering
Shorten the distance between a commit and production.
- CI/CD pipelines in GitHub Actions, GitLab CI and Jenkins
- Container builds, registries and supply-chain signing
- Kubernetes clusters, or a deliberate case for not using one
- map[Release strategy:blue/green, canary, feature flags]
- Environment parity and reproducible local development
- Internal tooling that removes recurring manual work
Site Reliability Engineering
Define what "up" means, measure it honestly, and defend it.
- SLIs, SLOs and error budgets tied to user experience
- Observability with Prometheus, Grafana, Loki and OpenTelemetry
- Capacity planning and load testing
- Incident command, postmortems and follow-through
- On-call rotation design that people can sustain
- Failure-mode analysis, backups and tested restores
Systems Administration & Engineering
The unglamorous layer everything else depends on, run properly.
- Linux fleet management across RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu and Arch
- Windows Server, Active Directory and Group Policy
- Virtualization with Proxmox, VMware and KVM
- Patch management, configuration drift and golden images
- Storage, filesystems, RAID and backup architecture
- Directory services, DNS, DHCP, PKI and certificate lifecycle
Software Engineering
Frontend, backend and the contract between them.
- Web applications in React, Next.js and TypeScript
- Cross-platform mobile with Flutter and React Native
- Services and APIs in Go and Python
- Database design, query tuning and schema migrations
- Legacy modernization and incremental refactoring
- Test strategy, from unit coverage to end-to-end
Networks & Edge Infrastructure
Routing, segmentation and remote access that hold under scrutiny.
- Routing, VLAN and firewall design
- Edge router and firewall deployment
- Site-to-site and remote-access VPN
- Network segmentation and zero-trust access patterns
- Monitoring, traffic shaping and QoS
- Documentation and diagrams your next engineer can follow
Toolkit
What we actually work in
Listed because it is in regular use, not because it appeared on a slide once. If something you depend on is missing, ask — adjacent tooling is rarely a real obstacle.
Languages
- Go
- TypeScript
- JavaScript
- Python
- Dart
- Bash / POSIX shell
- SQL
- PowerShell
App Platforms
- React
- React Native
- Flutter
- Next.js
- Node.js
- Progressive web apps
Backend & Data
- PostgreSQL
- MySQL / MariaDB
- Redis
- SQLite
- REST / gRPC / GraphQL
- Message queues & event streams
- S3-compatible object storage
Cloud
- AWS
- Google Cloud
- DigitalOcean
- Cloudflare
- Proxmox & bare metal
- Hybrid and on-premise
Automation & IaC
- Terraform
- Ansible
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- Helm
- GitHub Actions
- GitLab CI
- Packer
Observability
- Prometheus
- Grafana
- OpenTelemetry
- Loki
- Alertmanager
- SLO & error-budget tooling
AI Engineering
- Claude & OpenAI APIs
- Model Context Protocol
- RAG & vector search
- Agentic pipelines
- Prompt & eval harnesses
- Self-hosted inference
Security
- Zero-trust architecture
- IAM & secrets management
- CIS / STIG hardening
- SIEM & log pipelines
- Vulnerability management
- Incident response
Systems & Networking
- Linux (RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch)
- Windows Server
- Active Directory
- Routing & switching
- Firewalls & VPN
- DNS, DHCP, PKI
Process
How an engagement runs
Four stages, no surprises in the middle of them.
- 01
Scope
A short call to establish the actual problem, the constraints around it, and whether we are the right people to solve it. If we are not, we will say so.
- 02
Assess
Read the systems, the code and the history before proposing changes. Findings come back in writing, in plain language, with the risks ranked.
- 03
Build
Work in reviewable increments against agreed acceptance criteria. Infrastructure as code, changes in version control, nothing configured by hand and forgotten.
- 04
Hand Over
Documentation, runbooks and a walkthrough with whoever owns it next. The goal is that your team can operate it without us, and call us because they want to, not because they have to.
Engagements
Ways to work together
Pick the shape that fits the problem. Most clients start with an assessment and move into one of the others.
Assessment & Roadmap
A fixed-scope review of what you have, what is at risk, and what to do about it first.
You get a written findings report, a prioritized remediation list with effort estimates, and a walkthrough with your team. Useful before you commit budget to a larger project.
Project Delivery
A specific thing built, shipped and handed over with documentation.
Migrations, greenfield builds, pipeline rewrites, AI integrations, security remediation. Scope and acceptance criteria agreed up front so there is no argument at the end about what "done" meant.
Advisory & Fractional
A senior technical voice on call for architecture decisions, reviews and escalations.
For teams that need experienced judgment more often than they need another full-time headcount. Reserved hours each month, direct access, no ticket queue.
Operations & Support
Someone accountable for keeping infrastructure patched, monitored and recoverable.
Maintenance windows, monitoring and alert response, backup verification, capacity review, and a documented escalation path. Coverage terms set to match what your business actually needs.
About
Depth in a lot of places, on purpose
Most problems worth paying for do not sit neatly inside one discipline. A slow application might be a query plan, a container limit, a routing decision or a cost ceiling, and finding out which one usually means crossing three teams. We have worked at every one of those layers, so the investigation does not stop at a boundary.
That range is the offering. We write the application code, run the infrastructure it deploys to, secure both, and instrument the whole thing so the next problem is easier to find. When a specialist is genuinely the better call, we will tell you that too, and hand over clean documentation instead of a dependency.
- Full stack Silicon to interface, not just frontend to backend
- Direct You work with the engineers doing the work
- Documented Every engagement ends with something written down
Books closed
We are not taking additional clients at this time
Our current engagements have our full attention, and we would rather say so plainly than take on work we cannot do properly. This page will be updated when capacity opens up.