Build, test and release pipelines for network software
DevOps
We build the delivery machinery around network and device software: reproducible builds, hardware-in-the-loop test automation, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and the monitoring that tells you a release is going wrong before your customers do.
Device manufacturers, ISPs and software teams shipping firmware, network platforms or managed services.
- Repeatable
- builds, byte for byte
- HIL
- testing on real boards
- IaC
- environments from code
The release works. Nobody is quite sure how it was made.
Network and device software has a delivery problem that ordinary web tooling does not solve: builds depend on vendor SDKs pinned to one engineer's machine, tests need actual hardware, and a rollback means a field upgrade rather than a container restart.
A firmware release you cannot reproduce is a firmware release you cannot support.
What it costs you today
- Builds that only succeed on one laptop
- Testing that stops at what can be run without hardware
- Environments configured by hand and drifting apart
- No signal that a release is failing until support calls arrive
How we work
The principles that shape the engagement, and why they are worth holding to.
Builds that anyone can reproduce
Toolchains, SDKs and dependencies pinned and containerised, so the build runs identically on a laptop, in CI and on a machine you set up next year. This is the foundation everything else rests on, and it is usually the thing that is missing.
Tests that involve the actual hardware
We wire real boards into the pipeline: flash the image, run the suite, capture serial output, power-cycle and repeat. Timing and memory bugs that never appear in an emulator get caught by the commit that caused them.
Release like it is going to a field device
Signed artefacts, staged rollout, a canary population, and a rollback path proven before it is needed. When the fix has to travel over the network to a device in somebody's home, hoping for the best is not a deployment strategy.
Handed over, not held hostage
The pipeline is yours: documented, in your source control, in your accounts, runnable without us. We would rather your team ran it than that you needed a retainer to change a build step.
What we deliver
- Reproducible, containerised build environments
- CI/CD pipelines for firmware, platform and application code
- Hardware-in-the-loop test racks wired into CI
- Automated regression, conformance and interoperability suites
- Infrastructure as code for staging and production
- Container orchestration and deployment automation
- Artefact management, signing and release provenance
- Observability: metrics, logs, traces and alerting
- Staged rollout and canary strategies for field upgrades
- Runbooks, on-call design and incident review practice
Capabilities in full
The detail behind each area, so you can see whether we cover what you need.
Build and test
- Containerised, reproducible toolchains
- Multi-variant and multi-board build matrices
- Cross-compilation and SDK management
- Hardware-in-the-loop racks and device farms
- Automated flash, boot and serial capture
- Protocol conformance and interoperability suites
- Static analysis, sanitisers and coverage reporting
- Performance and soak testing
Infrastructure and deployment
- Infrastructure as code for repeatable environments
- Container build and orchestration
- Secrets management and credential rotation
- Blue-green and canary deployment
- Staged firmware rollout with health gating
- Artefact repositories with signing and provenance
- Backup, restore and disaster-recovery rehearsal
- Cost and capacity review
Operations
- Metrics, logging and distributed tracing
- Alerting tuned to symptoms, not to noise
- Dashboards for release health and fleet state
- Runbooks and on-call rotation design
- Incident response and blameless post-mortems
- Capacity planning and scaling policy
- Security patching and dependency monitoring
- Documentation and team handover
How we engage
Three common shapes. We will scope to whichever fits, or to something else entirely.
Pipeline build-out
From an ad-hoc build script to a reproducible pipeline with automated testing, in a defined engagement with a handover at the end.
Test automation
Hardware-in-the-loop racks and the regression suites that run against them, wired into your existing CI.
Release engineering
Signing, staged rollout, canary populations and a rollback path for firmware that has already shipped to the field.
Other services
Most engagements draw on more than one of these.
Embedded Software Development
Firmware, drivers and device stacks that ship
ExploreWiFi and IoT
Wireless design, IoT integration and custom applications
ExploreIndustrial IoT
Connectivity and telemetry for plant, field and infrastructure
ExploreTraining and Consulting
Standards expertise, architecture review and team enablement
ExploreCommon questions
We are a hardware team, not a cloud team. Does this apply?
Especially so. Most DevOps tooling assumes software that redeploys in seconds. The value here is adapting those practices to firmware, where the test target is a physical board and a bad release travels to devices you cannot reach.
Will we depend on you afterwards?
No. The pipeline lives in your source control and your accounts, and handover with documentation is part of the engagement rather than an upsell.
Can you work alongside our existing CI?
Yes. Replacing a working CI system is rarely worth it. More often we add the parts that are missing — reproducible build containers, hardware test stages, release gating — to what you already run.
Talk to us about DevOps
A scoping conversation with an engineer, not a sales call. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you.