NORTHARC · PRODUCT ENGINEERING

Ambitious products deserve serious engineering

NORTHARC is a product engineering company. We partner with founders and growth-stage companies to build and evolve digital products built for scale — fintech, AI & data, consumer apps, enterprise platforms and connected hardware.

Start a conversation Selected work

01 — DOMAINS

Where we go deep

Not "anything you need". We work only in domains we understand well, because good engineering judgment comes from understanding the business.

Fintech

Payments · Risk · Ledgers

Payments, settlement, accounts and risk. Consistent, auditable money movement built under regulatory and compliance constraints.

  • Payments & settlement
  • Risk & KYC
  • Multi-currency
  • Audit trails

Commerce & Consumer

Scale · Growth · Content

Consumer products and commerce systems for millions of users: transactions, membership, growth and content, designed for concurrency and fast iteration.

  • Commerce & fulfilment
  • Membership & growth
  • Recommendation
  • Mini programs

AI & Data

LLM · Pipelines · Metrics

Turning large models and data capabilities into reliable products: knowledge assistants, workflow automation, real-time pipelines and metric systems.

  • LLM applications
  • RAG & knowledge
  • Data pipelines
  • Dashboards

Enterprise Platforms

SaaS · Middle office

Multi-tenant SaaS, business platforms and internal systems, with permissions, audit and integrations as the skeleton for long-term evolution.

  • Multi-tenant SaaS
  • Business platforms
  • Permissions & audit
  • Integrations

Connected Hardware

IoT · OTA · Rules

Device onboarding, firmware OTA, rule engines and fleet monitoring. Cloud and apps that live up to the hardware.

  • Device onboarding
  • OTA & rollout
  • Rule engine
  • BLE / MQTT

Cross-border

Markets · Payments · Compliance

Multi-market, multi-language, multi-currency and local compliance. We handle payments, tax, privacy and app-store differences for products entering new markets.

  • Localisation
  • Local payments
  • Privacy compliance
  • Multi-store release

02 — STANDARDS

  • Every line reviewed

    Mandatory code review and static analysis. No exceptions.

  • Automated tests, continuous delivery

    Reproducible builds, staged rollouts, rollback at any time.

  • Secure by default

    Encryption, audit logs and least privilege are in the architecture from day one.

  • Performance & accessibility budgets

    Every screen ships with measurable performance and accessibility targets.

03 — SELECTED WORK

How we handle complexity

Anonymised blueprints and interfaces showing how we approach scale, compliance and complex business logic across domains.

Fintech · Platform

Cross-border Payments & Settlement

Multi-currency accounts, real-time settlement and reconciliation, KYC/AML risk engine and a complete audit trail — consistent money movement under regulation.

  • Multi-currency
  • Risk engine
  • Audit trail

AI & Data · SaaS

AI-powered Enterprise Workspace

LLM knowledge assistant and workflow automation with enterprise permissions, traceable citations and multi-tenant isolation.

  • LLM / RAG
  • Workflow engine
  • Multi-tenant

Consumer · App

Consumer Product at Million-user Scale

Content community, personalised recommendation and a growth system — native iOS / Android architecture designed for concurrency and weekly releases.

  • Recommendation
  • Growth system
  • Native apps

Enterprise · Data

Enterprise Data Platform

Real-time pipelines, a unified metric layer and operating dashboards, so the whole organisation decides on the same numbers.

  • Real-time pipelines
  • Metric layer
  • Dashboards

Hardware · Cloud

IoT Device Cloud

Million-device onboarding, staged firmware OTA, rule engine and fleet monitoring — the full path from device to cloud.

  • Onboarding
  • Staged OTA
  • Rule engine

Commerce · Platform

Retail Membership & Operations Platform

Membership, marketing and order platform for thousand-store chains, connecting mini programs, stores and back office so one action applies everywhere.

  • Business platform
  • Marketing automation
  • Mini programs

04 — ENGAGEMENT

Three ways to work together

Products at different stages need different relationships. We run only a few engagements at a time so each one gets the core team's full attention.

01

Product Partnership

Zero to one. We define the problem with you, validate the approach, then design and ship the first scalable version.

Forstartups and new business lines with a clear direction that need a complete product engineering team.

02

Scoped Delivery

Defined scope, fixed timeline and budget. For a new product line, a platform rebuild or a critical technical upgrade.

Forgrowth-stage companies with an existing product and team that need a complex delivery done on time.

03

Embedded Team

A long-term embedded team, planning the roadmap quarterly, evolving the product and owning technical decisions.

Forcompanies that need sustained senior engineering capacity rather than a one-off project.

05 — PLATFORMS

  • App Store
  • Google Play
  • WeChat
  • Alipay
  • Stripe
  • AWS
  • Alibaba Cloud
  • Tencent Cloud
  • Cloudflare
  • OpenAI
  • Kubernetes
  • PostgreSQL

06 — POINT OF VIEW

What we believe

  1. 01

    No outsourcing without product judgment. We help define the problem, not just execute the spec.

  2. 02

    Performance, security and accessibility are defaults, not add-ons.

  3. 03

    Scale is designed. We architect for the millionth user on day one.

07 — ABOUT

NORTHARC

NORTHARC (北弧) is a product engineering company. "North" is certainty of direction; "Arc" is the line between engineering and aesthetics. We are senior engineers and product designers who run only a few engagements at a time, with core members owning each one end to end — from the first conversation to every release after launch.

  • Delivered by the core team

    The people who assess your project are the people who design and build it.

  • Product, design and engineering as one

    One team owns everything from problem definition to implementation.

  • Asia-Pacific and global clients

    Bilingual collaboration, fluent in the platform, payment and compliance differences between China and international markets.

08 — CONTACT

Start a conversation

Tell us what you are building, who it is for and where you are today. We reply within two business days and set up a 30-minute call.