We Build Data Platforms
Real-time pipelines, event streaming, and the plumbing that gets data where it needs to be. Transactionally consistent, not a stale point-in-time snapshot, and something your own team can actually run.
What we do
We're hands-on, primarily. We build and ship data platforms, not just diagram them. Advisory and architecture work is on the table when it's the right fit, but our default mode is on the tools, in the repo, shipping.
Core of the work we produce
Real-time data pipelines — event-driven architectures that move data as it happens and stay transactionally consistent, not a batch job pretending to be live
Change data capture (CDC) — getting data out of operational systems without hammering them or duct-taping cron jobs together
Kafka & streaming — designing topics, consumers, and event contracts that don't fall over at scale
AWS-native builds — Lambda, async Python, the managed services that let a small team run something serious without a dedicated ops function. We have clients in Azure, so we’re not afraid of any cloud environment.
Async Python at scale — high-throughput ingestion and transform layers built to be debugged by the next engineer, not just the one who wrote it
Back-office web apps — real-time internal tools and dashboards sitting on top of the platforms we build, for the people who actually have to use the data day to day
Data-lakes and marts — the majority of our team started their careers in this field. Creating robust analytical layers that actually work.
How We Work
We build things that are boring in the right way. Established tooling, real documentation, patterns the next engineer can pick up without you in the room. If it only works because we're the ones who built it, we haven't done our job.
On tools by default, advisory when it's genuinely the better fit.
We hand back systems your own team can run, or we can run the platform as needed ongoing. We do both.
Get In Contact
We would love to hear about what you’re building.
Data EnGINEERING
We specialise in helping you build reliable and scalable data environments that integrate with your companies existing production platforms.
IN CLOUD OR ON PREMISE
Where your services call home makes no difference to Needles. We have experience deploying to both cloud providers and on premise.
About Us
Needles was founded by data engineers, for data engineers in 2015. We are a small boutique shop that hates consultancy buzz words. We've been building platforms since before "big data" was the word for it, and the tools have changed a lot since. We've kept moving with them so you don't have to catch up alone.
We have a plethora of experience from tracking telemetry data for 2.5 million online Call of Duty players, Investment Finance, Insurance, Loyalty Schemes, Electricity Sectors, Food Retail, antivirus systems servicing millions of online devices all the way through to helping startups find their feet in the data world.
