Work

Big-system experience. Small-team price.

Two kinds of proof. Systems we have engineered for large public-sector and enterprise organizations, where client names stay confidential. And things we have built and run ourselves, which you can see and try.

Engineering backgroundIn-house builds
Engineering background

Proven where it counts.

Built as part of larger teams at organizations across Canada and the US. Details are kept general on purpose: the clients are real, and their privacy matters.

01

Public-sector service platform

Fault-tolerant, event-driven platform behind a core government service, with full audit trails and live sync to legacy on-premise systems.

JavaContainersEvent-drivenOIDC
Millionsof residents served

What was built

  • Event-driven services in Java, running in containers, so one slow step never holds up the rest
  • Sign-in through the organization’s existing identity provider (OIDC)
  • A full audit trail: who changed what, and when
  • Live, two-way sync with on-premise systems that were not going away

What it means for you

Most municipalities have the same shape of problem at a smaller size: a new online service that still has to talk to the old system in the back office. Same patterns, right-sized.

02

Organization-wide AI platform

Self-serve platform letting staff build and deploy their own AI assistants, with real-time chat, swappable model providers and fine-grained access control.

RAGTypeScriptWebSocketsRBAC
10K+users

What was built

  • A self-serve builder so non-developers can set up their own assistant
  • Real-time chat over WebSockets
  • Swappable model providers, so no single AI vendor owns you
  • Role-based access: each team sees only its own assistants and documents

What it means for you

You probably need one or two assistants, not a platform. But the hard parts are the same: permissions, keeping documents private, and not getting locked into one vendor.

03

Healthcare AI assistant

Source-grounded AI assistant giving patients and the public trustworthy answers from vetted medical content, embedded across public websites.

RAGPythonReact
Citedevery answer

What was built

  • Retrieval-augmented answers from a vetted content library only
  • A citation on every answer, so readers can check the source
  • A widget embedded across several public websites

What it means for you

Health content is about as unforgiving as it gets. A bylaw, a garbage schedule or a permit guide is a much easier place to apply the same care.

04

Cloud security re-platform

Moved a large multi-account cloud organization onto a modern security baseline, tightening access controls and network segmentation across hundreds of workloads.

IAMNetworkingPolicy-as-code
0workloads disrupted

What was built

  • A modern security baseline rolled out across many cloud accounts
  • Tighter access controls and network segmentation
  • Guardrails written as code, so they stay applied
  • Rolled out without disrupting running workloads

What it means for you

This is where the two-week Cloud & Security Review comes from: the same checklist, applied to your accounts, with a plain-language report.

05

AI-assisted modernization

Framework that uses AI coding agents to convert legacy applications to modern cloud architectures, with security hardening built in.

LLMsIaCSecurity
~50%less migration time

What was built

  • A framework that pairs AI coding agents with human review to convert legacy apps
  • Infrastructure as code generated alongside the application
  • Security hardening built into each step, not bolted on after

What it means for you

It is why modernization quotes can come in lower than you expect: the repetitive translation work is faster, and the engineering time goes into the parts that need judgement.

In-house builds

Don't take our word for it. Look.

Products and infrastructure built, tested and run by Hawthorn Digital. Same standards as client work: tested, documented, deployed automatically.

Product demo · walkthrough on request

Cellar: a website platform for wineries

A WordPress replacement built for small wineries and the marketing teams who run their sites. One install runs many winery websites, each with its own look, shop and staff logins.

  • Live page editor with 23 building blocks and a side-by-side desktop / phone preview
  • A free-form canvas block that still stacks cleanly on phones
  • Blog with tags and drafts, event listings, wine catalogue
  • Online shop per site: stock, tax, shipping, pick-up, orders dashboard
  • Named logins with admin and editor roles, limited to their own sites
  • AI help for drafting pages and rewriting copy
  • Over 100 automated tests, including phone-width browser checks
NuxtTypeScriptSQLitePlaywright

The wineries in the demo are made up. Screenshot photo: “Kelowna Vineyard overlooking Okanagan Lake” by Kelowna09, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Cellar demo: a winery home page with a large photo of vineyards above Okanagan LakeCellar editor: page settings and content fields on the left, a live preview of the page on the right
In production · you can try it

This website’s booking system

The “Book a call” page is not a Calendly embed. It is a small booking system built from scratch, the same kind of thing a municipality might need for inspections, rooms or appointments.

  • Open slots from weekly hours and days off, correct across daylight-saving changes
  • Email confirmation, calendar invites and one-click cancel
  • Layered spam defence, and double booking blocked by the database itself
  • Private, cookie-free visitor analytics: no tracking banner needed
  • An admin dashboard for bookings, availability and traffic
NuxtSQLiteDockerGitHub Actions
Try the booking flow →
In production

The infrastructure it runs on

Every server behind this site is configured from a Git repository. Nobody logs in to change things by hand, which is exactly what we set up for clients.

  • Push to main: tests run, an image is built, the server updates itself
  • A failing test blocks the release. Rolling back is re-running an older build
  • HTTPS certificates issued and renewed automatically
  • Automatic blocking of repeated break-in attempts
Infrastructure as codeCI/CDContainersAutomatic TLS
Get in touch

Want something like this?

Tell us about the problem. You'll get an honest read on whether it's worth building, and what it would take.

Book a free 30-min call →or email [email protected]Pick any open slot · Video or phone · Remote across BC