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Chicago–Naperville–Elgin · Central (CT)

Chicago

Manufacturing, logistics and insurance, where the systems are old, load-bearing, and cannot be switched off for a rewrite.

Sectors we see here

  • Manufacturing
  • Logistics & transportation
  • Insurance
  • Financial services

Delivered remotely on Central (CT) hours. Our only office is in Austin, TX — we do not claim a Chicago address we do not occupy.

The market

What is different about Chicago

Chicago work is dominated by companies whose core systems predate the web and still run the business correctly. The engagement is almost never a rewrite — it is building alongside, integrating with, and gradually reducing dependence on something that must not stop working.

That makes integration design the whole project. What is the source of truth, what happens when the mainframe batch is late, how does a partial failure get reconciled. Those questions decide the schedule; the interface is comparatively easy.

Illinois also has BIPA, the strictest biometric privacy statute in the country, with a private right of action. Anything touching fingerprints, face or voice — including timeclocks — needs to be reviewed against it before it is designed, not after.

What it changes

How that shapes the work

Local context is only worth writing down if it changes a decision. These are the ones it changes here.

Strangle, do not replace

Legacy systems here run real operations. We build around them incrementally so value lands early and the cutover risk is spread, rather than betting a year on a single switch.

BIPA is a genuine liability

Illinois biometric law carries statutory damages per violation and a private right of action. If a project touches biometric identifiers at all, that constraint comes first.

Operations decide the timeline

Peak season, batch windows and union scheduling are real constraints on when a cutover can happen. We plan the release calendar around the business, not the sprint calendar.

Regulation

What comes up disproportionately here

Not an exhaustive list of what applies to you — the regimes that appear more often in this market than elsewhere, and that we therefore design against by default.
  • BIPA
  • SOC 2
  • PCI DSS
  • HIPAA for benefits data

Next step

Building something in Chicago?

Tell us what you are trying to move. We work Central (CT) hours and the first conversation is thirty minutes, with no deck.

No pitch deck. A 30-minute conversation about what you are trying to achieve.