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Formwork

AboutThe studio manual

A small studio for software that’s meant to last.

Studio
Remote-first, with rooms in Lisbon and Toronto.
Team
Fourteen people. Designers who prototype, engineers who care about UI. (Sample)
Focus
Web products that stay in use for years, not campaigns.

We started Formwork because good products kept being built like campaigns: launched loudly, then left to rot. We build the other way — structure first, then the parts people see, with the same team from the first sketch to the last deploy.

Illustrative floor plan of the studio: an open workshop with desks, a review wall, a quiet room, a kitchen and a meeting room.21.6 M9.2 MWORKSHOPREVIEW WALLQUIET ROOMKITCHENMEETINGPAIRING TABLEENTRANCE
Fig. A1 — The Lisbon studio, ground floorIllustrative · not to scale

01Point of view

Four things we believe.

  1. Belief 01

    Software is a building, not a campaign.

    It should still stand — and be easy to extend — five years after launch.

  2. Belief 02

    Small, senior teams beat big, busy ones.

    Fewer handovers, faster decisions, and the person who designed it is in the room when it ships.

  3. Belief 03

    Working software every week. Not slides.

    Progress you can click is the only progress report that matters.

  4. Belief 04

    Leave every codebase easier to change.

    Tests, docs and boring, well-named code are part of the job, not an extra.

02How we work

The working principles.

Habits, not slogans. Each one shows up in how a project is staffed, scheduled and handed over.

Principle 01

Three people, one decision

Most projects run with a lead engineer, a designer who codes and one more engineer. No account managers relaying messages.

Principle 02

A demo every other Friday

Every sprint ends with something you can use on a real device, and a preview link for every change in between.

Principle 03

Measure, then decide

Performance budgets, accessibility checks and product analytics replace opinions about what's “fast enough”.

Principle 04

Leave it better

We refactor as we go and hand over runbooks, so your next hire can ship on their first week.

03People

Who you’ll work with.

No account managers or hand-offs: the people below run your project day to day.

Sample team · fictional people

Work with us

  • Inês Carvalho

    Founder · Engineering lead

    Architecture, Postgres, mentoring

  • Marcus Oyelaran

    Founder · Design lead

    Design systems, prototyping

  • Hana Sato

    Senior engineer

    Commerce, payments, performance

  • Theo Lindqvist

    Product designer

    Research, interaction design

  • Priya Raman

    Senior engineer

    APIs, integrations, data pipelines

  • Joel Mensah

    Engineer

    Accessibility, testing, front end