Zone2

We’re an engineering consultancy. We build AI systems and web platforms for startups and scale-ups in the DACH region and the EU, and we keep them running.


What we do.

Most projects we take on touch more than one of these. If you’re not sure which one you need, that’s fine. Book a call and we’ll work it out together.

  • AI systems

    • Claude
    • Gemini
    • Mistral
    • Node.js

    Somewhere in your company there’s a person who reads every incoming order, claim or request, works out what it means, and types the result into another system. A language model can do that job now. We build the software around it that reads the email, makes the call and writes the record, and we make it reliable enough that you stop checking on it. We’ve done this for a company in the German dental industry: order emails in, records their ERP accepts out.

  • Web platforms

    • Next.js
    • PayloadCMS
    • PostgreSQL
    • Stripe

    Your product is more than the app. There’s the content someone has to edit without calling a developer, the payments, and the servers it all runs on. Those four usually got built at different times by different people, and most of what we get called about is where they don’t fit together. We fix that on what you already run, and when the stack is ours to choose we build on Next.js, PayloadCMS and PostgreSQL.

  • Product development

    • TypeScript
    • React
    • Supabase
    • Kubernetes

    Sometimes your team is building fine and just needs more senior people on it. Sometimes nobody is deciding what to build, because the CTO left and the replacement is months away. We do both. Our engineers join your team and work in your repository, to your plan. Or one of us takes the technical lead’s seat for a while, owns the plan, and hands it back when your permanent hire arrives.

  • Identity and access

    • Keycloak
    • Auth0
    • OIDC
    • Terraform

    Every product has a login, and behind it a set of rules about who’s allowed to see what. Most companies get the login from Keycloak or Auth0 and write the rules themselves. Both outgrow you: you switch providers, a big customer wants to sign in with their own accounts, and the handful of roles you started with stops describing who does what. We’ve moved 3M+ users from Keycloak to Auth0, and we handle the smaller versions of the same problem.


What we’ve built.

  • Orders arrive as emails written by people, in no fixed format. The system reads them, using Claude, Gemini or Mistral depending on the task, and writes a record the ERP accepts. If it can’t, it writes nothing rather than something wrong.

    • Unstructured order email to ERP-compliant records
    • Claude, Gemini and Mistral, routed per task
    • Node.js, SigNoz
  • We moved a logistics SaaS from Rails to Next.js on Supabase.

    Logistics and transportation SaaS, Germany

    The framework was the visible part. We also moved access control out of the application and into the database, and the platform issues ZUGFeRD invoices, the German e-invoicing standard.

    • Ruby on Rails to Next.js on Supabase
    • Row Level Security, enforced in the database
    • ZUGFeRD e-invoicing
  • users
    3M+
    microservices
    30+

    We moved an optical retailer’s users from Keycloak to Auth0.

    Optical retail and omnichannel commerce, Germany

    We worked alongside the client’s own engineers. Keycloak crossed nine major versions on the way, v15 to v24.

    • Keycloak on Kubernetes, v15 to v24
    • Auth0 to AWS EventBridge, via Lambda
    • Datadog, Pulumi, Terraform

When to bring us in.

Earlier than you’d think. Most of what a project costs gets decided in the first few weeks, while it’s being scoped. If any of this sounds like you, that’s the moment to call.

AI systems

  • You’ve got a demo that works, and you need to know what it’ll cost and how often it’ll be wrong once it runs for real.
  • The data you need is in emails, PDFs and scans, and someone types it into a system by hand.
  • A wrong answer would cost you money or a customer, so something has to check the model’s work.

Web platforms

  • Your framework is several major versions behind, and nobody dares to start the upgrade.
  • You need to start charging customers, and there’s no billing yet.
  • Your marketing site and your application have become two codebases that keep drifting apart.

Product development

  • You’re deciding whether to hire, promote someone, or bring in outside help.
  • Your CTO or technical lead has left, and the decisions are piling up.
  • Your team has grown, and the way it used to work doesn’t work anymore.

Identity and access

  • You’re planning a move to or from Keycloak or Auth0, and nothing has moved yet.
  • Your Keycloak is several major versions behind.
  • A big customer’s contract requires single sign-on, and you don’t have it.

How we work.

The people who scope your project are the ones who build it.

  • The first call.

    You tell us what you’re building and when it has to be done. We tell you what we’d do first and where we think it’ll go wrong.

  • Who works on it.

    We started Zone2 in Sofia in 2022. Every project is led by Spas, who’s spent a career building production systems and keeping them up. The engineers on it are senior, and we pick them for your project. You’ll know who they are before we start, and you’ll work with them directly.

  • Once we start.

    We work in your repository and your pipeline, not a parallel one. Whatever you already run, we build on top of it.

  • After launch.

    If you want us to, we stay and run what we built. Upgrades, security patches, the next thing the product needs. It’s in the contract.


Spas Poptchev

I’m Spas. I started Zone2 in 2022, but I’ve been building software for German companies since 2010, first in Hamburg and now from Sofia. Engineer, co-founder, CTO. I’ve sat on both sides of the table.

Anyone can make software work on launch day. The test is two years later, when the people who built it have moved on and real customers depend on it every morning. So before anything ships, I ask myself one question: would I be happy being the one who gets paged when this breaks? Everyone at Zone2 builds to that question.

The other half of the job is talking. Most projects go wrong long before the code does, at the point where someone stops saying what they see. So you’ll hear from us the week something’s off, not at the end, and if you book a call, it’s me you’ll talk to. I’d rather have a client for five years than a project for five months.

Spas Poptchev, founder

Tell us what you’re building.

Send a note or book a call, whichever you prefer. You’ll hear from us within two business days.

Or call +359 877 277 640.

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