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Software Engineering + Consulting

We build software meant to last decades.

Interware is a founder-led engineering studio on the Microsoft stack. For more than 25 years we've designed, shipped and maintained mission-critical line-of-business systems — including one we built and evolved for 22 years straight. Most of our work is done under contract, embedded in our clients' teams — and lately some of that craft has also gone into products of our own.

1998
Founded in Switzerland, still founder-led.
22 yrs
One share-register platform — built and evolved from birth to phase-out.
Daily
Used directly by our clients' employees, in production.
DACH
Senior contract engineering — remote across the region, or on-site in Switzerland.
01 — SERVICES

Engineering you don't have to babysit.

We're a senior practice, not an agency. You work with the people who write the code — and stay long after the first release.
01

Contract engineering

Senior, founder-led development of line-of-business applications across desktop, web and mobile — specified, built and delivered without a layer of account managers in between.

02

Long-term maintenance

We don't vanish after v1. Systems get evolved for as long as the business needs them — through regulation changes, platform shifts and a generation of Windows. We measure relationships in decades.

03

Product development

Turning deep domain knowledge into products with their own legs. enaro and drive-evos are the first two coming out of the studio — built on the same engineering discipline as our client work.

04

Architecture & consulting

Platform choices, modernization paths and the hard calls — from someone who has lived with the consequences of those decisions for twenty years, not twenty months.

Stack C# .NET WinForms WPF Blazor .NET MAUI Avalonia ASP.NET Core SQL Server PostgreSQL Windows Linux Docker Kubernetes Rust ESP32 gRPC SignalR
02 — TRACK RECORD

The proof is in the longevity.

Anyone can ship a v1. The hard part is the next twenty years.
Twenty-five years on the tools

Four engagements that mattered — and one that lasted twenty-two years.

Interware has never chased logos. The track record is a short list of deep, long engagements — the kind where you live with your decisions long enough to learn what “maintainable” really means. Software like that usually costs more to build and less to own: fewer rewrites, fewer surprises, a lower total cost over the years it stays in service.

1998

Interware founded

Independent practice

Set up as a senior engineering practice — built to take on long, serious work without the overhead of an agency.

1999–2000

Traffic-control systems

Contract engineer

Communication software for signalling devices and their interoperability, for a global industrial group's traffic-control division — early, unforgiving real-world systems.

2001

First .NET application

.NET Framework 1.0

An RMA platform for a computer- and parts wholesaler — one of our first production systems on .NET, and the start of a stack we’d back for the next two decades.

2002–2024

Share-register platform

Flagship · 22 years
Lead engineer → acting CTO from 2010

Twenty-two years on one platform at the edge of the stock-exchange industry, used every day by the client’s own staff and run entirely on their own infrastructure — no cloud, no outside dependency. We designed it, built it and evolved it the whole way; from 2010 I held the role of acting CTO, as an external. Through changing regulation, shifting platforms and a generation of the Microsoft stack, it never became the system nobody dared to touch. Retired cleanly at the end of 2024.

2025 —

Swiss energy · Trading onboarding

Blazor · C#

For one of Switzerland’s largest energy companies: an internal platform for managing client contracts and onboarding them into the trading system. Modern Blazor and C#, for a business where reliability isn’t negotiable.

03 — LESSONS

What the long game teaches.

Some of these we learned the hard way. All of them shape how we build now.
01

Some endings aren't technical

A project can stop for reasons that have nothing to do with the work — a market shift, a global event, a change of strategy. Good engineering can't outvote a strategic call; what's left is to read the change early and adapt to it without drama.

02

Right solution, wrong moment

A design can be entirely feasible and well-built, and still be postponed as priorities move. Engineering has to align with business timing, not just the specification.

03

Scope always moves

Long initiatives shift direction as new insight arrives. Robust architecture absorbs that change without losing its coherence.

04

Legacy deserves respect

Older platforms carry deep domain logic and operational reality. Sustainable modernization starts by understanding what already works — not by treating it all as debt.

05

Organizational change reshapes software

Leadership transitions, mergers and budget cycles can redirect a roadmap overnight. Software lives inside organizations, and has to adapt when they evolve.

06

Adoption needs a sponsor

Even excellent work doesn't roll out without internal ownership and the right timing. Delivery includes stakeholder alignment and clear ownership, not just the build.

A case in point

A delivery-planning system we began for a coach-and-bus dealer in the summer of 2001 was cancelled in the prototype phase when, after 9/11, the budget simply vanished. The engineering was sound; the timing wasn't ours to control.

04 — SOVEREIGNTY

Run it where you can actually keep it.

The newest risk to your software isn't a bug. It's dependence.

This isn't a reaction to the headlines. For two decades we built systems that simply ran — on our clients' own infrastructure, in a world where the cloud was never even an option. Lately we've seen the other side up close: a modern, cloud-dependent operation brought to a standstill because a service an ocean away couldn't be reached. The newest risk to critical software isn't technical — it's who holds the keys.

We help clients get out from under the American cloud giants — building on Linux, Docker and Kubernetes, on infrastructure you control: your own hardware, a Swiss or European host, or a private cloud. Built to move, so no single vendor — or government — ever holds your business hostage.

And since we lead with the Microsoft stack, the obvious question: no, .NET isn't Azure. C# and ASP.NET Core have run cross-platform for years — they live happily on the Linux and Kubernetes you control. Choosing the framework never means renting the cloud.

01

Run anywhere

Containers and Kubernetes from the first commit. The same system runs on your servers, a Swiss data centre or a private cloud — your call, reversible at any time.

02

European by choice

Keep data and workloads on this side of the Atlantic, under Swiss and EU jurisdiction, whenever that's what your business — or your regulator — requires.

03

Portable by default

No proprietary lock-in baked into the foundation. A change in a provider's terms becomes an inconvenience, not an existential risk.

05 — PRODUCTS

A few things that are also ours.

Client work comes first — but two decades of it showed us where the real problems sit. On the side, in energy and mobility, a couple of them are becoming products of our own.
06 — RANGE

From bare metal to AI agents.

The longevity invites a fair question — is this shop still current? This is the short answer.
01

Embedded systems

Bare-metal Rust on ESP32 and Linux on Raspberry Pi, wired straight to real hardware over Modbus-RTU (RS-485) and CAN bus, with an on-device SignalR hub — rebuilt in Rust — so networked clients can command the device and get live notifications. Real builds: pool automation on a Pi with a spread of sensors, Tesla Wall Connector charge control over RS-485, and a Modbus proxy on a bare-metal ESP32.

02

Systems-level Rust

Rust where throughput matters — a shared-memory gRPC transport for processes that need to talk faster than the network allows, and a native Rust implementation of Microsoft's SignalR, built from the published Hub Protocol spec rather than bound to the .NET library.

03

AI-agent infrastructure

MCP servers and semantic memory — the plumbing that lets AI agents work against real systems, held to the same long-view discipline as everything else.

07 — APPROACH

How we work.

Four habits that come from building software you can't walk away from.
A

Senior by default

You talk to the people who write the code. No account layer, no hand-off to juniors once the contract is signed.

B

Optimized for the decade

We make choices that still look right in ten years — not the ones that demo best this quarter. Boring where boring wins.

C

Sustainable solutions

Maintainable, documented and built to be handed over. Software that a future team — ours or yours — can actually live with.

D

Microsoft-deep, not Microsoft-only

Twenty-five years on the .NET stack, and never stuck at its edges — Microsoft SQL Server since the early '90s, PostgreSQL now. Blazor and Avalonia on top; Linux, Kubernetes and Rust underneath.

08 — WORKING TOGETHER

We join your team.

Most of our work is freelance — embedded in an existing team, working the way it already works.
Pairing & mentoring

At home with XP practices — pair programming, review, working in the open. Over the 22-year engagement we brought two junior developers up to senior level through pairing, until they left for adventures of their own.

Agile, lower-case

We hold a Professional Scrum Developer (PSD I) certificate and slot into a Scrum team without fuss. The conviction underneath is agile with a small a: working software and honest adaptation over ceremony.

How the engagement works

Lead a build, or work as a senior pair of hands inside an existing team. Remote across the DACH region or on-site in Switzerland. Contract terms, no agency in between.

09 — ABOUT

Founded in 1998 and still founder-led. Interware is deliberately small — a senior engineering practice, not an agency — working with clients who need software that outlives its roadmap.
Founded1998
Based inSwitzerland
ModelFounder-led · senior
FocusLOB software · Microsoft stack
Now alsoBuilding products
On being small

It's the fair question for any small practice: what happens if the key person isn't there? We don't answer it with headcount — we answer it by building software that doesn't depend on us. Decisions get made in the open, with your people in the room; the code is written to be picked up and carried on — documented, conventional, and free of the cleverness only one head understands. Continuity should be a property of the system, not of any single engineer.

Get in touch

Have a system that needs to outlast its roadmap?

A few lines is plenty to start — what you're building, the rough scope and timeline, whether it's on-prem or cloud, and how best to reach you.