Who we are.

The engineers

The people who scope the work are the ones who approve it. There is no delivery layer between the call and the commit: the engineer who sized the work signs off on every change that ships under it, whoever wrote it.

That is a review gate, not a headcount promise. Work gets delegated, deliberately — it is how engineers become senior engineers, and a shop that refuses to delegate is a shop with a bus factor of one. What you are buying is the approval, and the approval has a name on it.

Zach Norman	Founder, Los Angeles. Eight years in FedRAMP-boundary infrastructure — healthcare.gov and aerospace. Platform and compliance architecture: scopes the engagement and approves every change that ships under it. linkedin.com/in/zacharyno

One name, because one name is what is true today. The rows that used to sit under this one were reserved for engineers who have not been hired yet, and a three-person list that is really one is the first thing a counterparty checks. When there is a second person to name, they get a row and it says what they hold on an engagement.

Work is delegated — see below — and the delegation does not change whose name is on the approval.

Why the team is small on purpose

A practice this size cannot afford a manual step anywhere. Every manual step only runs when someone is awake to run it, and there is no bench to absorb that. The method is what it is because the alternative does not survive contact with the headcount.

It is also why it works for you. Everything we build is automated, so your own one or two developers can run it after we hand it over — no new hire needed to keep it alive.

What we believe

Velocity makes compliance sustainable. Compliance makes velocity safe to ship. Both fail for the same reason — infrastructure changed by hand — and both are fixed by the same work.

That is why there are two ways in on this site and not two companies. Whichever you start with, you end up with one platform your developers can run and your auditor can trust.

Who you contract with

Standard Automata is a practice of Automata International, which is the party you contract with. The formal detail — entity, formation, and what we produce on request — is on one page.

What we build for ourselves ships as free, open-source software unless there is a specific reason it can’t. The conventions we author are numbered, dated, and published in the register.

The artifacts behind all of this are on proof.