About BRAINS
BRAINS is a technology company founded in 1985. BRAINS builds web and mobile products, plus custom software for clients with specific needs. BRAINS employs 10 - 49 people. Projects are generally billed around $100 - $149 / hr/hr. The team is based in Surry Hills, Australia. This gives a quick snapshot of what to expect when working with BRAINS.
Where We Specialize
Industry Expertise
Typical Project Size
BRAINS Reviews
Write a ReviewTechnically rigorous, commercially grounded, and a genuine pleasure to work with
Aoife Brennan / VP of Product Engineering - Emerald Digital LtdApr 23, 2026
Project summary: A content deal had given us the rights to a major catalogue but our delivery infrastructure could not stream it reliably at scale. We needed a cloud-native video platform in under six months.
The integration layer was the part of the project I was most concerned about going in. Our system landscape is complex, several of the upstream APIs we relied on were poorly documented, and two third-party vendors had a history of unpredictable response times on integration questions. This team managed all of that. They documented what the upstream vendors could not, built resilience into the integration architecture where the upstream behaviour was unreliable, and delivered a solution that works as specified in production. I could not have asked for more.
Clear and consistent communication adapted appropriately for both technical and non-technical stakeholders, shared tooling that gave our team real-time visibility, reliable sprint delivery throughout
Their discovery process is more rigorous than we were accustomed to and required more preparation from our side than we had initially allocated — but the quality of what followed justified every hour of it
Questions & Answers
Headless commerce architecture that gave our content and marketing teams genuine independence
Erik Lindqvist / Chief Technology Officer - Nordic Cloud ABApr 12, 2026
Project summary: Our client portal had been built in 2017 and had not received meaningful investment since. Clients were contrasting it unfavourably with the portals of our competitors in pitches.
The integration layer was the part of the project I was most concerned about going in. Our system landscape is complex, several of the upstream APIs we relied on were poorly documented, and two third-party vendors had a history of unpredictable response times on integration questions. This team managed all of that. They documented what the upstream vendors could not, built resilience into the integration architecture where the upstream behaviour was unreliable, and delivered a solution that works as specified in production. I could not have asked for more.
Architectural decisions designed for longevity rather than just the current brief, thorough automated test coverage, post-launch stability that validated every technical choice made during discovery
We underestimated the input required from our subject matter experts during the requirements phase. The team flagged this early but our resource planning did not fully reflect it — our responsibility, not theirs
Questions & Answers
Test automation that our developers adopted as a genuine aid rather than a compliance exercise
Declan Hartley / Chief Digital Officer - Southern Cross TechnologyApr 09, 2026
Project summary: As a technology business ourselves we apply the same scrutiny to our vendor selection that our clients apply to us. We needed a delivery partner who could meet a standard we would be comfortable being measured against.
Our stakeholder group included board members, clinical leads, compliance officers, and end users — each with different technical literacy and different success criteria. This team navigated that stakeholder landscape as well as any vendor I have seen. They adjusted their communication register depending on the audience without losing the substance. They managed expectations honestly throughout. And they delivered a system that each group can point to as meeting their requirements. That breadth is genuinely uncommon.
Clear and consistent communication adapted appropriately for both technical and non-technical stakeholders, shared tooling that gave our team real-time visibility, reliable sprint delivery throughout
We underestimated the input required from our subject matter experts during the requirements phase. The team flagged this early but our resource planning did not fully reflect it — our responsibility, not theirs
Questions & Answers
Data platform that turned five years of siloed records into a unified analytical asset
Imogen Tanner / Head of Engineering - Outback Data SolutionsApr 09, 2026
Project summary: The project had a board-facing delivery date tied to a strategic initiative. We needed a partner who would treat that date as their own, not ours.
Our stakeholder group included board members, clinical leads, compliance officers, and end users — each with different technical literacy and different success criteria. This team navigated that stakeholder landscape as well as any vendor I have seen. They adjusted their communication register depending on the audience without losing the substance. They managed expectations honestly throughout. And they delivered a system that each group can point to as meeting their requirements. That breadth is genuinely uncommon.
Senior-level engineering presence throughout the entire project, not just during the pitch, honest and commercially fair handling of scope changes, codebase that our internal team praised on review
Pipeline availability for kickoff required a few weeks of lead time — in hindsight that selection pressure means you are working with a team that is in demand for the right reasons
Questions & Answers
The outcome we specified, delivered the way we needed it, by people we would hire again
Tobias Lindemann / Leiter Digitalisierung - Lindemann Industrie GmbHFeb 26, 2026
Project summary: Several years of incremental development had left us with a platform that was technically functional but strategically limiting. A structured rebuild was the agreed path forward.
We gave this team an aggressive timeline, a technically complex scope, and a client-side project team that was stretched thin and not always available at the speed the engagement required. They absorbed all of that gracefully. Where they needed input they were precise about what they needed and when. Where they could proceed independently they did. The result was a delivery that landed on time despite the constraints on our side, which I regard as evidence of genuine professional maturity.
Production system that has performed as specified since go-live without remediation work, documentation thorough enough to support internal maintenance, knowledge transfer that left our team genuinely capable
Their discovery process is more rigorous than we were accustomed to and required more preparation from our side than we had initially allocated — but the quality of what followed justified every hour of it
Questions & Answers
Automation that freed our team from repetitive analysis and let them focus on strategy
Yuki Hashimoto / Head of Product Development - East Asia Commerce KKJan 23, 2026
Project summary: Our connected vehicle platform needed to handle telemetry data from an expanding EV fleet while supporting over-the-air update orchestration. No off-the-shelf platform handled both requirements well.
Six months after go-live our platform is processing three times the transaction volume we specified in the original brief. The architecture choices made during discovery accommodated that growth without remediation work. That is the difference between a team that designs for what you tell them and a team that designs for what you are likely to need. We are in conversation about a Phase 2 engagement and I expect to be using this partnership for several years.
Architectural decisions designed for longevity rather than just the current brief, thorough automated test coverage, post-launch stability that validated every technical choice made during discovery
Time zone coordination required some deliberate overlap management from both sides in the first couple of sprints, after which we had an efficient async rhythm that worked for the whole project