Knotenhub Limited · Ireland · working across the EU and UK

We tie together

From one specialist to a complete delivery team. Product, architecture, UX, development, QA, DevOps, project management and agile coaching – plugged into your business.

Open a connection Explore our services 
$ knotenhub connect --to your-team
› resolving roles…
✓ product        ✓ architecture
✓ ux             ✓ development
✓ qa             ✓ devops
✓ pm             ✓ agile
› team assembled. it took one email.
$

A hub, not a silo.

The name says it: a Knoten is a knot – a point where strands meet. Knotenhub is the point where your strategy, systems and people connect.

We work as an independent partner, small and senior, bringing clarity to complex problems and seeing the work through to something that actually ships.

What you can hire us for

Every role a software project needs – hired as a specialist, or together as one delivery team.

  • DevOps and infrastructure

    Into the cloud, between clouds, or back onto your own hardware.

    Migration and modernisation

    Whichever direction pays off for the workload, with the tests to prove nothing broke.

    • Off a PaaS you have outgrown, to a managed platform or your own Kubernetes
    • VMware exit after Broadcom: Proxmox, OpenShift Virtualization, OpenStack
    • Selective cloud exit: the expensive workloads to Hetzner or bare metal
    • AWS, Azure, GCP, or EU sovereign clouds such as STACKIT, OVHcloud and IONOS
    • Containerise the monolith, split only what pays off
    • Landing zones: accounts, IAM, network, done once and properly
    Pipelines and GitOps

    Ship every day without drama. Pipelines your team can read, releases that roll back on their own.

    • CI/CD with GitHub Actions and GitLab CI, Jenkins migrations
    • GitOps with Argo CD or Flux
    • Progressive delivery: canary and blue/green with Argo Rollouts or Flagger
    • Quality gates, integration tests, automatic rollback
    • End-to-end tests with Playwright that run in minutes, not hours
    Infrastructure as code and platform

    Reproducible environments, no snowflake servers, and a platform your developers actually want to use.

    • OpenTofu and Terraform, Pulumi, Ansible, AWS CDK
    • Kubernetes: EKS, AKS, GKE, OpenShift, k3s
    • OpenTelemetry-first observability: Prometheus, Grafana, Loki. Datadog bills cut down to size
    • Secrets and certificates: Vault or OpenBao, External Secrets, automated rotation
    • FinOps: cloud, SaaS and GPU spend, right-sizing, and when self-hosting is cheaper
    AI, cloud or self-hosted

    The same operational discipline applied to models. Hosted APIs where they fit, open-weight models on your own GPUs where volume or data rules justify it.

    • Claude, OpenAI or Mistral via Bedrock, Vertex or EU hosting, or open models on your hardware
    • An LLM gateway for routing, cost tracking and failover
    • Agent workflows and MCP integrations, retrieval, evals, guardrails
    • GPU platform on Kubernetes, inference with vLLM
    • EU data residency, GDPR, and AI Act-ready logging and oversight

  • Development

    The application itself: clean, maintainable software, seen through until it ships.

  • QA

    Testing in the pipeline, not as a phase at the end. The release either holds, or it rolls back.

  • UX design

    Research-led design that makes the product clear and easy to use.

  • Architecture

    Solution and cloud architecture, with security and compliance designed in and decisions written down.

  • Product ownership and business analysis

    A backlog ordered by value, and requirements that developers and testers read the same way.

  • Project and delivery management

    Scope, budget, risks and stakeholders in one place, and progress reported honestly.

  • Agile coaching and Scrum master

    A team rhythm that fits: Scrum, Kanban or Scrumban, without ceremony for its own sake.

How the roles work together

One pipeline, end to end.

  1. 01 Plan

    The backlog, ordered by value.

    Product · PM · Agile coach

    # backlog.md
1. Checkout drops on mobile     value: high  effort: S
2. Move reports off the monolith value: high  effort: M
3. Dark mode                     value: low   effort: S

  2. 02 Design

    Research first, then a prototype people can click.

    UX · Architecture

    research  → interviews, analytics, support tickets
prototype → the two flows that matter
test      → with real users, before a line of code
# cheaper to change a sketch than a release

  3. 03 Build

    Small changes, reviewed, merged daily.

    Development · Architecture

    $ git switch -c fix/keep-basket
$ git commit -m "fix: keep basket on session refresh"
$ git push
# pipeline starts. nobody waits for a release train.

  4. 04 Test

    In the pipeline, in parallel, in minutes.

    QA · Development

    $ npx playwright test
  ✓ checkout › keeps basket after refresh
  ✓ checkout › pays by card
  ✓ account › resets password
  all green – safe to ship

  5. 05 Ship

    Canary releases that roll back on their own.

    DevOps · QA

    strategy:
  canary:
    steps:
      - setWeight: 10
      - analysis: { templates: [error-rate] }
      - setWeight: 50
# bad metrics → automatic rollback

  6. 06 Run

    Infrastructure as code, observable, and paid for sensibly.

    DevOps

    $ tofu plan
  No changes. Infrastructure matches the code.
$ kubectl get rollout checkout
  checkout   Healthy   stable
# otel → prometheus → grafana. spot where it fits.

Work we have done

Our clients rarely want to be named. Here is what the work looked like.

  • Recruitment

    Self-hosted AI candidate data never left the company

    AI that takes people by the hand

    Problem
    Candidates were matched by hand, and every customer got the same onboarding.
    What we did
    Automatic candidate matching, and guided onboarding that adapts each step to the customer – on a locally hosted model, for data protection.
    Result
    Matches arrive on their own, and customers are led through onboarding step by step.

  • Consultancy

    Ask the wiki not the colleague next door

    An assistant that knows what is written down

    Problem
    Staff asked colleagues for answers that were already in Confluence and the other wikis.
    What we did
    An internal AI assistant that answers questions from the company's own wikis.
    Result
    People find answers themselves, and colleagues are interrupted less.

  • Insurance

    0 manual certificate renewals

    Two clouds, one network, no expiring certificates

    Problem
    AWS and Azure regions had to talk to each other securely, and certificates were renewed by hand.
    What we did
    Connected the regions and automated how certificates are issued and rotated.
    Result
    Certificates rotate on their own. Nobody renews one by hand any more.

  • Media

    Auto rollback on a bad release

    Releases that roll themselves back

    Problem
    Every release to a live audience was a risk, so releases were rare and large.
    What we did
    Progressive delivery: canary releases watched by metrics, with automatic rollback.
    Result
    A bad release stops itself before most users see it.

  • Automotive

    −⅓ cloud costs, about a third

    A multi-cloud bill cut by about a third

    Problem
    Spend across several clouds kept growing, and no one could say why.
    What we did
    Attributed every cost to an owner, right-sized, and removed what nobody used. Instances now scale with demand, with spot instances wherever a workload can handle interruption.
    Result
    Cloud costs down by about a third.

  • Software

    Hours minutes end-to-end test run

    A test suite from hours to minutes

    Problem
    The end-to-end tests took hours, so they ran rarely and caught problems late.
    What we did
    Rebuilt the suite to run in parallel inside the pipeline.
    Result
    The suite runs in minutes, on every change.

No two engagements look the same.

We shape the work around your situation, your team and your pace. A few typical starting points:

  • You need a specialist, fast

    We join your team, in your tools and rituals, for as long as you need us.

  • You have a clear piece of work

    An agreed scope and a fixed price, delivered and handed over with documentation.

  • You are building something new

    A small team around your product, from the first plan to running in production.

  • You are not sure yet

    We start with a conversation, or a short assessment with a written recommendation.

man knotenhub

Can you provide a whole team?

Yes. From one specialist to a complete team – project management, agile coach, product, architecture, UX, development, QA and DevOps – working as one unit.

Do you work alongside our own people?

Yes, and that is the usual case. We join your tools, rituals and chat, and leave the knowledge behind when we go.

Remote or on site?

Mostly remote, from Ireland. On site for kick-offs, workshops and whenever the work needs it, in Ireland, the UK and the EU.

Time zone and languages?

Irish time, which overlaps fully with UK hours and most of the Central European day. We work in English and German.

How does pricing work?

A day rate for open-ended work, or a fixed price for a clearly scoped piece. The assessment shows which one fits.

How fast can you start?

Usually within two weeks. Small, urgent pieces often sooner. There is no formal minimum engagement.

Let's connect.

Tell us in a few lines what you are working on, where it hurts and by when. We reply within one working day.

Get in touch