// about
A senior team
that owns what it ships.
rot8 is small on purpose. Under 30 heads. Designers and engineers who’ve shipped at scale, in their own names, before they joined.
rot8 Studio is a European engineering studio. The team is fewer than 30 senior designers and engineers, distributed across Western and Central Europe, with a combined 25 years of senior product experience. We work on three projects per quarter and have shipped 47 products to date.
- Under 30 heads
- Europe-based
- Founded 2024
// why this shape
Most studios scale by hiring juniors. We don’t.
Most studios scale by hiring junior engineers and senior account managers. The economics demand it: agencies sell hours, juniors are cheap, account managers protect the relationship from the team's actual capacity.
We built rot8 the opposite way. We don't hire juniors. We don't keep account managers between you and the people writing your code. We cap project count per quarter so the people on your project aren't also on three other ones.
This is structurally different from how a 200-person agency works. It's also structurally different from how a freelancer works. The result is a small company that ships at the pace and quality of a senior in-house team — without the nine-month hiring loop.
// the team
The team.
Founder bios and headshots will land here once the founding team finalizes public-facing photography and disclosure. In the meantime, every rot8 engagement is staffed and led by named senior designers and engineers you'll meet on day one — no account managers, no anonymous “a team will be assigned” lineups.
// what we believe
What we do — and don’t.
| We do | We don’t |
|---|---|
| Senior team only on every project | Hire juniors and bench-warm them on client work |
| Cap project count per quarter | Stack engagements to maximize utilization |
| Publish pricing minimums | “Contact us” pricing |
| Take cash for engineering work | Take equity in lieu of cash |
| Hand back the codebase clean | Sell maintenance retainers as default |
| Say no to two of every three applications | Run sales pipelines |
| Sign NDAs before real disclosure | Sign NDAs to receive a marketing pitch |
| Documentation by default | Tribal knowledge that disappears with the team |
// where we work
European boutique.
We're distributed across Western and Central Europe — primarily CET / CEST working hours — with overlap into US Eastern morning and Pacific afternoon for clients on the other side of the Atlantic. We work async after the daily overlap window.
First on-site visit with a new client is included in every Ship and Embed engagement. Subsequent travel within Europe is billed at cost only if requested.
// what we’re not
The shape is the goal.
- A 200-person agency. We won’t be one.
- A freelancer marketplace. We don’t sub-contract.
- A growth-stage startup. We’re a studio, not a venture-backed company. The shape is the goal.
- A WebGL aesthetics studio. We make beautiful interfaces when the product needs them; we don’t make beautiful interfaces instead of the product.
// quick answers
About, common questions.
How big is rot8?
Fewer than 30 people, distributed across Western and Central Europe. We don’t publish exact headcount because it’s not the useful number — what matters is that no project gets a junior, every project gets a named senior team, and we cap project count per quarter so the team isn’t stretched across more work than it can ship.When was rot8 founded?
rot8 was founded in 2024. The team’s combined senior experience is 25 years across product, engineering, and design. The studio was founded explicitly to offer senior product engineering at boutique scale, after the founders’ direct experience inside agencies that had grown past the point of being able to do that.Is rot8 hiring?
We hire selectively, senior only, when an engagement requires a specialist we don’t already have. We don’t run an open careers page because the hiring volume doesn’t justify it. If you’re a senior designer or engineer with a track record of shipped product work, email hello@rot8.studio.
// next step
Three projects this quarter. Two remain.
Apply with the four-step form, or see engagement shapes.