Tonkin Digital Studio

// software consultancy · Melbourne, AU

Software that holds up in production.

Tonkin Digital Studio helps teams make the hard technical calls — architecture, cloud platforms, integrations and engineering leadership — and then builds alongside them, hands-on.

Start a conversation $ ls services/

01 / services

What we do

Senior engineering help for the moments that matter: a platform being designed, a system that has outgrown its first version, or a team that needs technical direction.

~/services/leadership

Technical leadership

Fractional Head of Engineering or tech lead. We set technical direction, shape the roadmap, establish engineering process and translate between the business and the codebase.

  • fractional CTO
  • roadmaps
  • team process
~/services/architecture

Architecture & modernisation

Enterprise and solution architecture: service boundaries, data models and event-driven flows, designed and written down before code. For enterprises on ageing platforms, we plan and lead legacy migrations in phases — incremental cut-overs and parallel runs instead of a big-bang rewrite.

  • enterprise architecture
  • legacy migration
  • event-driven
  • design reviews
~/services/cloud

Cloud & platform engineering

AWS platforms defined as code, with deployment pipelines you can trust and observability built in from day one, not bolted on after the first incident.

  • AWS
  • IaC
  • CI/CD
  • observability
~/services/integrations

Integrations & APIs

Reliable connections between your system and the outside world: partner APIs, signed webhooks, queues and idempotent processing — including in regulated fintech and payments environments.

  • APIs
  • webhooks
  • queues
  • fintech
~/services/delivery

Hands-on delivery

We write the code too: backend services in Java and TypeScript, web front-ends in React and Next.js, mobile apps in React Native or native iOS and Android, and commerce builds on Shopify, Medusa and Adobe Commerce.

  • Java
  • TypeScript
  • React
  • mobile
  • eCommerce
~/services/ai-engineering

AI-assisted engineering

Bringing AI coding agents into a team's workflow safely — specs before code, review gates and guardrails — so the speed-up shows in delivery without showing up in production incidents.

  • AI agents
  • workflow
  • guardrails

02 / approach

How we work

Every engagement follows the same arc. The goal is a system your team understands and owns — not a dependency on us.

  • >
    Evidence over opinion

    Recommendations come with the reasoning and the data behind them. Candid disagreement is part of the service.

  • >
    Simple over clever

    Right-sized architecture for your actual scale, not a hypothetical one.

  • >
    You own everything

    Code, docs and decisions live in your repositories from the first commit.

$ git log --oneline --reverse

a1f3c9ediscoverunderstand the business, the system and its constraints

4be0d12designwritten spec, trade-offs explicit, decisions recorded

9c7e5a8buildsmall increments, tested and observable from day one

e21b6f4hand overdocs, runbooks and a team that owns what shipped

$

03 / engagements

Ways to work together

Pick the shape that fits where you are. Engagements can move between them as needs change.

--mode=advisory

Advisory

A senior second opinion on demand: architecture reviews, technical due diligence, vendor and build-vs-buy decisions.

fits: a decision you need to get right

--mode=fractional

Fractional leadership

Part-time Head of Engineering or tech lead, embedded with your team to set direction, unblock delivery and grow the people around it.

fits: a team that needs technical direction

--mode=project

Project delivery

A scoped build with a clear outcome — a new service, an integration, a platform migration — designed, built and handed over.

fits: a well-defined problem to solve

04 / stack

Tools we know well

Nearly two decades of production software across most mainstream stacks — from enterprise Java to React Native. We choose what suits your team; this is where we have gone deepest.

~/stack.ts
// web & mobile
import { React, NextJS }                          from "frontend";
import { ReactNative }                            from "mobile";
import { Swift }                                  from "mobile/ios";
import { Kotlin, Java }                           from "mobile/android";

// backend
import { Java, SpringBoot, Hibernate, Kotlin }    from "backend/jvm";
import { Maven, Gradle }                          from "backend/jvm/build";
import { TypeScript, NodeJS, NestJS }             from "backend/node";

// data
import { PostgreSQL, MySQL, Aurora }              from "data/sql";
import { MongoDB, Redis }                         from "data/nosql";
import { Elasticsearch, OpenSearch }              from "data/search";

// integration
import { Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS }                   from "event-driven";
import { REST, Webhooks, OAuth }                  from "integration";

// platform
import { AWS, GCP, Azure }                        from "cloud";
import { Docker, Kubernetes, Lambda }             from "runtime";
import { Terraform, CDK }                         from "iac";
import { GitHubActions, GitLabCI }                from "ci-cd";
import { OpenTelemetry, SigNoz }                  from "observability";
import { Grafana, Prometheus, NewRelic }          from "monitoring";

// commerce & analytics
import { Shopify, MedusaJS, AdobeCommerce }       from "commerce";
import { BigQuery, Snowflake, ClickHouse }        from "analytics/warehouse";
import { Amplitude, Mixpanel, GTM, GA4, Segment } from "analytics/product";

// …and whatever your system already runs on.

$ ./start-project.sh

Have a system that needs a second pair of eyes?

Get in touch hello@tonkindigital.studio