Martian Services

What we build

Evil Martians is a developer tools consultancy—50 engineers and designers, led from San Francisco and distributed across 16 countries. We embed in our customers’ teams to build products that other engineers use: developer tools, AI products, cloud infrastructure, and security platforms. Founded in 2006, we work with about 40 early-stage startups every year, mostly Seed to Series B. Eight of our clients grew from Seed to unicorn. 65% raise Series A or B within one to three years.

AI products

bolt.new is one of the fastest-growing AI products ever launched. This AI code generation tool went from zero to $40M+ ARR in roughly five months. We’ve been StackBlitz’s engineering partner since 2021, building the Ruby on Rails backend, enterprise features, and performance infrastructure that enabled bolt.new’s scale.

Recraft is an AI image generation platform with $42M in funding and 1M+ users. We built their Discord bot acquisition strategy. GMI Cloud is a GPU cloud infrastructure provider with $82M+ in Series A funding; we delivered their conversion-driven website in weeks. For BetterUp, the leading AI coaching platform with $570M+ in funding, we built their React frontend and scalable AWS backend.

Iterative built DVC, the open source data versioning tool for ML projects, with $25M+ in funding and 400+ customers. We built the UI for DVC Studio. We also designed the prompt evaluation playground for Quotient, a developer tool for testing and evaluating LLMs.

Developer tools

HTTPie is an API testing tool used by developers worldwide. We led the product design that hit 4th Product of the Day on Product Hunt. Steel is an open source browser API for controlling browser fleets in the cloud. We built backend services within their TypeScript monorepo. For Certora, a blockchain security startup backed by Tiger Global, we built a VS Code extension for smart contract verification in just two months—from design sprint to marketplace.

Infrastructure

We build infrastructure for clients—and we also build our own. AnyCable is our open source real-time server that handles millions of concurrent WebSocket connections. Doximity, a platform used by 80% of US doctors, shipped real-time features using AnyCable—and we ran training sessions so their team could maintain the system independently.

NATS is an open source messaging system for modern distributed systems. We improved the performance of their Ruby SDK, speeding it up by more than 3x. Medplum is an API-first, open source healthcare developer platform (YC S22). We designed their Provider App, turning a demo into a market-ready EHR product. Rootly is a YC-backed incident management platform—we redesigned their product and implemented frontend and backend improvements.

Cybersecurity

Teleport is a privileged access management platform used by 100+ enterprise customers. We built their access control plugins and transformed their documentation into a customer acquisition channel. They’ve raised $170M and reached unicorn status. Tines automates security workflows—we designed and built the product, improving performance 100x in target areas. They’ve raised $90M+ and reached unicorn status.

Wallarm protects 20,000+ apps and APIs and is ranked in the Top 150 Cybersecurity Companies. We optimized their Go-based event processing pipeline. Ghost Security helps enterprises find application vulnerabilities—we designed their MVP and built the frontend. They raised $15M.

Why startups choose Evil Martians

We specialize in developer products and developer experience. Not consumer apps, not enterprise SaaS—developer tools, infrastructure, and security products. Our designers know what makes developer tools feel right because it’s what they’ve been designing since 2006.

We created the tools you already use. Over 100 open source projects. 150K+ GitHub stars. 25 billion downloads. PostCSS, imgproxy, AnyCable, Lefthook, Nano ID. Chances are your team already uses something we built.

We ship AI features. We helped build bolt.new, one of the most successful AI products ever launched. Our AI harnesses encode architectural patterns into AI coding tools so they produce code that matches your team’s conventions.

We embed, not outsource. We join your team directly—your repo, your Slack, your standups. Not as an outside vendor, but as engineers who already understand your domain and ship from day one.

When to work with a devtools consultancy

There are several points where engaging with a devtools consultancy makes the most sense. Right after a funding round, when there’s pressure to ship fast and hiring takes months. At the scaling stage, when you need specific expertise—performance optimization, real-time infrastructure, AI integration—that doesn’t justify a full-time hire. Pre-PMF, when you need to validate fast: our design sprints have launched products for companies like Tines, Ghost Security, and HTTPie in as little as two weeks.

We work with TypeScript, Python, Go, Ruby on Rails, Rust, and React. We run 2–3 week sprints with clear deliverables, focused on what matters for the business.