Dev by Sal Ltd.

What Dev by Sal Ltd. does

Dev by Sal Ltd. (operating as DEV BY SAL) is a privately held, founder-owned senior software studio incorporated under UK-style "LTD." jurisdiction, with a remote-first global operating model spanning US Eastern through European hours. The company was founded by Sal Anvarov, who serves as Founder and Principal Engineer, and operates without institutional capital, project managers, or junior staff — every engineer on a project has shipped a startup or built infrastructure at a name-brand company. The studio ships AI-native products, agentic systems, and internal platforms for engineering-led teams ranging from Series A startups to Fortune 500 R&D groups across insurance, wealth-tech, fintech, edtech, grocery retail, govtech, HR tech, creator economy, and software M&A.

The studio offers three structured engagement tiers: AI-Native Product Engineering (4-12 week builds for production LLM systems including eval harnesses, retrieval pipelines, agentic workflows, cost and latency budgets, and LLM router design); Platform & Developer Tooling (6-16 week engagements after a one-week discovery, covering workflow builders, SDK and CLI design, multi-tenant architecture, and self-healing connectors); and Frontier Product Sprints (fixed-price four-week engagements to ship greenfield MVPs, vertical AI agents, or mobile and web launches, with 30 days of post-launch support). Pricing is outcome-based — fixed-price against defined deliverables for sprints, time-and-materials with a weekly cap and hard kill-switch for longer platform work. The go-to-market motion is direct: a 30-minute engineer-led triage call via Calendly, followed by a one-page scoped proposal within 48 hours if there is a fit.

The technology stack spans TypeScript, React, Node, Postgres, Python, Go, and Rust, with deep integration of the LLM toolchain (OpenAI, Anthropic, Vercel AI SDK, LangGraph, Inngest, Braintrust) and deployment across AWS, GCP, Vercel, Cloudflare, Fly.io, and Snowflake/BigQuery/DuckDB analytics layers. The studio's differentiating methodology is eval-driven development — treating the eval set as the product specification, with reference evals, rubric evals, pairwise evals, and production evals calibrated against judge-model bias. The firm has published three long-form technical papers (eval-driven development, agent architectures, production RAG) and maintains a sustained content cadence (insights, blog, RSS, LinkedIn) targeting founders, CTOs, and engineering leaders. Ten named 2025 case studies include marquee enterprise deployments such as the Co-operators policyholder portal (live across 10 Canadian provinces, ~28% inbound call reduction), Loblaws PC Express substitution intelligence (~1,400 stores, 6M+ decisions/day), Khan Academy adaptive mastery nudges (~1.2M learners, 12 languages), and FutureVault's retrieval-grounded advisor AI (~96% citation accuracy, 50K+ households indexed).

Name

Dev by Sal Ltd.

Legal name

DEV BY SAL LTD.

Website

https://by-sal.dev

Company type

Private

Operating status

Operating

Short description

Dev by Sal Ltd. is a founder-owned, remote-first senior software studio that designs and ships AI-native products, agentic systems, and internal platforms for engineering-led teams from Series A startups to Fortune 500 R&D groups across nine verticals, operating under a three-tier engagement model with 100% senior engineers and a four-week default delivery cadence.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

AI Software Studio Services

NAICS

Custom Computer Programming Services (541511), Computer Systems Design and Related Services (54151)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming Services (7371), Services-Computer Integrated Systems Design (7373)

akta.pro primary industry

DevOps Consulting & Transformation (BPAEAKAA)

akta.pro secondary industries

Developer Experience (DevEx) Tooling & Productivity Engineering (BPAEAKAM), Platform Engineering & Internal Developer Platforms (IDP) (BPAEAKAC)

Keywords

• AI product engineering
• LLM agent development
• Production RAG systems
• Custom software studio
• AI-native application development

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. AI-Native Product Engineering: 4-12 week engagements for production LLM systems including evals, retrieval, agents, and observability. Fixed scope against defined deliverables.
2. Platform & Developer Tooling: 6-16 week engagements after 1-week discovery. Time-and-materials with weekly reporting and hard kill-switch. Internal platforms, SDKs, multi-tenant architecture.
3. Frontier Product Sprints: Fixed-price 4-week engagements to ship defined MVPs, vertical AI agents, or mobile/web launches. Includes 30 days of post-launch support.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels2 records

Marketing channels8 records

Core offering

Dev by Sal Ltd. is a senior software studio that designs and ships AI-native products, agentic systems, and revenue-shifting platforms for engineering-led teams. It delivers work as three structured engagements: AI-Native Product Engineering (4-12 weeks for production LLM systems with eval harnesses, retrieval pipelines, and agents), Platform & Developer Tooling (6-16 weeks for internal platforms, SDKs, and multi-tenant architectures), and Frontier Product Sprints (fixed-price 4-week MVPs and greenfield prototypes with 30 days of post-launch support). The studio is 100% senior engineers, default 4-week delivery, and works inside the client's existing repo, stack, and conventions with code ownership transferring to the client.

Product overview

Dev by Sal Ltd. is a senior software studio offering three structured service offerings: AI-Native Product Engineering (production LLM systems with eval harnesses, retrieval pipelines, and agentic workflows), Platform & Developer Tooling (internal platforms, SDKs, CLIs, and multi-tenant architecture), and Frontier Product Sprints (fixed-price 4-week engagements for MVPs and greenfield prototypes). The studio has shipped 40+ products across insurance, wealth-tech, fintech, EdTech, grocery retail, GovTech, AI infrastructure, HR tech, SaaS commerce, and software M&A sectors. Their default engagement is 4 weeks with 100% senior engineers, serving ambitious teams from Series A to Fortune 500.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• AI-Native Product Engineering Production LLM systems development service for engineering-led teams, covering eval harnesses (offline and online tied to product KPIs), retrieval pipelines with measurable recall, multi-step agents with planning and tool-use, cost and latency budgets, and LLM router design for small/big model orchestration. Engagement timeline is 4-12 weeks, starting from a scoped 4-week sprint.
• Platform & Developer Tooling Internal platform and developer tooling service for engineering-led teams, covering visual workflow builders, low-code engines, multi-tenant SaaS architecture with per-tenant isolation, SDK and CLI design (TypeScript, Python, Go), self-healing connectors, ingestion pipelines, and developer experience audits. Engagement timeline is 6-16 weeks following a 1-week discovery phase.
• Frontier Product Sprints Fixed-price 4-week engagement service shipping greenfield product MVPs, vertical AI agents for specific business workflows, and mobile and web cross-platform launches. Includes penetration-tested security and SSO from day one, with 30 days of post-launch support.

Quantifiable outcome

• 28% inbound call reduction for insurance co-op portal
• +9 more outcomes

Named customers10 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration5 records

AI capability16 records

Feature5 records

Scale indicators19 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Globant: Global digital engineering services firm with dedicated AI studios building LLM-powered products and agentic platforms for enterprises. Comparable AI-native delivery capability at materially greater scale and geographic reach.
• Thoughtworks: Global technology consultancy with deep practices in platform engineering, AI/ML delivery, and DevOps transformation. Operates at much larger scale but addresses the same enterprise buyer with overlapping AI-native and platform engineering offerings.
• Slalom: Large-scale technology and strategy consultancy with an explicit AI engineering practice that builds GenAI products and platforms for Fortune 500 clients. Wider portfolio, similar buyer, broader geographic footprint.

Direct peers

• Markovate: AI consulting and product engineering studio delivering AI-native MVPs, vertical agents, and GenAI integrations to startups and enterprises. Similar service catalog to Dev by Sal's three engagement types.
• Itransition: Custom software development and AI engineering services firm with multi-vertical enterprise delivery (insurance, fintech, retail). Comparable in offering breadth, multi-vertical customer mix, and fixed-scope engagement model.
• Simform: Digital product engineering firm offering custom AI/ML, cloud-native platform, and SaaS product development with outcomes-based engagement pricing — directly comparable on fixed-scope, multi-vertical delivery.
• LeewayHertz: AI and software development services firm delivering custom AI solutions, RAG systems, and agentic applications for enterprise clients — directly comparable engagement model and AI delivery capability.
• Hatch (formerly Hatchworks): Boutique AI engineering services firm building AI-native products and agentic platforms for enterprise clients. Closest comparable in scope and operating model to Dev by Sal's AI-native product engineering offering.

Others

• Toptal: Network of pre-vetted freelance engineers (including AI/ML specialists) accessed on a talent-marketplace model. Different delivery model but adjacent — competes for the same senior-engineering capacity that Dev by Sal monetizes.
• Andela: Engineering talent platform connecting enterprises with senior software engineers including AI practitioners. Adjacent rather than directly competing — relevant as a substitute for the in-house senior-hire option Dev by Sal often pitches against.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/msanvarov
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/dev-by-sal

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Dev by Sal Ltd.