About the studio
RB Alliance is an Auckland-based engineering studio. We build custom software, train AI models, architect data systems and automate the workflows between them, for organisations that have outgrown what off-the-shelf SaaS can do for them.
The founder
Rafe founded RB Alliance in 2025 to do the kind of engineering work he wanted to do: broad, deep, and answerable. Before the studio, he worked across machine learning research, full-stack platforms, and the data architecture underneath both. He still writes the code he ships.
The studio takes on a deliberately small number of engagements at once, typically three to five, so that every project gets the depth of attention that good engineering requires. The next intake window opens 14 July 2026.
We lead with the work, not the tooling. Sometimes the right answer is not to build anything at all, and we will tell you when that is.
If you have a problem you suspect doesn't fit existing software, or an idea that needs a thesis before it needs a budget, this is the kind of conversation we're built for.
The studio · Auckland · Tāmaki Makaurau
Small, senior, and answerable for what it ships.
Founded
Based
Working across
Core practices
How we work
We lead with the work, not the tooling. AI gets used when it earns its place. SaaS gets used when it earns its place. Custom code gets used when the problem deserves it. We tell you which it is.
Every line of code we hand over is something we would be happy to open in five years. No clever shortcuts, no hidden debt, no surprises at handover.
Most engagements start with us sitting next to the team that will use what we ship. We read your codebase, talk to your operators, understand your constraints, then we come back with a thesis.
The best software disappears. We measure success in afternoons returned to your team and decisions made faster, not in screen real-estate or feature counts.
Most of our engagements run as a four-week diagnose-scope-build-handover cadence, then expand into a longer build if the engagement warrants. Working software at the end of every week.
We sit with your team, read the code, talk to your operators, and write a short thesis on what we think is actually going on.
A written scope with options, trade-offs, costs, risks, and an honest opinion on which path we recommend.
Working software ships at the end of every week. You see progress as it lands; we do not hide work.
Documentation, tests, retainer terms. We hand it over running. If something breaks at 2am, the on-call rota is yours, but we are a call away.
Tell us what you're trying to ship and what's blocking it. We reply within 24 hours.
