Software Development
Mission impact
Software produces mission value only when it ships and only while the owning organization can sustain it. We engage with defined scope, deliver incrementally against it, and transfer ownership completely — so the capability enhances operational effectiveness from the day it goes live and keeps doing so without dependence on our continued involvement. Every practice on this page resolves to the same two outcomes: less risk carried into production, and less time between mission need and fielded software.
One Practice, Both Ends of the Spectrum
Not every software engagement is a greenfield, mission-specific build subject to air-gap requirements and defense procurement constraints — but some are, and the same practice covers both. For mission-specific work, we build secure applications where security-by-design, auditability, and operational alignment are first-class requirements from the first line of code, producing purpose-built capabilities that act as force multipliers and reduce reliance on fragmented commercial tools retrofitted to fit. More broadly, government agencies, contractors, and commercial organizations need engineering teams that can ship web applications, build and integrate APIs, retire technical debt, and reinforce internal teams when capacity or skills run short. Wilkes & Liberty provides that capacity — with the same rigor our defense-grade work demands.
What We Build
- Web applications — modern, decoupled frontends built with frameworks like Next.js, backed by structured, API-first data layers.
- APIs and integration services — REST, GraphQL, and JSON:API interfaces that connect systems securely and predictably.
- Backend and middleware services — PHP, Node.js, and Python engineered for reliability under load.
- Custom modules and extensions — purpose-built functionality for existing platforms, built to open-source community standards.
When a project centers on structured content and editorial workflows, our Content Management capability picks up where custom development leaves off. When it centers on the environments software runs in, see Private Infrastructure.
Engagement Models That Fit the Work
Net-new applications. We carry the engagement from requirements through delivery: architecture, full-stack development, testing, and deployment — with documentation sufficient for the team inheriting the codebase.
Modernization sprints. We scope focused sprints against specific technical-debt targets — framework upgrades, API surface redesigns, dependency remediation, performance bottlenecks — and deliver incremental, validated improvements rather than open-ended rewrites that defer value for quarters. For deeper transformation efforts, see Digital Modernization.
Team augmentation. We embed engineers who operate to the same standards as your existing team, contribute from day one, and transfer knowledge rather than accumulating it.
Agent-Accelerated Delivery
Our practice runs on orchestrated AI agent workflows for the repetitive, well-specified portions of engineering work — multi-repository refactoring, dependency remediation, documentation, and tracker hygiene — with human engineers owning architecture, judgment, and every merge. The result is delivery velocity manual practices can't match, at the same standard of review. Organizations that want this capability inside their own teams should see our Agentic AI Development capability.
Engineering Discipline You Can Audit
- Version-controlled source with meaningful history and peer-reviewed changes
- Automated test coverage and continuous integration
- Security-conscious practices, including dependency auditing and least-privilege design
- Documentation that outlives the engagement — architecture decisions, runbooks, onboarding guides
A Lifecycle You Can Attest To
Federal buyers no longer take secure development on faith. Executive Order 14028 and the attestation requirements that followed it ask vendors to demonstrate — not assert — that software was built under the practices of the NIST Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF, SP 800-218). Our delivery pipeline is organized around that standard: protected source repositories with enforced peer review, provenance-aware builds, dependency auditing in the pipeline, and SBOMs generated as a routine build artifact rather than a compliance scramble. We run these pipelines on our own estate before we recommend them to anyone — and the evidence they produce shortens the path from delivered code to authorized system. For the pipeline discipline itself, see DevSecOps.
Open Source, First-Class
We're active contributors to the open-source ecosystem, with maintainer experience on npmjs.com and drupal.org among others, as well as public work on GitHub. The code we deliver follows community standards, benefits from public scrutiny, and never locks you into a proprietary black box.
Delivery Under Your Authority
The pipeline that builds your software is part of your attack surface, and it should answer to you. We deliver into repositories you own, through runners you control, to registries you operate — on open, vendor-independent toolchains that outlast any single provider. Nothing in the delivery chain requires a vendor cloud to function, which is why the same practice serves connected enterprises and air-gapped environments alike: the capability transfers to your team intact, not as a service you rent. It pairs naturally with the posture described in Zero-Trust Architecture.
Software You Own
Every engagement produces software your organization can maintain. We do not deliver codebases that require our continued involvement to understand, and we do not make architectural choices that create the next cycle of technical debt. The deliverable is working software — tested, documented, and owned by your team when the engagement closes. Contact us to scope the work.
Key capabilities
Web application design and development
Full-stack web application development across modern frameworks — frontend, API, and backend — with architecture decisions documented, test coverage defined from the start, and delivery sequenced so working functionality reaches users incrementally rather than at the end of a long development cycle.
Mission benefit: Applications that deliver operational value early and continue to improve through the engagement rather than waiting for a big-bang delivery.API design, implementation, and integration
RESTful and GraphQL API design, implementation, and integration work — including new API surface development, legacy API modernization, and third-party integration engineering — with versioning strategy, documentation, and security controls built in.
Mission benefit: Clean API surfaces that your internal and partner consumers can depend on, rather than integration points that require tribal knowledge to use correctly.Modernization sprints against legacy codebases
Scoped, time-boxed modernization work targeting specific technical debt: framework and dependency upgrades, performance bottleneck remediation, test coverage extension, and architecture simplification — sequenced so each sprint delivers a validated improvement rather than accumulating changes that cannot be tested until the end.
Mission benefit: Legacy codebase risk is reduced incrementally and measurably, with each sprint delivering a codebase that is more maintainable than the one it replaced.Team augmentation and embedded engineering
Skilled engineers embedded in your existing development team — operating under your processes and standards, contributing to active workstreams from the first week, and applying the same documentation and knowledge-transfer discipline that makes the engagement net-positive for your internal capability rather than a temporary throughput supplement.
Mission benefit: Your team's delivery capacity increases without the ramp overhead that external contractors typically impose, and the internal team is stronger when the augmentation engagement ends.Delivery documentation and codebase handover
Technical documentation, architecture decision records, test suite documentation, and structured codebase handover — ensuring your team can maintain and extend every application we deliver without requiring our involvement to interpret what was built or why it was built that way.
Mission benefit: The software your organization owns is actually owned — understood, documented, and operable by your team independently from the day we hand it over.
Sovereignty features
Your code lives in repositories you own, builds on runners you control, and ships to registries you operate — the delivery chain answers to your authority at every stage. The toolchain is open and vendor-independent: nothing in how we build, test, or release requires a proprietary platform or a vendor cloud to function, and the entire practice transfers to environments with no external connectivity at all. Air-gapped delivery is a supported mode, not an exception. When the engagement closes, the pipeline is as much yours as the software it built.
Defense & government relevance
Every delivery cycle is aligned to the NIST Secure Software Development Framework (SP 800-218) and organized to support the secure software attestation requirements that flow from Executive Order 14028: protected repositories with enforced peer review, static analysis and dependency auditing in the pipeline, and SBOMs generated as routine build artifacts for supply-chain integrity. The same pipeline evidence — build provenance, test results, review history — arrives in a form suitable for ATO packages and SSP support, and all of it runs on infrastructure the customer controls: on-premises, self-hosted, or hybrid, without rearchitecting for a specific hosting model. Team augmentation operates under your security and personnel policies, with cleared personnel available where access requirements demand it.