Culture & Teams
OPEX vs CAPEX in software development: the decision that shapes your EBITDA
At Orbitant, a client’s finances matter to the whole team, not just to whoever holds the CTO title or sits in the finance department: they help anyone in technology make better decisions about what they build, because every line of code ends up reflected somewhere in the company’s accounts. That’s why I ran an internal […]
From accountant to developer: my career change into tech (and what came after)
Even though it’s been a few years now, I still vividly remember the reasons and feelings that led me to rethink my professional life. It was a mix of monotony, lack of challenge and creativity, no sense of progress. My job required no effort whatsoever — neither physical nor intellectual — and that, for me, […]
Engineering career paths: 3 growth tracks no one explains
What happens when you’ve been coding for years and you realize the next step isn’t simply picking up a new framework? At the latest edition of the Node.js Madrid Meetup, hosted at Orbitant’s offices in Torre Emperador, Jorge Castaño — senior software engineer, author, and a recognized voice in technical leadership — opened a debate […]
The Recipe Behind High-Performance Software Engineering Teams
In a previous article, I spoke about psychological safety and how important it is to remove fear from your organisation in order to enable high-performance engineering teams. To support this idea and unlock the real potential, over the years I have found two main sets of instruments that need to be present in any organisation: […]
Remote Working: Tips and Tricks
Let’s be honest: the landscape has changed since the pandemic boom. In Europe, fully remote positions have dropped sharply from 24% to 14% between 2022 and 2024, and the percentage of people working entirely from the workplace increased from 36% in 2023 to 41% in 2024. Big corporations are leading the push back to the […]
Forward deployed engineer: why knowing how to code is no longer enough
AI has made writing code cheap, but what remains expensive —and scarce— is knowing what to build, for whom, and why. Out of that scarcity, a new profile has emerged, one the industry has started to call the forward deployed engineer: someone who doesn’t sit around waiting for a well-defined ticket, but instead gets inside […]
Building Your Best Knowledge Base
Every company has a “secret sauce”, a way to do things, a recipe (whether the team are aware or not). When the organisation is small things can be chaotic, processes may not be entirely defined and the team knowledge may not even be fully formed. However, when the size of your team (and/or your project) […]
How a software consultancy makes money: from your payslip to EBITDA
You can spend years billing software projects without ever learning how a software consultancy makes money: what your work actually costs the company, or why a rate that sounds high barely leaves any margin. That gap between what you see on your payslip and what a client gets invoiced is why so many everyday technical […]
The Operating Principles That Define Orbitant
Principles are not slogans or motivational posters on a wall. They are the backbone of how we think, decide, and operate every single day at Orbitant. These principles outline what “good” looks like here: what we expect from ourselves, how we collaborate, and how we make decisions when things become complicated. They are the practical […]
I Hated Writing Tickets (Until I Used AI)
Does this sound familiar? At some point, if you have worked as a software developer, ticket creation has been one of the main discussion topics in refinement sessions and retros. Many of us tend to think descriptive tickets are a waste of time. With simpler versions we could do what tickets are supposed to be […]
When code thinks about the future: sustainable software
How far does a developer’s responsibility go? We’re not talking about optimizing queries or reducing memory consumption. We’re talking about something deeper: the social and environmental impact of the software we build, the legacy we leave for the teams that will maintain our code. Furthermore, we’re talking about the ethical decisions we make under pressure. […]
From GuideSmiths to Orbitant: Building the Next Generation of Software Consultancy
Three companies. Seven years of learning. One conviction that never changed: great software is built by engineers who are trusted, autonomous, and close to decisions. This is not a marketing pitch. It’s the story of how we built, sold, experimented, learned, and why all of that led us to start Orbitant. It’s about understanding that […]