About Acme
Twenty years of building software people depend on
We're an independent engineering firm of 1,200 architects, engineers, designers and operators across 11 offices — trusted by 340+ organizations to build and run their most important systems.
Our story
Started by engineers, still run by engineers
Acme began in a San Francisco loft in 2004, when three infrastructure engineers grew tired of watching good businesses held back by brittle software. Our first client was a regional bank that needed its payments platform to stop failing on payday. It hasn't since.
Today we work with global banks, hospital networks, logistics leaders and government agencies. The scale has changed; the approach hasn't. We put senior people on hard problems, measure everything, and stay accountable for what we ship long after launch.
- Independent and employee-owned since 2016
- Delivery centers in San Francisco, Austin, Dublin and Singapore
- AWS Premier, Microsoft Solutions and Google Cloud partner
- Founded
- 2004
- People
- 1,200
- Offices
- 11
- Countries served
- 28
What we value
The principles behind every engagement
Outcomes over output
We agree on measurable results before we write code — uptime, cycle time, cost, adoption — and report on them every week.
Senior by default
Every team is led by practitioners with 10+ years in production systems. No bait-and-switch, no learning on your budget.
Secure from the first commit
Threat modeling, least-privilege access and automated compliance checks are part of how we build, not a phase at the end.
Leave you stronger
Documentation, pairing and training are built into our plans so your team can own, extend and operate what we deliver.
Milestones
How we got here
2004
Founded in San Francisco
Three engineers, one payments platform and a promise to make it reliable.
2011
First cloud migration practice
Moved a top-20 US retailer's commerce stack to the cloud ahead of Black Friday.
2016
Became employee-owned
Ownership passed to our people, keeping Acme independent and long-term focused.
2020
Launched Data & AI practice
Built production ML systems for logistics, healthcare and financial services clients.
2024
1,000+ engineers across 4 continents
Opened delivery centers in Dublin and Singapore for true 24/7 coverage.
Leadership
The people accountable for your results
Our leadership team still reviews architecture, joins client steering meetings and carries a pager.
Sarah Whitfield
Chief Executive Officer
Co-founder. Former principal engineer at a global payments network; leads strategy and client partnerships.
Daniel Okafor
Chief Technology Officer
Co-founder. Architect of platforms processing $40B a year; sets Acme's engineering standards.
Mei-Lin Zhou
Chief Data & AI Officer
Built ML platforms at two Fortune 100 companies; leads our Data & AI practice.
Rafael Moreno
Chief Information Security Officer
Two decades in security engineering and incident response across finance and healthcare.
Want to work with a team like this?
Talk to a senior consultant about your goals. We'll tell you honestly whether we're the right fit.