Product Engineering Studio

We build software products that companies depend on.

We make technical decisions you’ll still be happy with two years from now.

Your product deserves engineering that won’t become your biggest bottleneck. From architecture to launch, we build for real customers, real growth, and real business demands.

Schedule a 30-minute call

30 minutes • No sales pitch • We’ll tell you honestly if we’re a good fit.

See our work →
Experience building software for
restaurant groups crypto exchanges industrial operations consumer marketplaces AI platforms

What we do

01

Build Products

We take a product from idea to production. We design the architecture, build the backend and frontend, set up infrastructure, and ship it to real users. We take full ownership of the technical outcome.

Includes

  • System architecture and technical strategy
  • Backend and frontend engineering
  • Cloud infrastructure and deployment
  • Authentication, payments, and integrations
  • AI integrations when the problem calls for it

02

Solve Hard Engineering Problems

We step in when software becomes difficult. Scaling bottlenecks, architecture debt, performance issues, systems that are hard to change — we have seen these problems before and know how to untangle them.

Includes

  • Architecture review and redesign
  • Performance and scaling work
  • Legacy system modernization
  • Fractional CTO and technical leadership
  • Rescued projects and team stabilization

Selected work

Restaurant Technology

Restaurant Reservation & Operations Platform

Problem

Restaurant groups managing multiple locations had no unified system. Reservations, payments, and customer operations ran across disconnected tools that couldn’t talk to each other.

Solution

We designed and built a complete platform: reservation system, payment processing, pre-orders, Google integrations, and real-time operations — one system covering the full customer journey.

Outcome

Restaurant operators now run their entire customer-facing operation from a single platform, processing thousands of reservations monthly across multiple brands and locations.

Fintech

Trading & Liquidation Platform

Problem

One of Latin America’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges needed sophisticated trading infrastructure — liquidations, collateral management, and treasury operations — built to handle real financial risk at scale.

Solution

We built the core trading engine: liquidation logic, collateral calculations, treasury automation, and advanced order types that the exchange’s growth had outpaced.

Outcome

The exchange now handles sophisticated trading operations at scale, with infrastructure that earns the trust of users moving significant capital through the platform every day.

Industrial IoT

Industrial Operations Monitoring Platform

Problem

Industrial operations generated enormous amounts of sensor data that went unused. Operators had no real-time visibility into equipment status, so problems were discovered late — or not at all.

Solution

We built the complete data pipeline — from device ingestion to processing to operational dashboards — turning raw sensor readings into information operators could act on immediately.

Outcome

Operations teams gained real-time visibility across their industrial infrastructure, enabling decisions that previously required manual inspection or expensive unplanned downtime.

AI Product

Multi-Location Review Management Platform

Problem

A restaurant brand operating hundreds of locations couldn’t respond to customer reviews at scale. Reviews across Google, TripAdvisor, and Meta went unanswered — or answered inconsistently.

Solution

We built a unified platform that consolidates reviews across all channels and generates brand-consistent responses using AI — trained to understand each location’s voice and guidelines.

Outcome

The team went from managing a fraction of their reviews to responding to all of them — at scale, consistently, without losing the human voice that customers expect from the brand.

How we work

01

Understand

We learn the business before making technical decisions. The technical problem is rarely the first problem.

02

Design

Architecture that makes future development easier. The decisions made early have consequences that compound over time.

03

Build

Small iterations. Continuous delivery. You see progress every week. No black boxes, no surprises at the end.

04

Launch

Production support through go-live. We stay to fix what real users surface. Staging environments are not production.

05

Improve

Software never stops evolving. Good architecture makes the next feature cheaper. We build systems that are meant to change.

What we believe

Architecture is a business decision.

The choices made early in a system’s life follow the business for years. A good architecture enables growth. A poor one becomes the thing that slows everything down.

Production is the only real test.

Everything before production is a hypothesis. Real users behave differently than expected. The work isn’t done when the code is written — it’s done when it works under real conditions.

Simplicity scales better than cleverness.

Complex systems are hard to change, hard to debug, and hard to hand off. The best engineering looks obvious in hindsight — and that takes more effort, not less.

Why founders work with us

You won’t get a team of junior developers.

You won’t get endless meetings.

You won’t get architecture designed to impress other engineers.

You’ll work directly with senior engineers who have spent years building production software and making technical decisions with long-term consequences.

About

Engineering experience that compounds.

True Forge is a product engineering studio founded by José Joaquín Núñez. For more than 15 years, José has built production software across marketplaces, fintech, blockchain, AI, industrial IoT, restaurant technology, and high-scale web platforms.

The common thread isn’t the industry. It’s taking complex problems and turning them into systems that people depend on every day.

We don’t join projects to write tickets. We become part of the product team, helping founders make technical decisions with long-term consequences in mind.

15+ years building production systems
8+ industries shipped to production
Full ownership from architecture to launch
Senior Engineering leadership

Founder

José Joaquín Núñez

Product Engineer · CTO · 15+ years

Previously

AyHungry — CTO Buda.com Telefónica R&D Yapo.cl Jooycar Loot Labs

Over the last 15 years I’ve helped build software for startups, scaleups, and established companies. I’ve been the first engineer, a senior IC, a technical lead, and a CTO. Those different perspectives shape how we work with founders today.

I’ve seen what happens when architecture decisions are made too fast, when systems aren’t designed to change, when the wrong technical choices become the thing a company spends years cleaning up. I’ve also seen what good looks like — what it means to build something that a team can actually grow on top of.

True Forge is where that experience is available to founders who need it.

Technologies

TypeScript  ·  React  ·  Next.js  ·  Node.js  ·  NestJS  ·  PostgreSQL  ·  Redis  ·  Python  ·  AWS  ·  Terraform  ·  GraphQL  ·  Docker  ·  OpenAI

Technology is a means to an end. We choose tools based on the problem — not trends.

Who we work with

A good fit

  • Founders building SaaS products that need to ship and scale
  • Startups that need senior engineering without a full-time hire
  • Teams replacing or supplementing a CTO
  • Companies with production software that needs to evolve
  • Products where engineering decisions matter

Probably not a fit

  • Marketing websites or landing pages
  • Projects where lowest cost is the main criteria
  • Engagements without direct access to the founder or decision maker
  • Teams looking to add headcount without technical collaboration

Let’s build something people depend on.

Tell us what you’re building. We’ll tell you honestly if we’re the right team.

Schedule a 30-minute call

30 minutes • No sales pitch • We’ll tell you honestly if we’re a good fit.