Trendkill Systems
Writing code faster doesn't always mean shipping better software. If that gap sounds familiar, we can help.
Services
Probably not another vendor. Twenty years of engineering leadership, brought in fractionally. That can mean hiring your first engineers, getting delivery back on track, or setting standards for AI-assisted work. A lot has changed, but the job underneath hasn't changed: build a team that ships good software.
Engineering Leadership in the room when it matters. Hiring plans that survive contact with reality. A roadmap your investors and team actually believe.
If your team has AI tools but no shared rules for using them, we'll start there. We put standards in place for LLMs and coding agents: what they can access, how their code gets reviewed, and who owns the result. Measure adoption by the work your team ships.
Adoption
The same tools that help engineers can help other teams with repetitive work. Think finance copying numbers between spreadsheets or HR answering recurring policy questions. We sit next to the people doing the work, build with them, and establish the tools and ownership your team needs to keep going without us.
We watch how the work actually happens, then weigh the time saved and errors avoided against the cost of building and maintaining automation. Start with the workflows where that trade makes sense.
An engineer sits with finance or HR and builds the thing. Their tools, their real data, their desk. No requirements doc thrown over a wall. The people with the problem watch it get solved.
Company data can end up in unapproved chatbots when staff need a faster way to work. Providing solutions that are better than something off the shelf is where it all starts. We help you find that usage, set clear data boundaries, and give people approved tools that meet their needs. Then check whether those tools are being used.
Domain
In healthtech, AI adoption has to account for HIPAA. That means turning policy into engineering constraints: access boundaries, appropriate BAAs, audit trails, and review gates built into the tools your team uses every day.
Clear rules for what LLMs and agents can touch. Which repos, which datasets, which environments and company applications.
Audit trails, access boundaries, and review gates that keep your auditors happy without strangling delivery.
Straight answers about AI vendors. Who signs a BAA. Where your data actually goes. Which tools have no business being anywhere near patient records.
Process
A month embedded in your team. Code, process, people. You get a blunt, written action plan for what's actually slowing you down and what's getting ready to bite you. You're probably doing a lot right as well, which is rad. We'll talk about that, too.
Execute the action plan with your team. Standards, rituals, tooling, all held to one bar: solid, compliant engineering that accelerates delivery. Everything is documented, owned by your people, and built to outlive our time together.
An ongoing fractional cadence keeps the bar where we set it. Leadership in your weekly rhythm while the team grows. As your own leaders step up, we step back.
Fit
Principal
Trendkill Systems is Terry Harmon. Hi! I have over twenty years building tech companies, from back-of-the-napkin ideas to exit. Most recently I led engineering at Kismet Health from early stage to exit, which is why healthtech is home turf here.
My range runs wide. Eye tracking. Vocal Biomarkers and Live Vital Signs. Ecommerce. Enterprise software Fortune 100 companies rely on. CTO of a venture studio that launched over 70 start ups. Early engineer at an AI audio company building text-to-speech tools for enterprise. Built an AI gateway for scaling LLMs in production. Engineering teams scaled from 2 to 30.
The name is a promise. We kill the trend-chasing so your team can do the work that actually moves the business.
Maybe you need senior engineering leadership. Maybe you need an AI operating model that isn't theater. Either way, let's talk.
Get in touch