As a semiconductor startup, our engineering team depends on always-available compute infrastructure — developer VMs, CI/CD pipelines, an HPC cluster for chip design workloads, and shared storage. As we grew, so did the strain on our systems. CI jobs were constantly queuing, storage was running out at the worst times, and we didn’t have the internal IT resources to keep up with the infrastructure demands of a scaling hardware team.
Before working with Crafty Penguins, we were managing a patchwork of cloud infrastructure that wasn’t purpose-built for our needs. We lacked proactive monitoring, had no after-hours support coverage, and every infrastructure issue — whether it was a downed runner, a full disk, or a broken login — pulled our engineers away from the work that actually matters.
Crafty Penguins changed that. They led us through a full infrastructure migration to bare metal, significantly increasing our compute and CI capacity. They managed a complex identity management transition that touched every engineer’s login and home directory — and when that rollout hit bumps, their team was in our Slack channel working through issues alongside our people in real time. They’ve handled everything from GitLab administration and security patching to HPC cluster tuning, new employee onboarding, and storage management.
What I value most is the responsiveness and the feeling that they’re genuinely part of our team. Our engineers raise issues directly in a shared Slack channel and get fast, hands-on support — often with tickets created and work underway within minutes. When we needed 24/7 monitoring coverage, they made it happen. When we needed to scale CI capacity ahead of a major release, they delivered.
For a company where engineering uptime directly translates to business outcomes, having a dedicated infrastructure partner that keeps pace with us has been a game-changer.
