Engineering notes from the Zephico team: Databricks, Retool, Django, Saleor, AWS and distributed contract teams.https://zephico.com/en-ushttps://zephico.com/blog/contract-engineer-vs-full-time-hire-cost/https://zephico.com/blog/contract-engineer-vs-full-time-hire-cost/Salary is less than half the story. A line-by-line look at what a senior engineer actually costs to recruit, employ and — sometimes — let go.Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://zephico.com/blog/custom-software-development-cost-2026/https://zephico.com/blog/custom-software-development-cost-2026/Agencies hate publishing prices. Here are the real cost drivers, realistic ranges, and the questions that keep a project on the right side of them.Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://zephico.com/blog/databricks-vs-snowflake-mid-size-companies/https://zephico.com/blog/databricks-vs-snowflake-mid-size-companies/The platforms have converged on paper. The right choice still comes down to your workloads, your team, and how each platform bills you for growth.Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://zephico.com/blog/llm-features-demo-to-production/https://zephico.com/blog/llm-features-demo-to-production/The demo takes a week and impresses everyone. What separates it from a feature you can ship — retrieval, evals, guardrails and cost — is the actual project.Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://zephico.com/blog/outsourcing-development-gdpr-checklist/https://zephico.com/blog/outsourcing-development-gdpr-checklist/A buyer's checklist for hiring an offshore development partner without creating a compliance problem — DPAs, transfers, access control and the questions that expose weak answers.Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://zephico.com/blog/saleor-vs-shopify-plus/https://zephico.com/blog/saleor-vs-shopify-plus/Shopify wins the first years for almost everyone. The interesting question is what happens after — and when open-source headless commerce flips the math.Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://zephico.com/blog/what-a-retool-internal-tool-costs/https://zephico.com/blog/what-a-retool-internal-tool-costs/License, build, and the maintenance nobody budgets for — the full cost picture of a Retool project, compared honestly against the spreadsheet it replaces.Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://zephico.com/blog/where-aws-savings-actually-hide/https://zephico.com/blog/where-aws-savings-actually-hide/Most cloud bills carry 20–40% of pure waste, and it clusters in the same places. A field guide, ordered by effort-to-savings ratio.Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://zephico.com/blog/medallion-architecture-databricks-practical-guide/https://zephico.com/blog/medallion-architecture-databricks-practical-guide/Bronze, silver, gold — everyone draws the same diagram. Here's what we've learned actually matters when you build a medallion lakehouse for production.Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://zephico.com/blog/retool-internal-tools-when-to-use/https://zephico.com/blog/retool-internal-tools-when-to-use/We build internal tools with Retool for a living — which also means we know exactly where its limits are. A practical decision guide.Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://zephico.com/blog/managing-contract-engineers-remote-teams/https://zephico.com/blog/managing-contract-engineers-remote-teams/We place engineers into North American and European teams for a living. Here's what separates the engagements that compound from the ones that stall.Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT