Rescuing and stabilizing a notarization platform under load
Notary.io came to Leanware frustrated with a previous team and a notarization platform that was unstable and running over budget. A lean, AI-augmented engineering team rebuilt session reliability, moved the infrastructure to Kubernetes, and brought engineering spend back under control.
- Geography
- United States
- Stage
- Growth-stage SaaS
- Team
- 1 senior full-stack engineer, 1 QA, 1 product owner (managed team engagement)
- Duration
- Ongoing
The situation
Notary.io runs the kind of platform where reliability is the product. Customers come to it to complete legally binding notarization sessions, and if a session drops mid-flow, the trust evaporates. By the time Notary.io reached out, a previous team had left them with a platform that was unstable under load and an engineering bill that kept climbing without the reliability to show for it.
Three problems compounded: session stability under load, infrastructure that did not scale gracefully, and UX gaps in the notarization workflow itself. On top of those, the platform faced compliance and certification requirements that came with serving regulated transactions at scale. The brief was to stabilize the product and get the spend under control at the same time.
What we built
Leanware took over as a managed team and ran the work AI-augmented from day one. A senior full-stack engineer carried the technical lead, paired with a QA engineer and a product owner. The lean, AI-augmented setup is what let a small team move at the pace the recovery needed without the headcount the previous arrangement had been billing for, which is where the budget came back into line.
On stability, the work eliminated the session-drop class of bug that had been the single largest reliability gap. Sessions now run uninterrupted through the full notarization flow.
On infrastructure, the platform moved to Kubernetes. Compute scales against demand; deployment cadence tightened around GitHub Actions; observability and incident response are built into the platform rather than bolted on. Document handling was optimized for faster retrieval and download, which mattered because every session ends with the user pulling notarized documents and the slow path was painful.
On compliance, the work covered the certification needs the regulated context requires. Tech stack: Vue 3 frontend, Node.js and Laravel backend services, Linode infrastructure, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions.
Outcome
-
Platform stabilized: session-drop defects eliminated, with notarization sessions running uninterrupted end to end
-
Engineering spend brought back under control with a lean, AI-augmented team
-
Infrastructure moved to Kubernetes for graceful scaling under load
The platform now runs as a stable, scalable, compliance-ready notarization SaaS, and the engineering spend is predictable rather than open-ended. The engagement continues as a managed-team relationship covering ongoing product and infrastructure work.
Engagement line