We are Tucanoo
Tucanoo Solutions Ltd is a software development company based in the UK. We've been building and maintaining cloud-based web applications since 2011, mostly for law firms, public-sector bodies and growing businesses. We're deliberately small, so when you hire us you deal with the people writing the code and designing the product, not a sales team and a handover document.
Who we are
David Brown – Founder & Lead Engineer
David has been writing software professionally for over 30 years. He started Tucanoo in 2011 and has worked as a regular consultant to the United Nations since 2020, on a system used by customs authorities around the world. He still spends most of his week in the code: architecture, Java and Spring Boot, Grails, Kotlin, React and AWS. The technical tutorials on our Resources pages are his, and the working code for them is on our GitHub if you want to see how we actually build things.
Maria Brown – Director & Creative Design Lead
Maria runs the design side of Tucanoo. She works on the interfaces and the day-to-day experience of the applications we build, with a focus on software people don’t have to fight with. Most of our work is the kind of internal, operational system that staff use for hours at a time, so good design here isn’t decoration; it’s whether the thing is usable or not.
What we do
We build custom web applications from front to back, and we modernise older systems that have stopped keeping up. Most of our projects are Java and Spring Boot or Grails on the back end, React on the front, running on AWS. That might be a new SaaS product, a rescue job on an ageing platform, or ongoing consultancy alongside an in-house team. Whatever it is, we try to hand back code that the next developer can read, test and extend without cursing us.
Where we focus
Legal technology
We’ve built case-management software for law firms, including a full system that handles the day-to-day running of a practice. Legal work suits us: it rewards careful data handling, dependable workflows and software people can trust with sensitive, high-stakes matters. There are a couple of examples on our case studies page.
Government & public sector
Since 2020 we’ve been a development consultant to the United Nations, working on a web application used by dozens of customs authorities and other organisations internationally. Public-sector software lives for a long time and gets used hard, so it has to be reliable and maintainable years after launch. That’s the way we prefer to build anyway.
Outside those two areas, we’ve also delivered software in healthcare, fintech and a range of other regulated industries over the years.
How we work
We start by asking a lot of questions, because most of the cost of a project comes from building the wrong thing. Once we’re clear on what you need, we work in short iterations and get something real in front of you early rather than disappearing for three months. And we don’t vanish when the build is finished; a lot of our client relationships have run for years, which is usually a better sign of how a project went than anything we could say about ourselves.
Who we’ve worked with
Over the years that’s included the United Nations (UNECE), Lifelink Systems, Propertissimo and law firms in the UK and US. A few words from some of them:
“David has great expertise in Grails/Groovy and did an excellent job… he didn’t hesitate to go the extra mile to ensure the long-term viability of our application.” Sebastien Galtier, Project Manager, United Nations
“The project was done within budget and on time and with high quality… I would definitely recommend Dave to any and all.” Anil Nair, CTO, Lifelink Systems
“The professionalism and knowledge that Tucanoo and Dave have shown to our law firm has been priceless.” Gary J. Zalarick Esq., Attorney at Law, NJ, USA
Company details
Tucanoo Solutions Ltd is registered in the United Kingdom, company number 7681233, and has been trading since 2011. You can email us at info@tucanoo.com or get in touch about a project.
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