There’s a lot written about scaling tech companies in abstract terms – investment rounds, headcount targets and GTM motion. Those are useful markers, but they miss the hardest decisions founders face: how do you approach scaling tech teams without unravelling the organisation you’ve built? At Spyrosoft, one insight became clear early on: growing a technology organisation isn’t just about hiring more people. It’s about increasing organisational capability and enabling disparate teams to work with clarity, autonomy and shared purpose in the face of rising complexity. 

Growth makes weaknesses harder to ignore

When you have a team of five, problems can be discussed and solved quickly over coffee. When you have dozens of engineers, multiple clients, and overlapping product domains, that informal coordination model fails. 

As your technology teams scale, problems that were once easy to work around become impossible to ignore: 

• Architectural deb

• Misalignment between teams

• Gaps in onboarding and knowledge handoff

• Communication bottlenecks

It’s one thing to build a product once; it’s another to deliver hundreds of incremental features in parallel, with quality and consistency. Companies that understand the realities of scaling engineering teams early – and act on them – are far more likely to avoid the worst pitfalls. 

Case in point: smart city data for the modern world

One illustrative example from our own work in the UK was a collaboration to enhance a smart city digital twin platform. In this engagement, Spyrosoft didn’t just bring extra bodies. We brought a team that could help the client move from reactive development to predictive capability – layering machine learning on top of an existing digital twin to forecast public transport movements and optimise urban flows. 

This wasn’t a typical “get it done” contract. It was about integrating specialised skills into a growing technical ecosystem, demonstrating how growing tech teams also means scaling data science, cloud infrastructure and real-time interfaces together so the platform can evolve sustainably. The result: a solution with measurable impact on operational planning and user outcomes, not just lines of code. 

Hiring isn’t enough. You must hire the right people 

One of the hardest transitions in scaling technology teams is shifting from hiring generalists who can cope with ambiguity to hiring specialists who can thrive amid complexity. Early on, teams need versatility. 

Later, effective growth means building depth in areas like: 

• Distributed systems and cloud architecture

• Secure, resilient microservices

• Platform engineering

• Scalable data pipelines

• AI/ML and predictive analytics

Technical skill is one axis. The other, often overlooked axis, is learning agility – the ability to adapt as tools and requirements shift, which they always do. At Spyrosoft, that has meant being intentional about mixing backgrounds and experiences within teams, so that people constantly learn from one another while still driving progress. This blend is critical when expanding an engineering organisation that needs to evolve every year. 

Real outcomes: ITV and Simplyhealth

Our work with major UK organisations shows how scaling tech teams with the right structure makes a real business difference. For a leading UK broadcaster like ITV, the challenge was modernising legacy metadata services, migrating to cloud-native microservices, and enhancing digital experiences across web and connected TV platforms. That initiative involved collaborating closely with ITV’s internal teams to re-architect core systems, reduce maintenance costs, and improve performance for millions of viewers. 

Another UK example is our long-term work with Simplyhealth, a healthcare services provider. What started as a support engagement in 2019 evolved into a core partnership where we helped expand the digital ecosystem, from Salesforce development and microservices to customer dashboards and communication enhancements. The project grew to involve more than 30 engineers, design and delivery specialists, and operations support – a real test of expanding technical capacity while maintaining coherence across delivery areas. 

These case studies underscore a practical truth: scaling isn’t about volume. It’s about building the right set of capabilities at the right time

Culture is an architecture 

Technology culture doesn’t scale by accident. In the early days, everyone knows everyone. Decisions happen quickly and in context. That simply can’t be the model once teams and responsibilities expand across geographies and domains. 

What we’ve learned is that scaling tech teams sustainably requires a strong culture built on: 

• Clear expectations around quality, autonomy and accountability 

• Shared principles for architecture and delivery

• Structures for knowledge sharing,mentoring and alignment 

• A learning orientation that embraces, rather than resists, technological change

You can see this reflected in the people who flourish in growing organisations. They are people who look beyond their task list and care deeply about how the system works – exactly the mindset you need as your engineering function expands. 

Platforms, not projects 

Another shift that signals maturity is when a company moves from project-centric thinking to platform-centric thinking. Projects are discrete, but platforms are enduring. Building internal platforms, reusable services, shared infrastructure, and standardised APIs enables teams to deliver rapidly, predictably and safely.
Without this discipline, technical debt and architectural debt become a drag on velocity, and quality deteriorates as the organisation grows. Platform engineering isn’t a luxury; it’s a core mechanism for making sure your scaled tech teams can move quickly without sacrificing stability.

What leadership learns over time

For founders and early tech leaders, the transition is sometimes the hardest part. The traits that make someone a great engineer – curiosity, intensity and action orientation – don’t automatically translate into leading a growing technology organisation. 

Senior tech leadership must become: 

• A thoughtful guardian of how everything fits together

• A mentor who listens and supports, not just solves problems

• Someone who shapes strong teams, not just ships features

• A builder of people’s skills and confidence, not just products

These are the capabilities that distinguish effective leadership when you’re responsible for scaling tech teams across products, domains and locations. 

Scaling is organisational engineering 

Scaling a technology organisation is as much about organising people as it is about organising code. It’s about shaping communication pathways, designing feedback loops, and ensuring everyone – regardless of role or seniority – understands how their contribution accelerates the business. 

Companies that master this treat scaling tech teams as a form of organisational engineering. They don’t just grow headcount – they design systems, structures and cultures that can sustain performance as complexity grows.