DEV.co
Los Angeles, CA · Custom Software + AI

Custom software for Los Angeles — built the AI-native way.

We pair senior engineers with an AI-accelerated delivery model to ship custom software for LA's media, AdTech, and commerce operators — without the fragile output that gives AI a bad name.

Senior-only engineering · AI-accelerated delivery · you own 100% of the code

AI changed the economics of custom software. We rebuilt our process around it.

Los Angeles is the country's largest media, AdTech, eCommerce, and creator-economy market — and a serious enterprise SaaS hub layered on top. Senior engineering hires are six figures plus equity, months out, and almost always picked over by entertainment-tech giants and venture-backed challengers. AI changes the math, but only when senior people own the parts AI gets wrong.

On an LA media or commerce build, AI absolutely handles the repetitive 70% — CMS extensions, dashboards, asset pipelines, scaffolding. The 30% that bites you in production is privacy and consent, signal loss, attribution drift, and the asset-pipeline failure modes that surface only at scale. Raw AI output gets those quietly wrong; the team finds out when a tracking pixel violates a state privacy law or attribution stops matching the contract.

We build for LA operators shipping creator tools, ad-stack rebuilds for the post-cookie world, commerce experiences, and AI for content workflows. Our model: AI handles scaffolding and the repetitive 70%; a senior engineer owns architecture, security review, and signs off on every change. You ship at AI speed without the failure modes that come from AI-only output.

Show, don't tell

AI writes the first draft. A senior engineer signs off.

Every change runs through review for security, tests, and architecture before it ships — that review is the product.

delivery.tstypescript
const draft = await ai.generate(spec)          // minutes, not daysreview(draft, { security: true, tests: true, architecture: true })// ✗ rejected: third-party tracking pixel firing before consent → consent gate + test + cookie scope tightened// ✓ merged: first-party attribution event, server-side dedupe, audit-trail on consent state
Every change
AI velocity + human judgment
tests + security review built in
you own 100% of the result

On an LA media or commerce build, the failure modes are pre-consent tracking, attribution drift, and asset-pipeline race conditions. Senior review catches them before a CCPA notice or a CMO escalation does.

What we build for Los Angeles companies.

Media / AdTech

Media & AdTech platforms

Content systems, audience analytics, and ad-stack tools that survive the privacy reset.

Commerce

eCommerce & marketplaces

Storefronts, marketplaces, and merchant tools built for conversion and scale.

AI

AI applications

Copilots, RAG, search, and agents grounded in your data, with guardrails and evals.

Product

SaaS platforms

Multi-tenant products with auth, billing, and dashboards — MVP to scale.

Internal

Internal tools & copilots

Operations tooling that replaces the spreadsheet-and-tribal-knowledge workflow.

Web

Web apps & portals

Fast, custom applications and customer portals on a modern stack.

Senior, on-shore, AI-accelerated

A senior team that moves at AI speed.

You work with senior engineers in Pacific Time who own architecture, privacy, and quality — fitting into the rhythms of a Culver City product team, a Santa Monica startup, or a Burbank studio — not a junior pool with raw AI output bolted on.

From Culver City to Santa Monica to Burbank, senior engineers cost top-of-market and get poached every quarter. An AI-native team gets you shipping this week, flexes monthly with your roadmap, and doesn't add another headcount line to your studio's books.

Talk to an engineer

Traditional Los Angeles dev shop vs. AI-native.

Traditional AgencyDEV.co (AI-native)
Time to working softwareMonthsDays to weeks
CostFull senior rates, all hoursLower — AI removes the rote work
Code qualityGood (if senior)Same bar — every change reviewed
AI riskContained by senior review + tests
You own the codeUsuallyAlways — full repo on day one
Scales with youSlow to staff upFlex up or down monthly
2–3×
faster than traditional development
1 wk
to a working prototype
100%
code ownership at handoff
30 days
post-launch support included

Common questions from Los Angeles teams.

Do you work with Los Angeles companies?
Yes — we serve Los Angeles, Long Beach, Anaheim, and Santa Ana companies with senior, on-shore engineers in Pacific Time. Most collaboration is remote-first, with on-site available for kickoffs and key milestones.
Do you build for ad-stack and content workflows?
Yes — first-party data pipelines, attribution, content management, asset workflows, and AI tools that fit into a creative team's day. We've worked across the cookie reset and can architect for what's actually allowed today, not what was easy three years ago.
Can you build to a creative team's tempo?
Yes — we work on creative-team rhythms: cuts, reviews, fast iteration on UX. We can show real working pixels (not Figma) inside a sprint, integrate with your asset and rights pipelines, and we don't ask creative teams to write tickets in your engineering format.
Is AI-built software production-ready?
Yes — when a senior engineer reviews every output, adds tests, and hardens it. The horror stories come from shipping raw AI code unsupervised. We don't, and we support what we ship.
Will we own the code?
100%, from day one. We deliver to a repository you control — no proprietary platform, no lock-in.
How fast can we start?
Usually within days. A short scoping call defines the build, the timeline, and a fixed quote.
Can you work with our existing team?
Yes — we augment in-house teams, review their work, and set standards, or run the build end to end. We flex to how you work.

Let's build it — Los Angeles.

Tell us what you're shipping. We'll give you a senior engineer's read, an honest timeline, a fixed quote, and an honest answer on whether AI-native is the right fit for your build.