Route B · Software engineering

Software that holds up on the climb.

We build web apps and websites, and we modernize the aging systems behind them. It's the work Kyle has done for more than twenty years, from individual contributor to VP of Technology.

Book a free consultation

What we build

Customer-facing products and internal tools, designed, built and shipped. Clean architecture, deployed to the cloud and monitored from day one.

New products, from first release to scale
Internal tools and automation that remove busywork
Native iPhone, iPad and Android apps, like our own
Cloud-native infrastructure on Kubernetes and GCP

Fast, accessible websites built to be found, by people searching Google and by the AI assistants they increasingly ask instead.

Technical SEO and Core Web Vitals baked in, not bolted on
Structured data and clean markup that LLMs can read and cite
Static-first builds that are cheap to host and hard to break

Legacy systems moved onto modern foundations without taking the business offline. Incremental, measured, and with uptime that gets better along the way.

Migrations from dated stacks to modern, cloud-native platforms
Standards, tooling and process your team keeps using after we leave
Fractional or interim engineering leadership while it happens

Findability

Found by people. Read by machines.

Search engines rank you. AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews summarize and cite you. Every site we build is written for both audiences.

Semantic, accessible HTML
schema.org structured data
Sitemaps and llms.txt
Sub-second page loads
Clean, stable URLs
Content that answers real questions

Hire well. Build right.

Technical recruiting and software engineering for startups and growing tech companies.

Recruiting
Web apps
Websites
Modernization

application/ld+json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "ProfessionalService",
  "name": "Cascadia Ascent",
  "slogan": "Hire well. Build right.",
  "description": "Technical recruiting and software engineering",
  "knowsAbout": ["Technical recruiting", "Web application development",
    "Website development", "Technical SEO", "Legacy modernization"],
  "email": "info@cascadiaascent.com",
  "areaServed": { "@type": "Country", "name": "United States" },
  "location": "West Coast, United States",
  "founder": [
    { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christina Vidauri" },
    { "@type": "Person", "name": "Kyle Johnson" }
  ]
}

Field test · Our own app

We test our gear on our own climbs.

The Palms Commons is a native app we designed, built and run ourselves. Here's how it's put together, and the engineering calls behind each piece. Tap any part.

Public sources

Backend

In residents' hands

PocketBase

Collect

One PocketBase backend gathers everything the sources publish into a single store.

The engineering call

One small service to run and reason about, instead of a stack of cloud products.

5 of 11 ·

Two HOAs (Source)

Both homeowners' associations post notices to their own websites. Read only what is already public, and name the source of every single item.

The club (Source)

Menus, specials and live music go out on the club's Instagram. Meet sources where they already publish instead of asking anyone to change how they post.

Resident groups (Source)

Neighbors trade news in their public Facebook groups. The app gets a short summary of each discussion, never the posts themselves. Summarize the conversation, never the people: names come out before a model reads a word, and anything personal is dropped whole.

Weather + AQI (Source)

A week of weather, plus the air quality reading that matters in a desert summer. Show the one number residents actually act on, not every metric available.

Collect (PocketBase)

One PocketBase backend gathers everything the sources publish into a single store. One small service to run and reason about, instead of a stack of cloud products.

Summarize (PocketBase)

Each notice gets a short, machine-written summary, with the original a tap away. Summaries can be wrong, so anything about money, a deadline or a rule links straight to the source.

Notify (PocketBase)

Push alerts for gate and road closures, weather warnings and association business. Nothing else buzzes your phone. Fewer alerts means people keep them on.

iPhone + iPad (SwiftUI)

A native app built for both, because the readership skews older and reads on iPads. Respect the system text size and keep lines a readable width on a 13-inch screen.

Android (Jetpack Compose)

Version 2.0 shipped on Android alongside iOS. Same feed, same calendar, same alerts on every phone in the neighborhood.

Calendar sync (Calendar)

Anything with a date lands on a calendar that syncs into the phone's own Calendar app. A gym closure should show up next to your dentist appointment, not in yet another app.

Seasonal maps (MapKit + Live Activity)

The parade tracker and the Halloween map, with a Lock Screen countdown on parade night. Config-driven banners go live, and switch over, without an app update.

Platforms: iPhone, iPad, Android
Stack: SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose, PocketBase
Accounts required: None
Accessibility: Dynamic Type, Reduce Motion, VoiceOver

See the app and its live demos Read the parade case study

Where we help

We know what good looks like at every elevation.

0 → 1
Getting started
Your first product, your first site, your first engineers. Foundations you won't have to rip out in a year.
1 → 10
Scaling up
Systems and process that hold up through rapid growth, with the team structure to match.
Legacy → modern
Starting over, carefully
Dated platforms modernized one piece at a time while the business keeps running.

Got a system that keeps you up at night?

Book a free consultation See Route A · Hire

Software that holds up on the climb.

What we build

Web applications

Websites

Modernization

Found by people. Read by machines.

We test our gear on our own climbs.

We know what good looks like at every elevation.

Getting started

Scaling up

Starting over, carefully

Got a system that keeps you up at night?