HQ · staffed~14 ppl
New York
EST · Manhattan / Flatiron
North American HQ. Strategy, brand, growth, small engineering pod.
signature ritual
Friday demos. Two-hour show-and-tell, alcohol optional, family welcome.
§
§ · life @ DH
Life at Digital Heroes. Fifty people. Five offices.
Remote-first since day one. Six-week build cadence. Senior-heavy. No bench, no make-work, no perma-WIP.
§ 01 · the honest pitch
What's actually true here that isn't true elsewhere.
Every culture page on the internet says it's remote-first, senior-heavy, and outcome-driven. The honest version is shorter and more specific. There is no bench - if a project ends and your next one isn't ready, you take the gap as paid leave, you don't get put on busywork to justify the timesheet. There are no client-facing roles without a craft - the lead on every project is the senior practitioner, not a "delivery manager" filing tickets. There are no make-work design comps or proof-of-life Jira updates - if there's nothing to ship today, you write something useful or you stop. The ratio of senior-to-junior is roughly nine-to-one because that's what the work actually needs, not because we're avoiding hiring.
What this trades against: there's nowhere to be quiet, the bar is unforgiving, and the standard for "good enough" is set by the most experienced person in the studio, not by you. If that sounds like the right kind of pressure, the rest of the page covers how the week actually runs. Shape Up influenced our cadence, but the lived version is closer to the way a small editorial magazine ships an issue than a software house ships a sprint.
50+
people on the team
5
offices, no mandate
6 wk
standard cadence
9:1
senior to junior
§ 02 · five rooms
Five offices, one Slack, five rituals.
Each office runs the same cadence with one local ritual that's its own. The rituals are not enforced from the centre - they grew because someone in that office decided they were worth keeping. New people pick up the ritual that fits them; nothing gets imposed.
HQ · staffed~22 ppl
Delhi NCR
IST · Gurugram / Cyber City
Engineering, design, ops. The largest pod and the heaviest build engine.
signature ritual
Monday planning + chai. 90 minutes, every Monday, never moves.
satellite~5 ppl
London
GMT/BST · Shoreditch
UK + EMEA. Brand, growth, senior engineering on EMEA hours.
signature ritual
Wednesday afternoon Slack-storms. Three hours, full attention, doc out.
satellite~3 ppl
Sydney
AEST/AEDT · Surry Hills
APAC pod. Strategy and growth, small but high-leverage.
signature ritual
Coastal walk-and-talks. One per week, 1:1s done outside on a route.
satellite~6 ppl
Lucknow
IST · Hazratganj
Second engineering pod. Senior devs, paired closely with Delhi.
signature ritual
Thursday code reviews. Public, in-room, no PR merges without two seniors.
fully remote~13 ppl
Distributed
8 countries · async-first
A third of the team is fully remote. No office, no mandate, same Friday note as everyone else.
signature ritual
Once-a-quarter physical retreat. Travel covered, four days, one place.
§ 03 · the cadence
Six weeks, five phases, no 3am crunches.
Every project runs Discover → Design → Build → Launch → Optimize on a six-week clock. The cadence is the same regardless of discipline - a Shopify replatform, a Flutter app, a brand system, all run on the rhythm below. The work changes, the rhythm doesn't.
week 01
Discover
Stack audit, customer interviews, tech walkthrough. The lead and one senior. No design files yet.
week 02-03
Design
In Figma. Three rounds maximum. Final round signed off by founder before Build starts.
week 03-05
Build
Engineering. Daily standup, Friday demo, ticket-by-ticket against the scope. No scope creep without re-pricing.
week 05
Launch
Cutover plan written, redirects mapped, monitoring live. Launch on a Tuesday or Wednesday, never a Friday.
week 06+
Optimize
90-day window. Performance, conversion, lifecycle. Convert to retainer or close out clean.
Larger platforms ship as a series of six-week cycles, not one twelve-week run. The reason is simple: a six-week cycle has a real launch and a real demo at the end of it; a twelve-week cycle has neither for the first half.
§ 04 · values
Six values, one trade-off each.
Values that don't carry a real trade-off aren't values, they're slogans. Each card below names what we choose and what we're choosing against. The list has been roughly stable for six years.
value 01
Craft over output.
A small piece done right beats a larger piece done fast. The trade-off: lower velocity on tickets, higher quality at launch.
value 02
Senior in the room.
No client meeting without the practitioner who'd build the thing. The trade-off: senior calendar tax, no mid-market BD scale.
value 03
Outcomes over hours.
Fixed-fee or retainer, no time-and-materials. The trade-off: higher pricing risk on us, more careful scoping up front.
value 04
Slow over speed (when it matters).
Brand systems, replatforms, and architecture decisions get the time they need. The trade-off: longer kickoff, fewer regrets.
value 05
Honesty over comfort.
If a client request is wrong, we say so in the call, not the post-mortem. The trade-off: occasional uncomfortable hour, no surprises later.
value 06
Show your work.
Every Friday note shows what shipped, what didn't, why. The trade-off: more writing, less hand-waving.
§ 05 · typical week
A week in the life, by role.
Week shape varies by role and project phase, but the bands below are a fair median. Numbers are hours per week assuming a 40-hour week. We don't have a 60-hour culture and don't want one - the bands add up to 40 on purpose.
| Role | Deep work | Meetings | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engineer | ~28 hr | ~6 hr | ~6 hr |
| Designer | ~26 hr | ~8 hr | ~6 hr |
| Strategist | ~22 hr | ~12 hr | ~6 hr |
| Lead | ~18 hr | ~14 hr | ~8 hr |
Reviews include code review, design critique, and content review. "Friday" is what closes the week - every role writes or co-writes a Friday note, and most projects do a 30-minute demo into Slack on Friday afternoon.
§ 06 · questions
The five we get most.
If your question isn't here, ask on the craft call or write to hr@digitalheroes.co.in.
Are you fully remote or hybrid? +
Remote-first, with five offices for the people who want them. About a third of the team is fully distributed across eight countries; the other two-thirds are office-attached but choose how often they go in. There is no office mandate, no minimum number of in-person days, and no plan to add one. The offices exist for people who like working from a desk that isn't the kitchen table - they don't exist as a productivity-policing tool.
How do you stay senior-heavy at scale? +
By hiring slowly, by hiring at the senior bar regardless of team size pressure, and by keeping the work concentrated. The studio is fifty people - small enough that every senior knows every other senior personally. We don't run apprenticeship tracks, we don't backfill on cost, and we close the hiring funnel rather than drop the bar when there's no aligned candidate. The model is intentionally capped; we'd rather turn down work than dilute the team.
Do you have summer hours or sabbaticals? +
Yes to both. Summer hours run two months in each hemisphere - June-July in the northern offices, December-January in Sydney - and the working week shrinks to four days for those windows, paid the same. Sabbatical is three weeks, paid in full, at year four and again at year eight. Both are non-optional from our side: we want people to take them, and we plan client work around them rather than around them being skipped.
How do five offices coordinate on one project? +
Async-first by default. Slack is the primary surface, with a written Friday note from every project lead summarising what shipped, what's next, what's blocked. Two scheduled live calls per week per project - one Monday planning, one Thursday demo. Notion holds the scope, the backlog, and the decisions log. The combined timezone coverage means a developer is online from 6am IST through 11pm EST, but no individual works those hours - the relay is what does it.
Can I visit an office before joining? +
Yes, after the craft call. We will arrange a half-day shadow in your nearest office - usually NY, Delhi, London, Sydney, or Lucknow - so you can sit with the team you'd be joining, watch a live working session, and ask anyone anything. Visit is reimbursed for travel within reason. The reverse is also true: we sometimes ask candidates to spend half a day with us before final round, especially for leads, because both sides need to know what the room actually feels like.
§ 07 · next step
If this matches, come work with us.
Open application policy: we keep CVs on file for 12 months and re-open them when a role opens. Or read more about the founder and how the studio came together.