A close studio focused on making useful software for complex operations.

We're 13 people with deep experience in product design, engineering, and business. Most of us have spent years working inside operations teams before joining Hearthline. We know how this work actually goes.

How we operate

Make the real work visible

We design for the actual work, not an imaginary ideal state. Every decision is grounded in how teams really operate.

Design for the handoff

Our deliverables are meant to be used and built upon. Clear documentation, logical structure, and maintainability matter as much as initial beauty.

Prototype the risky part early

We identify the hardest technical or design challenges and de-risk them early. Prototyping comes before full implementation.

Leave teams stronger than we found them

When we finish an engagement, we want your team to have more capability, better tools, and deeper understanding. We're not a black box.

The studio

Eleanor Shaw

Founder & Product Strategy Director

Founded Hearthline after a decade helping operations teams redesign workflows. Focused on product strategy and ensuring every project starts with deep understanding of the real work.

Marcus Bell

Delivery Director

Leads delivery across all projects, ensuring teams stay aligned and work is shipped on time. Experienced managing complex multi-phase engagements across logistics and finance sectors.

Priya Nair

Lead Product Designer

Leads all design work from discovery through implementation. Specializes in designing interfaces for complex operational workflows and ensuring accessibility is built in from day one.

Daniel Hart

Principal Software Engineer

Architecture and technical leadership for custom web applications. Expert in designing systems that scale and remain maintainable as requirements evolve over months and years.

Imogen Clarke

Research & Insights Lead

Leads user research and discovery work. Excels at conducting interviews, mapping workflows, and translating findings into clear design direction and product strategy.

Lewis Grant

Technical Architect

Senior technical architect handling system design and integration work. Skilled at understanding legacy systems and designing modern approaches that work with existing infrastructure.

Harriet Cole

Design Systems Lead

Builds and maintains design systems that scale across products and teams. Focused on creating flexible, well-documented systems that improve designer-developer collaboration.

Nathan Reeves

Full-Stack Engineer

Full-stack development from database design to frontend implementation. Rapidly learns business domains and builds features that solve real problems for operations teams.

Sophie Whitmore

Client Partnership Lead

Manages client relationships and ensures successful delivery from kickoff through launch. Excellent at communication, stakeholder alignment, and keeping projects moving forward.

Oliver Kent

Quality Engineering Lead

Leads quality assurance and testing across all projects. Focused on catching edge cases and ensuring software is reliable in production, where teams actually depend on it.

Grace Holloway

Content Designer

Crafts clear, helpful content for interfaces and documentation. Ensures every label, instruction, and help text is written for the actual users—operations teams under pressure.

Thomas Avery

Data & Integration Engineer

Expert in data architecture and integrations. Designs systems that reliably connect disparate platforms and transform data to serve different teams with different needs.

Amelia Brooks

Operations Manager

Manages studio operations, schedules, and resources. Ensures the team stays organized, projects move smoothly, and we have the capacity to do our best work for clients.

Who we are

Hearthline was founded by Eleanor Shaw after a decade of working with operations teams—helping them redesign workflows, build better processes, and modernize software. She saw a pattern: teams outgrew their tools, then bought generic enterprise software that didn't fit, then built fragile workarounds. Most software vendors didn't understand—or care about—the specific messy reality of running operations.

The studio was built around a different idea: that software should be designed for the specific work teams do, with the people who do that work sitting at the table during design. That architects should stay engaged after launch to improve based on real usage. That teams should leave engagements stronger than when we arrived.

We're particularly drawn to operations-led businesses in logistics, field services, finance, manufacturing, and membership organizations. These industries have complex workflows that traditional SaaS doesn't serve well. That's where thoughtful custom software makes a real difference.

Most of us have worked inside these organizations before joining Hearthline. We've felt the pain of spreadsheet chaos, API limits, and disconnected systems. We know what it means when a workflow breaks down, and we know how much pressure operations teams carry. That context shapes everything we build.

Let's talk about your work.

We're interested in understanding how your team operates and what's holding you back.

Get in touch