A small engineering team. Direct access to the people doing the work.
Ambient Labs is a small engineering studio by design. We build software, automation, engineering tools, and connected systems for real-world operations. Our clients work directly with the people responsible for engineering, operations, and the customer relationship, without layers of account management between them and the work.
We take on focused engineering and automation projects where a small, experienced team can move quickly, understand the problem deeply, and own the result from initial scoping through delivery. When a project requires expertise beyond our core team, we bring in specialists as needed.
Jose Catarino
Founder & Principal Engineer
Jose leads engineering and technical strategy at Ambient Labs. His background spans software systems, automation, telecommunications, edge computing, network infrastructure, and product development.
He has designed production automation systems that replace hundreds of hours of recurring administrative work by coordinating human-in-the-loop workflows, APIs, browser automation, partner integrations, and the infrastructure required to run them reliably. Earlier in his career, he worked on large-scale telecom automation, private wireless and edge-computing systems, hybrid-cloud infrastructure, and automated data systems for emerging technologies.
At Ambient Labs, Jose works directly with clients to understand difficult technical problems, design the system around them, and lead the engineering required to get from idea or broken process to a working production system.
Tori Melendrez
Operations Lead
Tori leads operations and project coordination at Ambient Labs. She helps turn technical work into organized, well-run engagements by coordinating schedules, priorities, communication, and the practical details required to keep projects moving.
Her background includes experience in telecommunications and technical operations, giving her familiarity with the environments and constraints in which many Ambient Labs projects operate.
Tori’s role is to make sure clients know what is happening, what comes next, and that the engineering team has what it needs to deliver.
Built around the problem
Our core team stays deliberately small. That means the people you meet at the beginning of a project remain involved in the work.
For projects that require additional disciplines or capacity, we work with trusted engineers, designers, fabricators, and other specialists rather than building unnecessary layers between our clients and the people doing the work.
Why “Ambient Labs”?
Our name comes from ambient computing: technology that becomes part of the environment rather than demanding constant attention.
That idea influences how we build. We care about clear interfaces, visible system health, graceful failure, maintainability, and tools that fit into the way people actually work. Systems like that only hold up when the underlying infrastructure is reliable and observable, especially at the edge, where networks fail and conditions are unpredictable.
Principles
Build for failure modes
We identify likely failure modes and design recovery paths around them. Real-world software meets failures, and the system should handle them in a way operators can understand.
Optimize for maintainability
We favor code and interfaces that the next engineer can understand and change, including the engineers on your team.
Ship with observability
You can't fix what you can't see. Logging, metrics, and operational visibility are part of the product, scaled to what the project needs.
Make complexity feel calm
Technical problems don't require complicated interfaces. We reduce cognitive load so operators can focus on what matters.
How engagements work
You'll work directly with the engineers doing the build.
1.
Understand the problem
We start with the workflow, constraint, or system you are trying to change. Sometimes the solution is obvious. Sometimes figuring out what should be built is part of the engineering work.
2.
Agree on the work
We define the immediate scope, technical approach, responsibilities, and budget model before substantial work begins.
3.
Build and review
We work in short iterations and review progress as the system develops, using working demonstrations where the project permits.
4.
Launch and hand over
Deployment, documentation, training, continued support, and ownership expectations are defined as part of the engagement.
Tell us what you're trying to build, automate, or fix.
Discuss a project