Custom Software Development Company in Pittsburgh

Custom software development for Pittsburgh companies

Pittsburgh has a software economy that looks different from most American cities. Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh feed a steady stream of robotics, autonomy and machine learning talent into the region, and the Strip District and Lawrenceville now host a cluster of autonomous vehicle, robotics and AI companies. At the same time, the city’s largest employers are still hospital systems, banks, insurers and manufacturers that run on systems built a decade or more ago.

That mix creates a specific kind of software demand. A health system needs a patient facing app that talks to an electronic health record. A specialty manufacturer in the Mon Valley needs a shop floor app that replaces paper travelers. A robotics startup needs a customer portal and admin console around hardware that already works. Tepia builds these kinds of products from its Pittsburgh office and has been doing custom development for thirteen years.

Tepia is not a staffing firm and not a body shop. You get a named project manager, a US based design lead and engineering lead, and engineers who were individually selected for your project and who work during your business hours. The goal is software people keep using, which is why Tepia describes its work as apps engineered for retention.

How Tepia approaches custom software development in Pittsburgh

Every Tepia engagement runs through the same six phases, whether the client is a two person startup in Bakery Square or a hospital system with a procurement department. The phases are Discovery, Design, Development and Testing, Training, Launch and Support. You can read the full version on the Tepia process page.

Discovery

Tepia starts with a system investigation, user interviews and a third party integration review. For a Pittsburgh health system that usually means mapping how the EHR, scheduling tool and billing platform already exchange data. Deliverables are an Investigation Summary, an Interview Summary and a set of User Stories. Discovery typically takes 1 to 3 months depending on complexity, and is shorter when you arrive with specs.

Design

A design questionnaire, moodboards, a style guide, detailed wireframes and sample designs. Tepia designers work from user interviews, not assumptions, so a shop floor app is designed for gloved hands and bad lighting, not for a conference room.

Development and Testing

Tepia runs Alpha and Beta schedules with written test plans covering functional, user acceptance and non functional testing. Development and QA typically take 2 to 6 months.

Training, Launch and Support

Training is hands on, in person in Pittsburgh or remote, built around user story scenarios. Launch includes data migration, transition from the old system and support reps on rollout, usually about 1 month.

How the Tepia US led team model works for Pittsburgh clients

Tepia’s model is US leadership with individually sourced global talent. Your project manager, design lead and engineering lead are US based. Engineers are hand picked for your project, named on the team roster, and work hours that overlap with Eastern time. You will know who is writing your code and can talk to them directly.

Meetings follow a predictable rhythm. Tepia holds a kickoff in Pittsburgh or over video, a weekly status call during Eastern business hours, and sprint reviews where you see working software rather than slide decks. Between calls, you have a shared backlog, a written changelog and a direct channel to your project manager. Questions get answered the same business day.

Leadership is accessible. Abraham Agopian, Founder and CEO, Dustin Gordon, Director of Operations, Brianna Martison, Director of Engineering, and Fahad Baig, Technical Lead Manager, are involved in scoping and escalation. Tepia clients report about 90% customer retention, which is the number Tepia cares most about because it reflects whether the relationship outlasts the first launch.

Software and AI work Tepia does well in the Pittsburgh market

Pittsburgh companies tend to ask Tepia for four kinds of work.

• Healthcare facing apps. HIPAA aware architecture with PHI handling, BAAs with vendors, audit logs and encryption in transit and at rest. Tepia built Water Saver Solutions, a fixture care and water conservation app used in hospitals and healthcare facilities, and brings that experience to patient and staff apps.
• Manufacturing and industrial software. Production tracking, quality checklists and maintenance apps that work offline on the floor and sync when a signal returns. Tepia’s offline first sync work is directly relevant here.
• AI features on existing products. Retrieval augmented generation over your own documents, summarization, classification and assistants built on OpenAI and Anthropic model APIs with vector databases. Tepia scopes these as contained features, not rewrites.
• Customer portals for hardware and robotics companies. Admin consoles, fleet dashboards and mobile companions for connected devices. Tepia’s Maximum Controls project, an iOS, Android and admin portal for gate control, is a representative example of IoT work.

For companies that need a full product from scratch, Tepia’s custom software development and AI integration services pages go deeper. The Pittsburgh mobile app development page covers consumer and workforce mobile specifically.

Frequently asked questions