Helix Engineering LLC · San Diego, CA

Engineering across the full stack — silicon to cloud

A San Diego consultancy with over a decade of experience shipping firmware, connected devices, and the platforms behind them — including FDA-cleared diagnostics and pre-IPO product organizations. Deep enough to follow a problem from the register map to the production deploy.

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What we do

Services

Embedded & Firmware

Bare-metal and RTOS firmware for battery-powered, connected products — from bring-up through certification.

  • Board bring-up and driver development
  • BLE, Wi-Fi, and MQTT connectivity stacks
  • Power profiling: days to months of battery life
  • OTA update and provisioning pipelines

Full-Stack Product Engineering

The web, mobile, and API surface that turns a device or a service into a product people can actually use.

  • Next.js and React front ends
  • Node/NestJS services and REST or GraphQL APIs
  • Native and Expo mobile clients
  • E-commerce, billing, and account infrastructure

Cloud & Platform

Infrastructure that a small team can operate: reproducible, observable, and boring in the best way.

  • GCP and AWS architecture
  • Kubernetes, Helm, and container pipelines
  • CI/CD, release engineering, and IaC
  • Observability, cost, and reliability reviews

Regulated & Medical Devices

Software built to survive an audit — developed under design controls without grinding delivery to a halt.

  • IEC 62304 aligned software lifecycle
  • Design history file and traceability
  • HIPAA, HL7, and FHIR integrations
  • Verification strategy and test evidence

AI Engineering

LLM features and agent workflows shipped as real software — evaluated, cost-bounded, and maintainable.

  • Claude API and agent integrations
  • Retrieval and tool-use architectures
  • Evaluation harnesses and guardrails
  • Developer tooling and workflow automation

Fractional CTO & Technical Leadership

Senior engineering judgment on retainer for teams that need direction more than another pair of hands.

  • Architecture and technology due diligence
  • Hiring, onboarding, and team structure
  • Roadmap, estimation, and delivery process
  • Code and security review programs

Capabilities

AI

  • Claude Code
  • Claude API
  • Cursor
  • Agent workflows

Languages

  • TypeScript
  • C
  • Go
  • Python
  • Swift
  • Kotlin

Frontend

  • React
  • Next.js
  • Tailwind CSS
  • Expo

Backend

  • Node.js
  • NestJS
  • REST APIs
  • GraphQL
  • PostgreSQL

Cloud & DevOps

  • GCP
  • AWS
  • Kubernetes
  • Docker
  • Helm
  • CI/CD

Embedded & IoT

  • BLE
  • Wi-Fi
  • MQTT
  • ESP32
  • nRF52
  • RISC-V
  • ARM

Regulated

  • FDA / IEC 62304
  • HIPAA
  • HL7
  • FHIR
  • EHR systems

Have a product stuck between the hardware and the software?

Helix Engineering takes on a small number of engagements at a time — project work, staff augmentation, or fractional technical leadership. Tell us what you're building and we'll tell you honestly whether we're the right fit.

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josh@helixengineering.net