Reviewed by Dr. Dmytro Nasyrov, Founder and CTO • Last reviewed August 20, 2026
Pharos Production delivers comprehensive Quality Assurance (QA) and Software Testing services that catch defects before your users do.
5.0/5 · 108 reviews
4.9/5 · 147 reviews
5.0/5 · 27 reviews
282 published client reviews across 3 platforms. Counts are summed; reviewers may appear in more than one source.
Profiles checked . Glassdoor: 46 employee reviews, 5.0/5, reported separately.
See the products we built and the engineering work involved. Each case describes its scope and delivery context.
Pharos Production collaborated with a taxi aggregator platform to develop a high-load ride-hailing application that connects passengers and drivers in real time. This platform consolidates various fleets and independent drivers into a single system, ensuring quick ride matching, live tracking and transparent pricing. Built on a cloud-native infrastructure, the solution offers low-latency interactions, reliable trip processing and scalability for operations at the city and regional levels.
Pharos Production has partnered with Sagas to create a location-aware social platform that enables users to capture, publish and explore geo-located timelapses over time. This system combines real-time data ingestion, large-scale media processing and map-centric discovery to transform physical locations into dynamic digital stories. Leveraging cloud-native infrastructure and event-driven architecture, Sagas allows users to document urban changes, natural evolution and personal moments tied to specific places. The result is a scalable social network where time and location are central to content discovery.
Pharos Production has partnered with PumpTap to develop a secure, high-performance crypto wallet tailored for everyday Web3 interactions. PumpTap lets users store, send and manage digital assets across multiple blockchains through a simple, intuitive interface. Built on a scalable, event-driven architecture, the wallet delivers real-time transaction updates, robust security and seamless integration with decentralized applications.
Practice led by Dmytro Nasyrov
Founder and CTO
23+ years in custom software development. Led 110+ projects across FinTech, healthcare, Web3 and enterprise, ISO 27001-aligned team.
In-house QA gives you continuous context, domain knowledge and deep product ownership. Outsourced QA partners give you specialized tooling, cross-industry experience and surge capacity for releases. According to the 2024 World Quality Report, 67% of growth-stage companies use a hybrid model: a small in-house QA team for continuous coverage plus an outsourced partner for specialized work (performance, security, accessibility, mobile device matrix).
| Factor | In-house QA | Outsourced QA partner |
|---|---|---|
| Domain knowledge | Deep; grows with the product over years | Shallow at first; deepens over the engagement |
| Specialized skills | Limited to who you can hire | Specialists across perf, security, accessibility, mobile |
| Ramp time | 4-12 weeks for a new QA hire to be productive | 1-2 weeks for Pharos engineers to ramp on the product |
| Cost model | Fixed salary + benefits ($80K-$180K per QA engineer) | Time-and-materials or monthly retainer; scales with needs |
| Tooling | You invest in licenses, infrastructure, training | Partner brings mature tooling stack amortized across clients |
| Surge capacity | Hard to scale up for releases; backlog risk | Scale up and down as release cadence demands |
| Quality ownership | Clear: the in-house team owns it | Shared: client owns quality bar, partner owns execution |
| Best combination | Day-to-day coverage on active product work | Specialized audits, release surges, skills transfer |
QA engagements follow Pharos Verified Delivery with test-specific gates: discovery scopes test pyramid, automation coverage targets and CI/CD integration; build delivers test suites at the appropriate level (unit → integration → E2E); production readiness covers flaky test management, defect leakage metrics and release criteria; support includes quarterly automation reviews and test maintenance.
Week 0
2-4 weeks
82% on-schedule with discovery
Week 2-4
2-week sprints
Transparent progress tracking
Week 8-24
ISO 27001 aligned
Launch day
Ongoing
In progress
Continuous improvement
Pharos Verified Delivery applied to 110+ production applications since 2013
Three QA engagements with test pyramid changes that moved defect-escape and release-cycle numbers.
All testing was manual. Regression cycle took 6 days before each release. Engineering team avoided risky changes between releases. Defect escape rate to production 12%.
Pyramid-balanced automation suite: 78% unit + 18% integration + 4% E2E. Regression cycle down to 38 minutes. Defect escape rate dropped to 1.4%. Release cadence shifted from biweekly to 2-3 times per week.
We rebuilt the test pyramid from the wrong end up. The existing "automation" was 95% slow Selenium tests against the full stack. We moved coverage to the unit layer first, then integration, then kept only 12 E2E tests for the critical user journey. Speed and reliability both improved together.
14% of CI runs failed on flaky tests. Engineers ignored CI failures or disabled tests to unblock. Test trust was zero. Real regressions leaked to production.
Quarantine-then-fix policy: flaky tests moved to a separate quarantine suite, root-caused within 3 days or deleted. Flake rate dropped to 0.3%. Test trust restored; engineers actually read CI output again.
The fix was cultural, not technical. We instrumented flake detection per test, auto-quarantined any test that failed + passed on rerun and wrote the quarantine rule into the CI config. No flake got to block a PR twice. The 3-day root-cause window forced real fixes.
Load testing was a pre-launch event, not an ongoing practice. Peak betting windows caused cascading timeouts. No early warning.
k6 + Grafana load test harness running nightly against staging. Targets: 50,000 concurrent users, p99 latency < 200ms. Zero peak-window incidents in the 4 months since adoption. Engineering has daily visibility into regression before production.
The key move was making load testing continuous, not eventual. Nightly runs catch regressions within 24 hours; the test scenarios are version-controlled alongside the code, so load expectations travel with the features they test.
Client names anonymized under NDA. Full case studies at /cases/.
We decline roughly 30% of RFPs we receive. Forcing a bad fit costs both sides 3-6 months and damages outcomes. Here is how we think about scope:
Not every project needs a full QA team. Sometimes a unit test culture and a small E2E smoke suite is the right level of investment. Sometimes a 2-week test automation bootcamp transfers skills to the client team and exits. We start by understanding the actual quality problem and recommend the appropriate depth. We have closed engagements with "your unit tests are good, the gap is a 6-test E2E smoke suite" as the whole deliverable.
Observations from 26 QA engagements delivered 2020-2026 across FinTech, healthcare, SaaS and e-commerce.
Teams with over 80 percent unit coverage plus contract tests had 3.4x lower production defect rate than teams with unit-only coverage in matched cohorts.
Flake-rate budgets under 1 percent correlated with over 90 percent engineer confidence in suite signal; budgets over 3 percent correlated with engineers disabling or ignoring failures.
Ephemeral per-PR environments reduced PR merge time by 38 percent on average across 8 projects that adopted them.
Teams of 2 to 4 QA engineers plus test-engineering platform support sustained full coverage across 50-plus service codebases in our portfolio.
QA in 2026 has shifted from end-of-pipeline gate to continuous capability. Contract testing, in-IDE test generation and production-first observability (canary analysis, synthetic monitoring) handle most of what manual QA used to catch. AI-assisted test authoring is becoming standard for regression coverage; exploratory testing remains human-driven.
DORA 2024 confirms automated testing is the single highest-correlated capability with elite delivery performance[1].
ThoughtWorks Radar 2024 elevates contract testing, test-data management and ephemeral environments to "Adopt"[3].
OWASP ASVS plus NIST SSDF mandate security test coverage (SAST, DAST, dependency audit) gating release pipelines for regulated software[8][9].
IEEE SWEBOK Chapter 5 (Testing) remains the authoritative professional reference for verification and validation practice[12].
Before treating QA sign-off as a release condition, run this 8-point maturity audit. QA practice below 6 of 8 passing produces either late-stage defects or release delays in our tracked cohort.
Over 80 percent line coverage on business logic; coverage gates in CI block regression[11].
All external service boundaries covered by consumer-driven contract tests; contract-breaking changes surface in CI[3].
Critical user flows covered by automated E2E tests running in CI plus nightly; flakiness under 1 percent per week.
SAST, DAST and dependency audit integrated in CI; OWASP Top 10 mitigations mapped per release[8].
Load and soak tests run at least weekly; regression alerts on P95 latency delta over 10 percent.
Per-PR ephemeral environments available; E2E tests run in environment parity with production.
Time-boxed human exploratory sessions each release; defect reports feed regression suite.
Synthetic monitoring, error rate and SLO dashboards active; QA loop closed with production signal.
A SaaS customer had 2,400 E2E tests in 2023 with 18 percent weekly flake rate. Engineering disabled failing tests rather than fixing them; the suite became meaningless, and 4 production incidents in 6 months traced to scenarios the disabled tests had originally covered. Root cause: flake rate over 3 percent destroys signal-to-noise; engineers disabled as a coping mechanism. We declared flake-rate bankruptcy: quarantined the flaky 18 percent, rebuilt the critical 15 percent with stronger fixtures and deterministic test data and set a flake budget of 1 percent beyond which the suite blocks merges. Six months later, suite is 1,800 tests with 0.7 percent flake rate, and production incidents traceable to E2E gaps dropped to zero. The lesson: a flaky test suite is worse than no test suite because it teaches engineers to ignore signal.
Published record
Technical articles, comparison guides and methodology deep-dives we write from our own delivery experience.
Technology platforms and company references shown for identification. A logo does not establish a commercial partnership or endorsement.
16 references
Consensys
Gate.io
Coinbase
Ludo
Core Scientific
Debut Infotech
Axoni
Alchemy
StarkWare
MARA Holdings
MicroStrategy
Nubank
OKX
Uniswap
Riot
LeewayHertz
Founder and CTO Pharos Production
I design and build reliable software solutions - from lightweight apps to high-load distributed systems and blockchain platforms.
PhD in Artificial Intelligence, MSc in Computer Science (with honors), MSc in Electronics & Precision Mechanics.
13 years in architecture of great software solutions tailored to customer needs for startups and enterprises
23 years of practical enterprise customized software production experience
Lecturer at the National Kyiv Polytechnic University
Doctor of Philosophy in Artificial Intelligence
Master's degree in Computer Science, completed with excellence
Master's degree in Electronics and precision mechanics engineering
Pharos Production scopes engagements in three tiers, Proof of concept, MVP build and Enterprise platform, with typical budgets from $10,000 to $500,000+ depending on scope and complexity.
Focused validation of your riskiest technical assumption with a working spike and a clear build-or-pivot recommendation.
Production-ready first version with core flows, real backend and the integrations to onboard first paying users.
Full-scale build with architecture, DevOps, QA, security and long-term evolution.
Prices vary based on project scope, complexity, timeline and requirements. Hourly rates range from $50 to $99 depending on role and seniority. Contact us for a personalized estimate.
Need extra hands on your software project? Our developers can jump in at any stage - from architecture to auditing - and integrate seamlessly with your team to fill any technical gaps.
Whether you're building from scratch or scaling fast, our engineers are ready to step in. You stay in control, and we handle the code.
From first line to final audit, we handle the entire development process. We will deliver secure, production-ready software, while you can focus on your business.
We select the stack for your product, integrations and operating requirements.
Our engineers work with 10+ technologies across 2 categories: DevOps, Tests.
Selected badges from Clutch, GoodFirms and The Manifest. Open the issuer profiles to review categories and dates.
Our company starts and assembles an entire project specialists with the perfect blend of skills and experience to start the work.
We'll design, build and launch your MVP, ensuring it meets the core requirements of your software solution.
We'll create a complete software solution that is custom-made to meet your exact specifications.
Our company will be right there with you, keeping your software solution running smoothly, fixing issues and rolling out updates.
Software testing cost in 2026 covering pricing by approach, project scope, in-house versus outsourced QA and how to reduce cost without adding risk.
A public-data synthesis of test automation adoption, AI in testing, shift-left practice, quality cost of defects and QA team topology in 2026, drawn from the World Quality Report, GitLab, JetBrains, State of Testing, Stack Overflow and CISQ research.
The European Accessibility Act never names WCAG or EN 301 549. This piece sorts a software company into the role that actually carries liability, and states plainly why the standard everyone cites carries no legal presumption here.
Type to filter questions and answers. Use Topic to narrow the list.
Showing all 11
No matches
Try a different keyword, change the topic or clear filters
The right answer depends on release cadence, regression cost and team size - but the shape should be a pyramid. Target ~70% unit tests (fast, focused on logic), ~20% integration tests (fast, focused on boundaries), ~10% E2E tests (slow, focused on the 5-10 critical user journeys).
If your ratio is flipped (mostly E2E), your CI is slow and flaky by construction. The fix is to move coverage down the pyramid, not to add more E2E tests.
QA MVP (audit + critical-path automation + CI integration): 4-8 weeks. Full test platform (automation coverage targets, performance harness, security baseline, accessibility audit): 3-6 months.
Embedded QA engineer supporting release cycles: month-to-month. We do not recommend engagements under one month - the ramp cost outweighs the value.
QA audit + roadmap from $8,000. Automation MVP $20,000-$60,000 (critical-path suite + CI integration). Full test platform $60,000-$180,000+ (pyramid, performance, security, accessibility, monitoring). Embedded QA engineer from $8,000/month. Cost drivers: codebase size, test pyramid starting state, release cadence, compliance requirements.
Quarantine-then-fix policy. Any test that fails then passes on rerun gets auto-quarantined into a separate suite.
Quarantined tests have a 3-day root-cause window before being deleted. We instrument per-test flake rates in CI dashboards so flakes surface early. Flaky tests are worse than no tests - they train engineers to ignore CI, which is how real regressions leak to production.
Yes. k6 or Gatling for scripted load testing, Grafana + Prometheus for observability, JMeter for legacy protocols.
Tests run in CI nightly against staging with clear targets (concurrent users, request rate, p99 latency, error rate). We have built load harnesses for sportsbook platforms at 50,000 concurrent users, payment systems at 12,000 transactions/second and SaaS platforms handling millions of daily API calls.
Yes. Accessibility: axe-core in CI for WCAG 2.1 AA, manual screen reader audits (NVDA, VoiceOver) on critical flows.
Security: Semgrep + CodeQL for SAST, OWASP ZAP or Burp Suite for DAST, Snyk or Trivy for dependency scanning, secrets detection via gitleaks. Both are integrated into the CI pipeline so regressions surface at PR time.
Yes. Firebase Test Lab for Android (15-25 representative devices per run), BrowserStack or Sauce Labs for iOS + Android + browser matrix, Appium or Detox for cross-platform UI automation, XCUITest for native iOS, Espresso for native Android.
We scope the device matrix during discovery based on the target market - emerging markets need different devices than US-only apps.
For functional testing we use Playwright and Selenium for web end-to-end, Cypress for component and integration work, Jest or Vitest for unit tests and Appium, Detox, XCUITest and Espresso for mobile. Load testing runs on k6 or Gatling; security runs on Semgrep, CodeQL and OWASP ZAP; accessibility runs on axe-core.
We match the toolchain to your stack and CI rather than forcing a single framework, and everything runs in the pipeline so regressions surface at pull-request time.
We start with a quality-risk map: which user journeys, data flows and integrations carry the most regression cost, and what the release bar is. From there we build the test pyramid (unit at the base, integration in the middle, a thin layer of end-to-end on the critical journeys), wire it into CI with clear pass/fail gates and instrument flake rates. QA sits inside the delivery process, shifted left into pull requests, not bolted on as a manual pass before release.
Both, matched to where you are. A one-time audit maps your current coverage, flags the highest-risk gaps and hands back a prioritized roadmap.
An automation project builds the critical-path suite and CI integration on a fixed scope. An embedded QA engineer or team supports your release cycles month to month once there is a pipeline to maintain. Many clients start with an audit, act on the roadmap, then embed once the suite needs ongoing care.
We decline projects without a defined quality bar or release criteria, manual-only QA where automation would pay back in 3 months, compliance-theater QA without remediation budget, engagements without a client-side product owner answering requirements questions and "automate everything" projects without a test pyramid plan. We also decline engagements shorter than one month.
QA and testing in 2026 is a continuous capability, not a release gate. Pharos Production builds QA programs with contract tests, deterministic E2E, ephemeral environments and production observability closed into the QA loop, so defects surface in CI, not in production.
Achieve them with minimized risk through our bespoke innovation capabilities
Contact us today to discuss your project. We're ready to review your request promptly and guide you on the best next steps for collaboration
Same dayWe're committed to keeping your information confidential, so we'll sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement
1 dayAfter we chat about your goals and needs, we'll craft a comprehensive proposal detailing the project scope, team, timeline and budget
3-5 daysLet's connect on Google Meet to go through the proposal and confirm all the details together!
1-2 daysAs soon as the contract is signed, our dedicated team will jump into action on your project!
Same dayThanks for the request!
We typically reply within 24 hours
