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How a UK InsurTech company scaled its engineering team without slowing down delivery
6
developers delivered
32
days to production
2+
years of ongoing collaboration
2
years of single-developer continuity
How a UK InsurTech company scaled its engineering team without slowing down delivery
6
developers delivered
32
days to production
2+
years of ongoing collaboration
2
years of single-developer continuity
Table of contents
Project details
Client: IS2
Location: UK
Industry: InsurTech / Insurance software
Duration: 2024 – present
Tech Talent Placed: 6
Tech Stack:
Frontend: Angular, TypeScript
Backend: C# / .NET Core, ASP.NET Core Web API, Entity Framework, background jobs
Database: Microsoft SQL Server
Cloud / Infrastructure: Microsoft Azure, Azure Storage, Kubernetes, Istio
Documents / Reporting: ClosedXML, Excel template rendering, document server integration
Tools: Git, pull requests, CI/CD pipelines
The client
IS2 is a UK-based InsurTech product company that has been building insurance software exclusively since 1996. Its flagship product, Atlas, is a cloud-native, API-first platform used by insurers, MGAs, brokers, and insurtech companies across the UK market.
The platform covers the full operational cycle of an insurance business — from policy administration and underwriting workflows to broker and customer portals, distribution, and automation. In practical terms, Atlas helps insurance organisations automate everything from agent and policy management to financial settlements, document generation, and reporting.
The platform’s users include insurance agents and brokers, internal operational and financial teams, customer service and back-office staff, and administrators managing documents, reporting, and payments.
The challenge
IS2’s in-house team of ten engineers, all based in England, did not have enough capacity to cover the growing volume of tasks without gaps. Rather than hiring permanently — which would have introduced fixed costs and limited flexibility — the company chose to extend its team with external engineers on a staff augmentation basis.
The expectations were specific. IS2 required developers who matched the existing technology stack and were ready to contribute with minimal onboarding time. Domain knowledge in insurance software was a meaningful advantage. References, including those from British companies, were also an important part of the selection criteria.
The initial engagement was planned for three months to one year, with the expectation of extending into a longer-term partnership.
The project scope
Platform overview
tlas is a multi-tenanted, microservices-based platform running in Kubernetes with an Istio service mesh for internal service communication. It exposes a comprehensive API consumed by quote-and-buy channels, back-office administration systems, and external integrators.
The platform can be deployed in B2C, B2B, wholesale, and retail environments and is engineered to support insurers, MGAs, and large commercial brokers seeking to increase GWP, reduce administration costs across the policy lifecycle, and protect key distribution channels.
From a functional perspective, the platform covers:
- Policy administration and product distribution
- Underwriting workflows and broker/partner portals
- Self-service customer portals
- Insurance automation across operational processes
- Accounting, financial settlements, and reconciliation
- Document generation, reporting, and statement management
UNL team's contribution
UNL’s engineers joined as an engineering partner, contributing directly to product development rather than working on isolated tasks. The team’s work spanned backend API development, new feature implementation, service-level integrations, tenant-specific logic, background job stability, database migrations, and production defect resolution.
Key areas of work included:
- Implementing new business features for broker- and agent-facing workflows
- Maintaining and developing existing platform services
- Participating in technical analysis of requirements
- Improving the stability and reliability of background processing jobs
- Working with accounting and reporting logic, including financial reconciliation and statement generation
- Managing database schema changes through SQL scripts and the database updater approach
- Contributing to code reviews and technical discussions within the client’s team
One example of recent functionality: the implementation of broker statement generation — a process where the system identifies eligible brokers, collects financial data, renders statements from Excel templates using ClosedXML, stores them as document attachments, and prepares the infrastructure for notification and archive integrations.
UNL’s process
IS2 approached UNL initially requesting two backend developers. The first candidates were in interviews within 10 days, approved within 22 days, and started within 32 days of the initial request.
The process followed a clear structure: IS2 provided its requirements specifying the stack, desired skills, expected responsibilities, and preferred location. UNL prepared CVs structured around those criteria, and IS2 conducted its own interviews before approving candidates to start. Existing UNL developers on the team subsequently participated in pre-screening and candidate evaluation for new hires, which helped maintain a consistent technical bar and reduced the time needed to assess new candidates.
Where a replacement was necessary, it was carried out as close to seamlessly as possible, without disrupting the ongoing delivery.
The team has grown progressively to six developers and the collaboration continues to this day.
Technical expertise supporting delivery
Core technical roles placed:
.NET Backend Developer
Skills:
- C# / .NET Core
- ASP.NET Core Web API
- Entity Framework Core
- Microsoft SQL Server
- Angular / TypeScript
- HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Vue.js, Bootstrap, jQuery
- REST API development
- Git, Docker / Kubernetes
- Microsoft Azure
Responsibilities:
- Designed, developed, and tested new features across backend and frontend application layers
- Implemented and maintained REST APIs for insurance business processes
- Worked with ORM frameworks and relational databases, including writing SQL scripts for schema migrations
- Built and supported background jobs and scheduled processing workflows
- Contributed to accounting, reporting, and document generation functionality
- Participated in code review and technical discussions
- Maintained regular communication with the client team throughout the development process
Technical challenges and how they were addressed
Complex accounting domain logic
Financial data in the platform depends on broker type, payment type, commission scenarios, transaction dates, reconciliation status, and organisational hierarchy. To manage this complexity, the logic was separated across providers, mappers, renderers, and orchestration services — rather than consolidating it in a single job or service — keeping the codebase maintainable as requirements evolved.
Multi-tenant architecture
Data and document templates depend on tenant context. The team worked with tenant-specific configuration, tenant file storage, and separate database scripts to support different settings and templates for different clients without introducing cross-tenant dependencies.
Template-based document generation
Rather than generating Excel output from scratch, the team implemented rendering logic that populates real business Excel templates — preserving layout, formulas, formatting, and business-specific sheets — using ClosedXML.
Background job reliability
For scheduled processing tasks, a failure related to one broker or agent must not break the entire run. The team structured processing per entity, with status tracking, error and warning capture, and retry capability built in at each step.
Talent gaps stalling delivery? Add senior developers who fit your stack and culture.
The result
IS2 closed its capacity gaps without expanding its permanent headcount, maintaining delivery continuity across backend and full-stack development work. The team grew from an initial two developers to six, with one developer maintaining uninterrupted involvement for two years.
The platform has been extended to support new business processes for IS2’s end clients — including new insurance product types being actively added at the time of writing: household, boats and yachts, expanding on the existing motorhome coverage. New broker capabilities and application-level functionality are also in active development.
By working with UNL under a staff augmentation model, IS2 accessed the engineering capacity it needed in line with its own technical standards, without the fixed costs or time overhead of local hiring.
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