About - Corelith Labs

Background

Corelith Labs was founded by Samuel Steiner to provide organisations with senior technical expertise that bridges product thinking and technical execution.

Samuel brings nearly a decade of experience building and scaling technical systems, with a unique combination of product management and technical leadership. Most recently as Chief Technology Officer at Techloq since 2022, he has been responsible for technical strategy, platform architecture, and engineering leadership. This followed roles as Technical Product Manager and DevOps Director at the same organisation—progression that developed expertise in translating between product requirements and technical implementation.

This product-to-platform experience means understanding both sides of the equation: what needs to be built (product), and how to build it reliably (platform). The result is technical decisions informed by product context, and product decisions informed by technical reality.

Earlier work included freelance system architecture, focusing on legacy-to-VOIP phone system migrations for enterprise clients. This required deep understanding of both established infrastructure and modern communication platforms, along with the ability to execute complex migrations without service disruption.

Technical experience spans cloud infrastructure, DevOps practices, platform engineering, and product development. This breadth allows for informed decision-making across architectural layers and the ability to work effectively whether setting technical strategy, designing systems, or working with product teams to define what gets built.

The transition to independent consulting reflects a preference for focused, high-impact work with organisations that need someone who can think in both product and platform terms.

Values

Clarity over cleverness. Systems should be understandable. Solutions should be appropriate to the problem at hand, not demonstrations of technical sophistication. Code, architecture, and documentation should optimise for the people who maintain them.

Correctness over speed. Moving quickly is important, but not at the expense of building things properly. Technical debt is a choice, not an inevitability. When time pressure forces trade-offs, those trade-offs should be deliberate and documented.

Durability over novelty. New technologies are adopted when they solve real problems, not because they are fashionable. Proven approaches are preferred to experimental ones unless there is a compelling reason to take on additional risk.

Collaboration over prescription. The best solutions emerge from working closely with the people who know the domain, the codebase, and the constraints. Consulting should transfer knowledge, not create dependency.

Systems thinking. Technical problems rarely exist in isolation. Architecture, people, process, and constraints interact. Effective solutions require understanding the whole system, not just the component being optimised.

Technical Depth

Corelith Labs brings expertise across architecture, infrastructure, and technical leadership:

Cloud and infrastructure: Extensive experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation). Kubernetes deployments, container orchestration, and platform engineering. Datacenter and colocation facility management including hardware provisioning, network architecture, and hybrid cloud deployments. CI/CD pipeline design and DevOps practices developed through years of building and operating production systems.

System architecture: Designing distributed systems, microservices architectures, and API platforms. Experience with legacy system modernisation, including complex migrations from on-premises to cloud infrastructure and traditional telephony to VOIP systems.

Technical strategy: CTO-level experience setting technical direction, technology selection, and platform evolution. Technical product management, roadmap development, and translating business requirements into technical architecture. Balancing technical debt, feature delivery, and long-term sustainability.

Leadership and process: Technical leadership across engineering teams. DevOps culture and practice development. Incident response and post-mortem processes. Engineering standards and code review practices. Building and scaling technical organisations.

Development context: Working knowledge of Go, Python, TypeScript/Node.js, and Linux systems. Sufficient technical depth to review code, evaluate architectural decisions, and engage directly with engineering teams on implementation details.

Specialist areas: Cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, DevOps practices, system migrations, technical strategy. Experience spans from infrastructure layer to product delivery, with strength in architecture and operational excellence.

Approach

Engagements typically begin with a discovery phase to understand the problem, the constraints, and the desired outcomes. This might involve reviewing existing systems, interviewing team members, analysing metrics, or studying incident reports.

Work is collaborative. Corelith Labs operates as an extension of your team—participating in standups, writing code in your repositories, reviewing pull requests, and pairing with engineers. Knowledge transfer happens throughout the engagement, not as a final handoff.

Documentation is produced as work progresses, not as an afterthought. This includes architecture decision records, runbooks, design documents, and updated team documentation. The goal is to leave systems better documented than they were found.

Communication is clear and regular. You will know what is being worked on, what has been completed, and what challenges have been encountered. There are no surprises.

At the conclusion of an engagement, recommendations are provided for next steps, whether that involves continued work, handoff to an internal team, or no further action. The relationship is optimised for your long-term success, not for maximising billable hours.

Interested in working together?

hello@corelith.co.uk