ABOUT
The people behind the fire.
We're not an agency with 200 developers on a bench. We're a tight group of principal and senior engineers who've been building production software for decades.
Andrew Lombardi
Founder & Principal Engineer
26 years building production software. Published author, conference speaker, and the kind of engineer who's seen enough production incidents to know where the bodies are buried. Andrew has led engineering teams and built systems for companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 — aviation, social media, enterprise, and everything in between.
Published authors
Not just blog posts — actual books. On real shelves. In real hands.
Beginning Spring AI
Apress, 2025
Joseph Ottinger & Andrew Lombardi
Integrating LLMs with Spring Framework — prompt engineering, model selection, conversational interfaces.
Beginning Spring 6
Apress, 2nd Edition
Joseph Ottinger & Andrew Lombardi
From beginner to pro — the comprehensive Spring Framework guide.
WebSocket
O'Reilly Media, 2015
Andrew Lombardi
Real-time bidirectional client-server communication. The definitive guide.
Beginning Spring 5
Apress
Joseph Ottinger & Andrew Lombardi
Spring Framework 5, web apps, microservices, and the Spring mindset.
Beginning Hibernate 6
Apress
Joseph Ottinger, Dave Minter & Jeff Linwood
Java persistence from beginner to pro — ORM, configuration, and framework integration.
Conference speaker
30+ talks over 15 years at ConFoo, Java2Days, CodeMonsters, JavaOne, UberConf, Jazoon, and more — across Montreal, Sofia, Zurich, Gothenburg, Las Vegas, Dublin, and Denver.
Browse all talks The team
When you hire Mystic, you get principal and senior engineers. Not juniors learning on your dime. Our extended team includes specialists we've worked with for years across AI/ML, platform engineering, and full-stack development. Everyone ships. No passengers.
Collective Experience
200+ years
Combined production experience across the extended team.
Team Depth
15+ engineers
Principal, staff, and senior-level. No juniors, no passengers.
Published Works
5 books
O'Reilly and Apress. Real shelves, real readers.
Where our team has shipped
Engineering & Platform
Staff and principal engineers who've built platform infrastructure, payment systems, distributed backends, and real-time multiplayer engines at scale.
AI, ML & Data
From supercomputer architecture to production ML models to AI-powered eCommerce. Data science, data engineering, and the infrastructure underneath it all.
Product, UX & Strategy
Product leaders, creative directors, and UX strategists who've founded companies, shipped SaaS platforms, and turned complex journeys into clear experiences.
Industry depth
Aviation
Fleet systems, MRO, airline ops
Automotive
EV infrastructure, supercompute, autonomy
FinTech & Payments
Payment infrastructure, insurance, monetization
Media & Ads
Ad platforms, content systems, $B-scale revenue
eCommerce & SaaS
AI-driven retail, platform products, marketplace
Gaming & Real-Time
Multiplayer backends, open-source engines
Enterprise
Spring, JVM, data pipelines, platform eng
Consumer Products
DTC brands, UX-led product, 0-to-1
How we're different
We're not an agency.
Agencies sell hours. We sell outcomes. We don't have a bench of developers waiting to be placed — we have a team of principal and senior engineers who choose their work carefully.
We're not a body shop.
Embedded engineers doesn't mean warm bodies. It means people who are productive in your codebase within days, not months. People who push back when they see a bad idea, not just nod along.
We've seen the failure modes.
26 years of production experience means we know what breaks, how it breaks, and how to build so it doesn't. We've scaled systems, fixed outages at 3am, and shipped under pressure.
We're honest about fit.
If we're not the right team for your project, we'll tell you. We'd rather turn down work than deliver something mediocre.