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Chicago, Illinois

Custom software development company for Chicago businesses

We are a UK-registered engineering team working remotely with Chicago companies: operations and back-office software, manufacturing and supply chain systems, freight and rail tooling, trading and insurance workflows, AI and machine learning. Calls sit in your Central Time morning, your systems run in the US cloud region you choose, and you get a written quote after a free scoping call.

Free estimateNo obligation

Tell us about your Chicago project

Describe the workflow, system or integration you need and which teams use it. A senior engineer will review it and come back with questions and a realistic range.

Takes under a minute. We never share your details.

  • Free consultation
  • No commitment
  • NDA on request

Prefer to talk? Book a free 30-minute call →

  • Daily overlap with Central Time working hours
  • Deployed to the US cloud region you choose
  • Contracts and invoices in US dollars
1,000+
Clients served
2020
Building since
4.6
Rated on Clutch

1,000+

Clients served since 2020

CT

Daily Central Time overlap

4.8★

From 944 Fiverr reviews

USD

Contracts and invoicing

Technologies we build with

  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • Django
  • Node.js
  • PostgreSQL
  • Kafka
  • Snowflake
  • dbt
  • React
  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • React Native
  • Swift
  • Kotlin
  • OpenAI
  • Anthropic Claude
  • Azure OpenAI
  • AWS Bedrock
  • PyTorch
  • scikit-learn
  • XGBoost
  • Azure North Central US (Illinois)
  • AWS us-east-2 (Ohio)
  • AWS us-east-1
  • Google Cloud us-central1 (Iowa)
  • SAP
  • Oracle NetSuite
  • Epicor
  • Infor
  • Salesforce
  • EDI via AS2
  • HL7 & FHIR
  • GitHub Actions
  • Terraform
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • AWS KMS
  • Snyk
  • Datadog

Quick answer

What is it like hiring a custom software development company from Chicago?

SpiderHunts Technologies is a software and AI development company registered in the United Kingdom, with an office in London and engineers in Lahore. We have no Chicago office, no Illinois entity and nobody on the payroll in the United States. We work with Chicago companies remotely: a daily overlap with your Central Time morning, a shared Slack or Teams channel, code in your own repositories, and infrastructure in a US cloud region you control.

Chicago is not a generic metro, and the work reflects that. The projects that reach us are manufacturing and industrial supply chain systems, freight, rail and intermodal tooling, back-office software for futures and derivatives firms, claims and underwriting workflow for insurers, operations software for health systems, and order and traceability systems for food and agriculture businesses. Most of it is custom software and internal tools, with machine learning, AI agents and AI integration where the data supports it, and pipelines that release it safely.

Two things decide most Chicago engagements. The first is where the data lives: we deploy to US regions under your own cloud account, and Chicago teams often pick Azure North Central US, which sits in Illinois, or AWS us-east-2 in Ohio and Google Cloud us-central1 in Iowa for a short hop from the city. The second is Illinois law. The state has no broad consumer privacy statute of the kind Texas or California passed, but it does have the Biometric Information Privacy Act, and BIPA is the one that catches software teams out. If a build touches fingerprints, face or voice, that changes the design before a line of code is written.

What we build

What Chicago companies hire us to build

The systems that sit between the platforms you already bought — built on your data, released into your own cloud account.

01

Operations software & internal tools

Admin panels, operations portals, approval workflows and the systems no vendor sells as you need them, built around how your team actually works rather than around a product roadmap.

02

Manufacturing & supply chain systems

Production scheduling that models the constraints your ERP does not, quality and lot traceability, downtime and maintenance tracking, and supplier portals for plants across Chicagoland and the wider Midwest.

03

Freight, rail & intermodal software

Load and quoting tools, carrier and drayage portals, and track-and-trace that merges EDI messages from the Class I railroads with telematics and carrier APIs into one view of a container’s journey.

04

Trading & financial back office

Trade capture, reconciliation and break resolution, position and exposure reporting, and commission, fee and rebate engines for futures, options and derivatives firms whose rules are too specific for a vendor product.

05

Insurance claims & underwriting tooling

First notice of loss intake, document classification, underwriting workflow, renewal management and broker portals, with every decision, override and document version recorded.

06

Healthcare operations software

Referral, scheduling, intake and internal reporting tools for health systems and clinics, built to the technical safeguards HIPAA expects and integrated through HL7 or FHIR interfaces.

07

AI, machine learning & document extraction

Extraction from bills of lading, invoices, claims packs and certificates of analysis, demand and ETA forecasting, anomaly detection in trade or invoice data, and agents that triage with a person approving.

08

Cloud, data & DevOps

US-region infrastructure as code, data pipelines and warehouses, CI/CD with review gates and scanning, and monitoring an on-call engineer in the Loop can actually read at 6am.

Why it matters

Why Chicago operators outgrow their platforms

Nobody sets out to run a freight desk, a claims team or a plant floor on spreadsheets. The platform covers most of the job, a gap appears, someone builds a workaround, and the workaround becomes the process.

The spreadsheet-and-workaround stack

  • Staff re-key the same data into the ERP, the TMS and a spreadsheet every morning
  • Two reports never agree, so nobody trusts either of them
  • One person understands the master workbook, and they are on holiday
  • Audit and compliance requests are reassembled out of email threads
  • Per-seat licences rise every year for features nobody opens

With software built around your process

  • One source of truth, fed by integrations rather than re-keying
  • Reports agree because they read the same data model
  • The process lives in the system instead of in one person’s head
  • Approvals, overrides and data changes are logged as work happens
  • The tool matches the workflow, so new hires learn it faster

Have a workflow in Chicago that still runs on a shared workbook?

Tell us which one costs your team the most time. We will suggest a practical first build and a realistic range — and say so if you do not need us.

Examples

What we build for Chicago companies

Typical problems Chicago teams bring to us, and the software that addresses them. Illustrative examples of what we build, not client results.

Manufacturing

Production scheduling around an ERP

A scheduling tool that reads orders and inventory from the ERP, models the changeover, tooling and labour constraints the ERP cannot, and writes the agreed plan back rather than replacing the system of record.

Aim: a plan the shop floor recognises, built from live data instead of a workbook

Freight & intermodal

Track-and-trace across rail and road

A service that ingests EDI status messages from the railroads, telematics from drayage carriers and terminal appointment data, and presents one timeline per container with exceptions raised to the desk that owns them.

Aim: fewer status phone calls between the yard, the ramp and the customer

Derivatives & trading

Break resolution dashboard

A back-office view that pulls trades, clearing records and internal positions into one reconciliation run, groups breaks by cause and keeps the approval chain and comments next to each one.

Aim: the daily reconciliation done in a system rather than in a spreadsheet ritual

Insurance

Claims intake and triage

An intake flow that reads the loss notice and attachments, extracts the fields adjusters retype, checks the policy record and routes the file to the right team with a summary attached.

Aim: adjusters spending their time on judgement rather than transcription

Health systems

Referral and scheduling operations view

An internal tool that tracks referrals from receipt to appointment across sites, surfaces the ones stalling, and records who saw and changed which record, hosted in a US region under your own account.

Aim: fewer referrals lost between departments, with an access trail your privacy officer can review

Food & agriculture

Lot traceability and contract tracking

A system that follows a lot from intake through processing to despatch, keeps the certificates and test results attached to it, and reconciles deliveries against purchase contracts and grade adjustments.

Aim: a recall or an audit answered from records rather than from memory

How we work

How a Chicago engagement runs

Short stages with a clear output each time, arranged so the time difference is never the reason something waits a day.

  1. Free scoping call

    A 30-minute call booked in your Central Time morning. We talk through the problem, the systems involved and the constraints, then send a written quote with scope and exclusions.

  2. Access, accounts and rules

    We agree which cloud account and US region the work runs in, who grants access to the ERP, TMS or clinical systems involved, and whether anything touches biometrics or health data before code is written.

  3. Build with a daily overlap

    Work lands in your repository from the start. There is a written update every day and a demo each week, both inside your working hours rather than ours.

  4. Integration and testing

    EDI feeds, ERP interfaces and historian or clinical exports are tackled early, because that is where operational projects usually come unstuck. Automated tests and scans run in the pipeline.

  5. Release and handover

    We release in stages with monitoring switched on. Documentation, runbooks and code stay in your accounts and repositories, and ongoing development is quoted separately if you want it.

Clear scope · Regular demos · Full handover

Is it right for you?

When a remote team is the right call in Chicago

We would rather tell you to buy a product or hire a firm on Wacker Drive than take on a project that will not work remotely.

A good fit when…

  • The scope can be written down and demonstrated each week
  • Someone in Chicago owns the decisions and the system access
  • The work is software, data or AI rather than plant-floor hardware
  • You want the code, infrastructure and documentation to stay yours
  • A written daily update and a weekly demo is how you like to track work

Not the right fit when…

  • The job needs an engineer physically in your building each week
  • An off-the-shelf product already covers the whole workflow
  • Nobody internally can approve designs or grant system access
  • Your rules require every engineer to be a US person on US soil

Track record

Trusted by 1,000+ clients since 2020

Independent reviews, including from clients in the United States, on the platforms where they hired us.

1,000+

Clients served since 2020

4.8★

From 944 Fiverr reviews

4.6★

Rated on Clutch

FiverrVerified review
I’m always nervous the first time I work with a new freelancer. I was pleasantly surprised at the level of detail and quality produced. It was immediately obvious how he cared about the level of work produced.
ckohls22United States
FiverrVerified review
We would highly recommend using Shahrukh for any project. He is very good at what he does. We have used him many times now and are always pleased with the results.
accuistUnited States
FiverrVerified review
Shahrukh was incredibly patient with me. I had problems at home and couldn’t get back to him when I should have but he took the time and worked things out. He is very professional, very organized. I love my website.
krystalfUnited States

Technology

What we build with, and where it runs

Mainstream languages and platforms, the integration formats Midwest operations actually speak, and deployment into your own US cloud account.

Backend & data

  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • Django
  • Node.js
  • PostgreSQL
  • Kafka
  • Snowflake
  • dbt

Front end & mobile

  • React
  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • React Native
  • Swift
  • Kotlin

AI & machine learning

  • OpenAI
  • Anthropic Claude
  • Azure OpenAI
  • AWS Bedrock
  • PyTorch
  • scikit-learn
  • XGBoost

US cloud regions

  • Azure North Central US (Illinois)
  • AWS us-east-2 (Ohio)
  • AWS us-east-1
  • Google Cloud us-central1 (Iowa)

Systems we integrate

  • SAP
  • Oracle NetSuite
  • Epicor
  • Infor
  • Salesforce
  • EDI via AS2
  • HL7 & FHIR

DevOps & security

  • GitHub Actions
  • Terraform
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • AWS KMS
  • Snyk
  • Datadog

Sectors

The industries Chicago runs on

Chicago is a factory city, a freight city, a trading city and an insurance city at once. That mix produces one class of software problem: high-volume operational data, systems that cannot be switched off, and regulators watching.

Manufacturing & industrial supply chainsProduction scheduling, lot traceability, downtime tracking and supplier portals
Freight, rail & intermodalEvery Class I railroad interchanges here — EDI, drayage, yard and track-and-trace toolingFutures, options & derivativesTrade capture, reconciliation, exposure reporting and fee engines for trading firms
Insurance & brokerageClaims intake, underwriting workflow, document processing and renewals
Health systems & providersReferrals, scheduling, intake and reporting built to HIPAA technical safeguards
Food & agricultureLot and cold-chain traceability, wholesale portals, contract and grade reconciliation

Chicagoland and the wider Midwest

The Loop & West LoopTrading, insurance and corporate technology teams
O’Hare & the north-west corridorFreight forwarders, 3PLs and air cargo operators
Elgin, Aurora, Joliet & ElwoodManufacturers, intermodal yards and distribution centres
Wider MidwestMilwaukee, Indianapolis, Detroit and the Quad Cities on the same hours
New YorkFinance, media and enterprise software teams on Eastern hoursHoustonEnergy, healthcare and port logistics, also on Central Time

FAQ

Working with us from Chicago — FAQs

The questions Chicago buyers ask before they send a contract, answered plainly.

Still have a question?

Ask us directly — a senior engineer will get back to you.

Ask about your project

Do you have an office in Chicago?

No, and we will not pretend otherwise. SpiderHunts Technologies Ltd is registered in the United Kingdom, with an office at 182-184 High Street N, London E6 2JA and engineers in Lahore, Pakistan. There is no Chicago address, no Illinois entity and no local sales team. We say it on the first call because some buyers need a US-domiciled supplier, and that is better known before a procurement review than after one.

How does the time difference between London and Chicago work?

Chicago runs on Central Time, six hours behind London for most of the year and five for the few weeks when the clocks change on different dates. Our afternoon is your morning, so standups, demos, design reviews and decisions all sit in roughly 8am to midday Central. Lahore is five hours ahead of London again, which means work raised at the end of your day is often picked up before you sit down the next morning. Anything later than early afternoon Central is scheduled deliberately rather than promised as round-the-clock cover.

How do contracts and invoicing work for an Illinois company?

Projects are quoted in pounds sterling and invoiced in US dollars at the rate agreed in the quote, so both sides know the dollar figure before work starts. Invoices are raised by SpiderHunts Technologies Ltd against a written scope with milestones, and we can complete a W-8BEN-E for your accounts payable team. Payment by ACH, wire or card. Your legal team is welcome to work from your own master services agreement rather than ours.

Where will our data and code live?

In your accounts, not ours. Chicago teams commonly choose Azure North Central US, which sits in Illinois, or AWS us-east-2 in Ohio and Google Cloud us-central1 in Iowa, all a short network hop from the city and from the interconnect facilities downtown. Code goes to your GitHub, GitLab or Azure DevOps. Engineers get named, least-privilege access you can revoke at any time, and production data stays out of development environments unless you ask otherwise.

Does the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act change what you can build?

Yes, and it is the single most Chicago-specific thing on this page. BIPA covers fingerprints, face geometry, voiceprints, iris and retina scans, and it applies to employees as well as customers. In practice that means informed written consent before anything is collected, a published retention and destruction schedule, no sale or profit from biometric identifiers, and a private right of action that lets individuals sue directly rather than waiting for a regulator. So we design around it: a time-and-attendance app gets a badge or PIN option rather than a fingerprint by default, a face or voice feature gets a consent record stored with the identifier and a deletion job that actually runs, and vendor choices get checked for where the template is processed. The legal judgement stays with your counsel; we build the software to match what they decide.

Can you build back-office software for a trading, clearing or brokerage firm?

Yes. Chicago firms usually have a well-served front office and a back office held together by spreadsheets, so that is where we work: trade capture and reconciliation, break resolution, position and exposure reporting that agrees with itself, and commission, fee and rebate calculation where the rules are too firm-specific for a vendor product. We are software engineers, not a broker-dealer or a compliance consultancy. Your compliance team defines the rules and the retention requirements; we build systems that enforce them with role-based access, immutable audit logs and reviewable data lineage.

Can you work with freight, rail and intermodal data?

Yes, and Chicago is where that gets interesting, because it is the interchange point for every Class I railroad in the country. We build track-and-trace that merges rail EDI status messages, drayage telematics and terminal appointment feeds into one timeline per container, load and quoting tools tuned to how your desk prices freight, carrier and yard scheduling portals, and settlement and invoice-audit tools that find a billing dispute before the customer does. Integrations are built defensively, with retries, idempotency and reconciliation, because a feed will eventually send a malformed record at three in the morning.

Can you build around our existing ERP rather than replacing it?

That is usually what we recommend. Midwest manufacturers carry decades of accumulated systems, and the ERP is generally the immovable object; a rip-and-replace is where most of the money and most of the risk goes. We build the layer above it instead — scheduling that models constraints the ERP does not, quality and traceability, downtime and maintenance tracking, and reporting that surfaces shop-floor data without a six-figure module. Our note on integrating with an ERP rather than replacing it covers the approach.

Do you build healthcare software with HIPAA safeguards?

We build to the technical safeguards HIPAA expects: encryption in transit and at rest, unique user identity, role-based access, automatic logoff, integrity checks and audit logs of who saw which record. We will not call the result HIPAA-compliant, because compliance covers your policies, training, contracts and physical controls as well as the software. Whether a business associate agreement is needed, and what it should say, is a decision for your counsel. Integration with clinical systems is normally through HL7 or FHIR interfaces your own team controls.

How much does custom software development cost, and how long does it take?

You get a written quote after a free scoping call. As typical ranges from our service pages: an internal tool or MVP is £8,000–£20,000 over 4–8 weeks, a business web application £20,000–£45,000 over 2–4 months, and a larger platform or modernisation £45,000–£80,000+ over 3–6 months. A focused machine learning model is £8,000–£25,000 and a single-purpose AI agent £5,000–£12,000. Those are quoted in pounds and invoiced in dollars; cloud and third-party licence costs are separate and stay in your own accounts.

Can we meet in person?

Not in Chicago. We are remote-first, so day-to-day work happens over video, Slack or Teams and a shared board. If you are ever in London, you are welcome at the office there. Where a project would normally open with an on-site workshop, we run a longer video session across two or three Central Time mornings instead, which works better over a six-hour gap than one long day does.

What language do you work in, and can software ship in Spanish or Polish?

We work in English, in writing as well as on calls. Software can ship in more than one language, which matters in Chicago: a warehouse app, a patient portal or a shop-floor screen often needs Spanish, and sometimes Polish. We build the interface so text, dates, currency and number formats are translatable from the start, and we handle right-to-left and character-set questions if you later add another language. We do not supply translation as a service — your team or your translator provides the wording, and we make sure the product carries it correctly.

Start here

Scope your Chicago project

Tell us what you need built, which systems it has to touch and who uses it. You will get an honest view on fit, a likely approach and a realistic range, free and with no obligation.

  1. You tell us what you needTwo minutes on the form, or a message on WhatsApp.
  2. A senior engineer reviews itAnd comes back with questions, a realistic range and an honest view on fit.
  3. Free 30-minute scoping callWe talk through scope, options and a realistic estimate — with no obligation.
Free estimateNo obligation

Get your Chicago project estimate

Tell us a little about the project and we will come back with a realistic range.

Takes under a minute. We never share your details.

  • Free consultation
  • No commitment
  • NDA on request

Prefer to talk? Book a free 30-minute call →