Black Dog Labs
Blog
Engineering insights, war stories, and thinking from our team.
Award win at the ElevenLabs x UK Government Hackathon
We built an AI-powered multilingual case onboarding system for Brent Council at the ElevenLabs and i.AI hackathon, winning 3rd place — judged by the Minister for AI.
Black Dog Labs x Anthropic
We're proud to announce our partnership with Anthropic, joining their partner network to help organisations build reliable, production-ready AI systems on Claude.
How to Actually Work with AI
Most teams use AI like a search engine. Here's how to use it like a senior engineer.
What Actually Works When Shipping AI Products
Notes from the field on why most AI teams measure the wrong things and fix the wrong problems.
Six Ways AI Projects Go Wrong
The hard part of building with generative AI isn't the AI — it's the same things that sink every software project.
Deploying at Scale: Lessons from the Trenches
What we've learned after years of shipping production systems for Fintech, Government, and Investment Banks.
The Case for Open Source Observability
Why we standardised on OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and Grafana — and haven't looked back.
Why Fintech Companies Need Specialist Teams
The unique intersection of regulatory compliance, low-latency requirements, and security that makes fintech engineering different.