About FJS

What makes us different

Most engineering shops can write the code. Fewer can tell you whether the code is worth building. FJS pairs ten-plus years of production Python engineering with formal training in public finance and program evaluation — the discipline of deciding whether an investment actually returns. We treat your software the way a budget analyst treats a program: inputs, outcomes, and cost over a real time horizon. That's why our work tends to pay for itself.

We're deliberately small. Most engagements are led directly by the founder, with vetted specialists brought in when the work divides cleanly or the economics call for it. You get senior judgment on the problem, not a rotating bench.

We're based in Brooklyn, NY, and work with clients across the country — on-site when it helps, remote when it doesn't.

From the founder

I came to software through public service. Before this, my work and my graduate training were in social services and public policy — first helping people one situation at a time, then studying the economics of how public programs actually reach the people who depend on them: Medicaid, healthcare access, who gets covered and who doesn't.

What that taught me is that one-to-one help is vital but limited — the real leverage is in the systems. Good software is leverage. It's how a small clinic serves more patients, how a nonprofit stretches a grant, how a regulated business stops losing nights to incidents. I build those systems, and because of where I come from, I hold them to one test: do they return what they cost?

— Francis Secada · MPA, Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College (CUNY)