# Test Double

> Test Double is a remote, employee-owned software consultancy that embeds senior engineers and product managers inside client teams to modernize legacy systems, improve delivery, build products, upgrade Rails applications, strengthen DevOps, apply AI selectively, and recruit technical talent. Founded in 2011 by Todd Kaufman and Justin Searls, the firm moved from a developer-first consultancy to an end-to-end product and software partner, helped by its 2023 acquisition of Pathfinder Product.

- **Founded:** 2011
- **Headquarters:** Westerville, United States
- **Founders:** Todd Kaufman (Co-founder and CEO), Justin Searls (Co-founder and former CTO)
- **Team size:** About 130 employees in the supplied dataset; the company publicly describes a team of more than 100 consultants.
- **Products:** Software Delivery, Legacy Modernization, Product Impact, Pragmatic AI, DevOps
- **Notable:** Converted to a 100% employee-owned ESOP in April 2020., Completed more than 1,000 projects and grew beyond 100 consultants., Acquired Pathfinder Product in November 2023, adding more than a dozen product management consultants.

## Products & services

- **Software Delivery** — Embedded senior engineering support for custom software, architecture, automated testing, maintainability, scalability, and delivery improvement.
- **Legacy Modernization** — Incremental, seam-based renovation of aging systems, including Rails upgrades, automated test recovery, performance work, and selective rewrites.
- **Product Impact** — Product strategy, leadership, discovery, operating-model design, and coaching added at greater depth after the Pathfinder Product acquisition.
- **Pragmatic AI** — AI-enabled product delivery, legacy analysis, context engineering, and workflow adoption tied to business outcomes rather than tool deployment alone.
- **DevOps** — Cloud infrastructure automation, observability, CI/CD, deployment reliability, scaling, and cloud cost optimization.
- **Technical Recruitment** — Recruiting for software and product roles by practitioners familiar with the work being hired for.
- **Technical and Product Due Diligence** — Pre-acquisition assessment of code, architecture, product, market, risk, savings opportunities, and post-close priorities.
- **Standard Ruby** — An open-source, zero-configuration Ruby linter and formatter built on RuboCop and maintained by Test Double.
- **Han** — An open-source collection of coding-agent skills and agents for research, planning, implementation, and reporting, aimed at solo engineers and small teams.

## Achievements

- Converted to a 100% employee-owned ESOP in April 2020.
- Completed more than 1,000 projects and grew beyond 100 consultants.
- Acquired Pathfinder Product in November 2023, adding more than a dozen product management consultants.
- Named to the Inc. 5000 for eight consecutive years, according to the company.
- Earned Certified Evergreen status from Tugboat Institute.
- Created and maintains the open-source Standard Ruby formatter and linter.
- For Gusto, repaired 1,700 test failures and delivered a Rails upgrade on time and under budget.
- For a MedTech client, cut deployment time by 50%, increased logging-tool adoption by 62%, and reduced troubleshooting from days to minutes.
- Delivered Pelagic Research Services a production-ready emergency-response platform in under two months.
- Identified an estimated $60,000 to $100,000 in potential annual savings during a technical and product due-diligence engagement.

## Latest updates

- **2026-06** — Published its position that AI amplifies existing organizational clarity or dysfunction, urging teams to question the process before automating it.
- **2026-05** — Expanded its legacy-modernization thesis for the AI era, arguing that AI speeds code comprehension but does not remove user friction or unintended consequences.
- **2026-04** — Released Han, an open-source agent and skills collection for research, planning, implementation, and reporting in software work.
- **2026-02** — Adopted a new mission and a measurable 2030 vision centered on 1,000 client outcomes, while explicitly declining to rebrand as an AI-only consultancy.
- **2025-10** — Expanded Software Leadership Circles to blended cohorts of product and engineering leaders for 2026.
- **2023-11** — Acquired Pathfinder Product to add product management consulting and cover more of the product lifecycle.

## Links

- Website: https://testdouble.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/testdouble
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/testdouble
- GitHub: https://github.com/testdouble
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@testdouble
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/testdouble/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/test-double
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-22