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Engineering depth, with commercial context.

Pacifica Labs is a Sydney-based software engineering consultancy for businesses that need to build, connect, modernise or improve important software.

Why Pacifica exists

Pacifica is built around a simple idea: important software problems are easier to solve when the senior person understanding the business problem remains close to the engineering work.

That model works particularly well for systems that have history, integrations, operational complexity or technical risk — where the answer is rarely just “build the screen”.

Pacifica Labs was founded in 2013 and is based in Sydney, Australia.

Principal-led

Led by a hands-on CTO and principal engineer

Pacifica Labs is led by Tarun Mookhey, with experience owning production platforms from architecture through delivery and operations across SaaS, ecommerce, fintech, CRM and messaging, data platforms and application modernisation.
Read Tarun's profile

Start with the business problem

Understand the workflow, risk and commercial objective before selecting a technical solution.

Prefer evolution to unnecessary rewrites

Preserve working business logic and modernise incrementally where that is the lower-risk path.

Keep senior engineering close to the work

Avoid the gap between the person who understands the problem and the person implementing it.

Build for operations, not the demo

Reliability, observability, maintainability, security and support matter once software becomes important to a business.

How Pacifica works

Four habits behind every engagement

  1. 01

    Start from the problem

    Understand the workflow, constraint and outcome before selecting technology.

    See how we start
  2. 02

    Map the system

    Identify the systems, people, data ownership and failure points that shape the solution.

    See how we map it
  3. 03

    Make the smallest durable change

    Prefer a maintainable increment that changes the operation over unnecessary platform replacement.

    See how we change it
  4. 04

    Operate what matters

    Design for monitoring, recovery and the next change — not only the launch.

    See how we operate it

Evidence, in brief

A short path through the experience behind Pacifica — not a full CV. Detail lives in the case studies.

  1. 2013Pacifica Labs founded in Sydney.
  2. 2017–2019Engineering manager on a fintech SaaS platform.
  3. 2022–2023Chief Technology Officer of an ecommerce and operations platform.
  4. 2023–presentConsulting CTO on a high-throughput data platform.
  5. 2025–presentPrincipal engineer on TickMessage.

Selected work

Commerce & operations

Ecommerce & fulfilment

One order, from storefront to delivery.

See the ecommerce system Pacifica product

TickMessage

A calendar event becomes a personal message.

Explore TickMessage engineering Modernisation

Rails 2/Merb to Rails 7.1

Four layers moved in stages.

See the modernisation path

Community

Tarun is a three-time elected Treasurer and Board Member of Ruby Australia, convened RubyConf Australia 2024, and helps organise the Ruby Sydney community.

Working on something important?

Describe the problem as it exists today. A finished specification is not required.

Discuss a project