Newcastle upon Tyne · Tyne and Wear
Software, apps and AI for Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is proof that a northern city can build software product companies rather than only service them. Sage grew out of the city into a FTSE 100 business and has moved its main operation to Cobalt Park in North Tyneside, Ubisoft Reflections has been making games here for decades, and Greggs runs a national estate from a Newcastle head office. Fugen Services builds web platforms, custom software, eCommerce, mobile apps and AI tools for businesses across Tyneside: energy supply chain firms working off the Tyne, professional practices in Grainger Town, studios in the Ouseburn. We are registered in Glasgow at 3/2, 4 Buccleuch Street. Newcastle work is delivered remotely with travel for meetings, and we keep no Quayside office.
Working with Newcastle upon Tyne businesses
Newcastle's economy now leans on energy, software and the public sector. The Port of Tyne hosts the operations and maintenance base for the Dogger Bank wind farm, and the wider Tyneside supply chain, including Siemens Energy, Baker Hughes, TechnipFMC and the subsea engineering firms, makes the North East one of England's densest concentrations of energy businesses. The Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult sits up the coast at Blyth and Newcastle University's Neptune subsea facility is in the city. Newcastle Helix, the former Science Central site, brings together the National Innovation Centre for Data, the National Innovation Centre for Ageing and university research in The Catalyst. Government is a major employer through HMRC at Benton Park View and DWP at Longbenton, with the Pilgrim Street redevelopment adding more office space to the centre. Around all of it: Cobalt Business Park, Quorum, Team Valley in Gateshead, and an owner-managed base of engineering, marine and construction firms.
Why Newcastle upon Tyne businesses work with us
Two things bring Tyneside companies to us. The first is asset and field data. Energy and marine supply chain firms hold inspection reports, vessel and turbine records, competence certificates and job sheets across email, paper and a shared drive, and need one system that office staff and offshore or site crews can both use, which means a mobile app that works with no signal and syncs later. The second is that Newcastle has enough software talent to know what good looks like and enough demand that hiring queues are long. Companies here often want a team alongside their own rather than a replacement for it, which is what dedicated developers at £3,200–£6,500 per developer per month are for. Either route, you own the code and the accounts.
How we work at this distance
Newcastle is the easiest of these cities for us to reach. Direct trains run between Glasgow Central and Newcastle in around three hours, so a day trip for a kickoff, a workshop or a difficult decision is realistic rather than theoretical, and Newcastle Airport sits on the Metro if flying suits the timing better. Day to day we still work remotely: video calls with the people who know the process, a shared board you can check without asking permission, code in a repository you own from the first commit, and a working build every fortnight. Nothing important should first appear in a monthly report.
The Newcastle upon Tyne market, honestly
Newcastle's technical market is deeper than most cities its size, because Sage, Ubisoft Reflections, the civil service digital teams and Newcastle and Northumbria universities have all been recruiting engineers here for years. That has two effects: salaries sit below Edinburgh and Manchester but are climbing, and experienced developers have options, so vacancies stay open. Premises are inexpensive by comparison, whether that is Cobalt Park, Team Valley or a Quayside floor. For most Tyneside SMEs the practical route is a fixed-scope build with us plus one internal person who owns it afterwards, rather than assembling a team against Sage's recruitment budget.
What Newcastle upon Tyne industries actually need built
Not a list of services — the specific gap we most often find in each of these sectors here.
Offshore wind, subsea and energy services
Inspection records, competence and certification tracking, vessel and turbine job packs, and cost reporting per campaign. Crews work where there is no signal, so field apps have to capture offline and reconcile later, and client audit trails must be exportable rather than screenshotted out of a spreadsheet.
Software and SaaS products
Tyneside product companies need engineering capacity rather than strategy documents: API work, migrations off legacy stacks, test automation and QA, DevOps and cloud cost control. We also take the parts a product team keeps deferring, such as the admin console, billing edge cases or the customer onboarding flow.
Public sector suppliers
Firms selling to HMRC, DWP or councils across Tyneside need accessibility to WCAG standards, documented security testing and data handling they can evidence in a procurement response. Security audits and remediation are often the actual blocker on a bid, not the product, so we treat them as delivery work.
Health, ageing and life sciences
Work around the National Innovation Centre for Ageing and the Centre for Life needs participant-facing apps designed for older users on older devices, consent management, and research data capture with proper governance. Large touch targets, clear language and offline tolerance matter far more here than animation.
Games, creative and hospitality
Ouseburn studios and city-centre operators want commerce, booking and membership platforms, plus tills that match how they trade. Our point-of-sale line covers cafes and restaurants, fast food, bakeries, retail and repairs, which fits a Quayside independent better than a system designed for national chains.
What we build for Newcastle upon Tyne clients
Every service below is available to Newcastle upon Tyne and Tyne and Wear businesses.
Software Engineering
AI & Automation
Design & Experience
Growth & Marketing
Cloud & Infrastructure
Dedicated Teams
Newcastle upon Tyne questions
Including whether we actually have an office here — we do not, and we would rather say so.
No. Fugen Services is registered at 3/2, 4 Buccleuch Street, Glasgow G3 6SL, and that is our only premises. Newcastle clients are served remotely with travel for meetings, which is easy here given the direct rail link. Plenty of agencies list a Quayside address they visit twice a year, and we would rather you knew exactly where the people building your software sit.
Yes, and it needs designing for it from the start. An offline-first app keeps a local database, queues photos and readings, and reconciles when the vessel or site regains signal, with conflict rules agreed with you rather than guessed. We also plan for shared devices, gloved hands and long shifts. Mobile apps start from £15,000, and cross-platform builds run £22,000–£45,000.
Yes, for the sessions that warrant it: discovery, process mapping, user testing and launch planning. Glasgow to Newcastle is a direct train of about three hours, and Cobalt is a straightforward run from Central Station, so a full day on site is a normal day for us rather than an expedition. Routine progress work stays on video calls, which wastes less of your time too.
That is a common Tyneside problem and it is what our dedicated development teams are for. A dedicated developer is £3,200–£6,500 per developer per month, working to your backlog and your standards, with no recruitment fee, notice period or desk. You can scale down when the project ends, which you cannot easily do with a permanent hire, and the code stays in your repository throughout.
A marketing website is £4,500–£9,000, a content-managed website £9,000–£25,000, and web applications start from £12,000. Mobile apps start from £15,000. Server management is from £250 per month if you want us keeping it patched and monitored afterwards. All of it is quoted fixed against a written scope, following a discovery stage where we work out what you actually need built.
The useful cases here are usually document-shaped: searching standards, method statements, inspection histories and manuals so an engineer stops asking a colleague who has left. A retrieval-based assistant over your own documents starts from £6,000. Where accuracy has to be guaranteed, we keep a human in the loop. An AI feasibility assessment at £3,000–£6,000 sorts the worthwhile ideas from the rest.
Yes. We do DevOps, server management, cloud migration and security audits, and often the audit is what triggers everything else. Typical findings for North East SMEs are unpatched servers, credentials shared by email, no tested restore, and an old site nobody owns. We fix what we find, document it, and hand over accounts in your name rather than holding them.
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Building something in Newcastle upon Tyne?
Tell us the problem. We will tell you what would fix it, roughly what it costs, and whether we are the right people for it.
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