Who they are
Deem is a Silicon Valley travel-technology company: a SaaS booking platform that corporate travel programs run on, serving some of the largest enterprises in the United States.
Its platform had been built over more than fifteen years — and it was showing it.
The challenge
Deem’s platform was built over more than 15 years, a complex foundation of legacy frameworks, mixed architectures, and fragmented upgrade attempts. Over time, this technical debt had accumulated into a brittle, inconsistent codebase where even minor changes took an excessive amount of time.
Performance issues were escalating. Slow response times impacted the user experience, and the architecture struggled under peak loads. The existing infrastructure lacked the scalability required to support Deem’s growth ambitions and evolving customer demands.
Compounding the issue, the platform suffered from recurring outages and reliability issues. The absence of modern observability, recovery automation, and deployment pipelines created friction across operations directly affecting uptime, customer trust, and the company’s ability to deliver innovation at speed.To support continued expansion and meet enterprise-grade expectations, Deem needed a comprehensive modernization of its platform and delivery model without disrupting the business.
What we did
Deem's transformation was led from the inside, by the team that would later found AHM Technology. Neil Markey served as CTO & SVP Product, Craig Harris as Chief Architect, and Steven Lopez as VP Engineering — employees of Deem, holding the company's technology and product leadership years before AHM Technology existed.
What follows is that team's operating record: a complete organizational and technology transformation, from executive restructuring to platform modernization, preparing the business for scalable growth and acquisition readiness. It is also part of why AHM Technology exists — the firm was founded in 2020, after Neil left Deem, by the team that had proved it could do this work together.
Technology Leadership Overhaul
The leadership team restructured Deem’s entire technology organization — bringing in experienced engineering and product leaders, clarifying team structures, and embedding modern delivery principles to increase velocity and accountability. This set the foundation for scalable software development.
A delivery organization with velocity — and someone accountable for it
Global Development Center Expansion
To scale delivery capacity, the team established a new global development center in Dublin and expanded operations in San Francisco and Bangalore. This resulted in a 5x increase in engineering capacity, enabling concurrent platform reengineering and new feature development.
5x engineering capacity across San Francisco, Dublin and Bangalore
SaaS Platform Re-Architecture
The team led the end-to-end architecture of a new, scalable, cloud-native SaaS travel booking platform. Designed from the ground up for modularity, performance, and reliability, the new platform empowered Deem to innovate with confidence and support large enterprise clients.
Key enhancements included:
- Microservices-based architecture for speed and flexibility.
- Scalable infrastructure with built-in observability.
- Automated deployment and recovery systems.
- Seamless integration across booking engines, payment systems, and third-party travel platforms.
99.99% sustained uptime at enterprise load
Mobile-First App Development
The team delivered a reimagined mobile app experience built specifically for business travelers: fast, intuitive, and enterprise-ready. This mobile-first approach helped Deem meet the expectations of a modern workforce and drive product-led growth across key enterprise accounts.
A booking experience that won enterprise accounts
Acquisition Enablement & Strategic Integration
As Deem prepared for acquisition, the leadership team aligned platform maturity and roadmap execution with the strategic requirements of potential acquirers. Post-acquisition by Enterprise Holdings, the team remained in place — required by the terms of the deal — to lead integration and scale initiatives across the new corporate structure.
Acquired — with the team retained as part of the deal
When Enterprise Holdings acquired Deem, the technology team was made a condition of the deal — and stayed on well beyond it to lead the integration.
AI-powered innovation
Deem’s platform transformation set the stage for AI enablement across the travel lifecycle. Early initiatives included:
Smart Fare Optimization
Dynamic recommendations driven by user profile, company policy, and historical behavior.
Personalized Travel Assistant (In Dev)
Mobile-native assistant to surface booking prompts, itinerary changes, and policy alerts in real time.
That foundation made it possible for Deem to embed intelligence natively across user experience and operations.