A national U.S. news publisher built its own content and publishing platform, and other media companies now license it too. Our engineers helped build it.
Seven and a half years on, Wizeline is its only outside partner for development services on the technology side, with engineers on its apps, subscriptions, ads, identity, cloud and AI teams.
AT A GLANCE
- Industry: News media and publishing technology
- Challenge: Keep a national publisher's digital products moving as its platform, priorities and team needs changed
- Wizeline offering: Embedded engineering teams in Mexico, Colombia and Vietnam, working inside the client's product teams
- Hightlights
- Seven areas of the client's digital business, including mobile apps, subscriptions and AI
- The only outside partner for development services on the client's technology side
- Nearly 40 engineers at the 2025 peak, up from a handful
- Seven and a half years, starting with helping build its publishing platform
OUR ENGINEERS STARTED OUT BY HELPING TO BUILD THE PUBLISHER'S OWN CUSTOM NEWS CMS
For a national news publisher, the consistent quality of every subscriber step, ad experience, login and article read depends on the software behind its website and apps. There are often many custom considerations here that affect the business, so our client built its own content and publishing platform. In time, other media companies licensed it too.
Wizeline joined that work seven and a half years ago, with a large team out of our Guadalajara office. In those early years, the client’s people often visited that office, and the two teams worked closely together.
The publisher kept its own product owners and engineering managers. Our engineers worked inside their teams, developing features of the platform alongside the client’s people. As the platform found new customers, we also ran implementation projects for three or four of the media companies that licensed it, projects our team owned from start to finish. Those years gave Wizeline a view of the platform from the inside and from the side of the companies that use it.
GETTING IN THE ROOM: HOW TIME WITH THE CLIENT'S ENGINEERING LEADERS GREW THE PARTNERSHIP
Over time, the platform and publisher teams bifurcated. The platform evolved as it served a growing number of news customers, and our original client ran on a separate track. Wizeline teams worked in both camps.
Once most of the platform’s core backlog was built, more of our work moved into the publisher’s own engineering organization, primarily building and running its apps and digital products. A handful of our engineers already worked there, and our account leadership team set out to work more closely with its leaders.
The work with that engineering organization picked up steadily after our first visit to the client’s offices, early in 2025. At the visit we proposed regular business reviews to build more closeness into the relationship, a central part of Wizeline’s nearshore value proposition. Those sessions now run three times a year, planned around the engineering leadership’s calendar.
We were able to steer for more partnership here based on a history of quality driven by the smaller original Wizeline team. The engineering leadership spoke very well of our engineers’ work, by name, and asked for more of our people.
«Being in the room together, we’re all very candid, and I feel like we have a human connection,» said Laura Ornelas Luna, who manages Wizeline’s relationship with the client.
In mid-2025, the publisher set out to move onto the latest version of its platform by the end of the year, and that summer it asked for more of our engineers. Our team on its side grew to nearly 40 engineers, working on the platform update in parallel with other key projects.
CONSISTENCY, CANDOR AND RESPONSIVENESS: WHAT THE PARTNERSHIP'S TRUST RESTS ON
At Wizeline, we understand that what makes a team succeed looks different for every client.
For this one, it has meant candid working relationships, a skill mix that follows the work from platform to product teams, and engineers who can work with real autonomy.
1. CONSISTENCY: ENGINEERS WHOSE WORK THE CLIENT KNOWS BY NAME
The engineering leadership can name our engineers and what each of them is working on.
That comes from steady delivery over many years, from the platform build to the product teams. Juan Sánchez Castro, our senior project manager on the account, calls our engineers in Mexico and Colombia, and more recently Vietnam, «truly premium talent that the client knows they can count on.»
2. CANDOR: OPEN ABOUT WHAT'S WORKING AND WHAT ISN'T
In person, the conversations about projects and people are direct on both sides. We consider this a noticeable cultural alignment between the two teams.
We tell our partner plainly what we can and can’t do, and when someone we bring in isn’t the right fit for a team, we say so, follow up and come back with a stronger match.
«We’re completely transparent with them, and that has built the trust,» said Sánchez Castro, who has worked on the account for about five years. «We built a relationship based on trust, and I think that’s always the best place to be.»
3. RESPONSIVENESS: A TEAM THAT RESHAPES ITSELF AROUND THE WORK
As our partner’s needs changed, so did our team. When the work moved from the platform into the publisher’s own product teams, our focus moved with it, and the platform team settled at five people. We built the team across Mexico and Colombia, and in 2025 we proposed adding engineers in Vietnam.
The client wanted to be sure a team that far away would work, so it chose to start with a single engineer in December 2025. Her work made the case, and we’ve continued to expand that team since. These more widely distributed teams keep excellent communication with the organization while working with a lot of autonomy, which suits an overnight handoff.
On a recent visit, the client’s teams told us that handoff feels «close to magic»: they assign work, and by morning it’s done.
WE CONTINUE TO GROW TOGETHER
Those three things are why the publisher’s engineering leadership now counts Wizeline as its only outside partner for development services on the technology side. We’ve touched many parts of its business along the way, and our engineers currently work across seven areas:
- Mobile: the Android and iOS app teams
- Subscriptions: monetization on the subscription side
- Ads: ad monetization
- Reader conversations: engagement across its digital sites
- Identity: sign-in, working closely with subscriptions
- Cloud platform: site reliability engineering
- AI innovation: a team exploring new ideas for the business
«We’re everywhere, and we’re touching strategy as well as execution,» said Ornelas Luna. The work keeps widening as our partner’s priorities change, and the Vietnam team is set to grow next.
Running digital products with a lean engineering team? Let’s talk.
Wizeline is a nearshore transformation engineering partner with 1,400+ team members across Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Spain, Romania and Vietnam. Our consultative doers embed within client teams to move AI possibilities into modern products and workflow innovation. Learn more at wizeline.ai. See our engineering and AI capabilities or more client stories.
