Case Study - Responsive Simplifies AWS Infrastructure and Automates Customer Onboarding
As Responsive begins expanding into new regions, it is imperative that we work with partners who are experts in security, cloud architecture, and best practices for SOC 2 audits.
Our partnership with Aligned was essential for us to meet these technical objectives. We are excited to continue to partner with Aligned and would highly recommend Aligned to any business that wants to solve challenging architectural problems with a focus on security, scalability, and business growth.
Aligned simplified Responsive’s AWS infrastructure and automated customer onboarding, working directly with its engineers as the company expanded into new regions.
Responsive is a Canadian fintech company whose unified software platform helps financial advisors be more productive and engaging, providing clients with ongoing guidance to generate long-term wealth growth. Backed by strategic investors including Co-operators, Responsive is privately owned and operating in the post-PMF expansion phase.
The Situation
As Responsive expanded into new regions, manual infrastructure provisioning took engineering time and complicated compliance work. Application architecture and fragmented development processes also made changes slower and more error-prone.
Our Approach
Aligned worked within Responsive’s team to investigate these constraints and implement a multi-account AWS environment built on the AWS Security Reference Architecture, implementing infrastructure-as-code with AWS CDK to enable rapid, repeatable provisioning. Our engineers collaborated directly with Responsive’s team to architect a solution using Amazon EKS for scalable microservices deployment, AWS-managed DocumentDB and RDS for PostgreSQL to eliminate costly self-managed database overhead, and AWS Cognito to enable new B2B product offerings. Throughout the engagement, we continuously upskilled Responsive’s engineers, transferring ownership of the remediated platform architecture.
Value Delivered
The remediation program eliminated infrastructure redundancy and reduced operational costs while strengthening security posture and compliance readiness. Customer onboarding was automated for both single and multi-tenant configurations, accelerating time-to-revenue and eliminating manual errors. Responsive’s developers now spin up production-like environments on demand, increasing iteration velocity and incident response capability. By working directly with Responsive’s engineers, Aligned also transferred the knowledge needed to maintain and change the architecture.
- Platform De-risking
- Margin Expansion
- AWS
- Kubernetes
- Embedded Execution