Bulgaria · Agentic software engineering

Software Development for Bulgaria From a Studio in Ankara

In summer a team in Bulgaria and a studio in Ankara read the same time on the clock, and in winter they are one hour apart. Time zones are not the hard part of buying engineering from Türkiye. The real questions are legal and operational: engineers outside the EU who can see your customers' personal data, NIS2 duties that reach suppliers, and who checks the code when AI agents do the volume work.

Curiosive, a studio in Ankara, Türkiye, builds products end to end or works as an embedded engineering partner on monthly engagement. AI coding agents handle scaffolding, migrations, test coverage and refactors across hundreds of files. Senior engineers design and review data models, authentication, permissions, payment paths and anything touching personal data, and no agent merges its own work. The code, repository and hosting accounts are yours from the first commit.

Start a partnership From $2,000 per month

24: published portfolio projects
5+: years building for production
12: countries the work runs in
100%: of code read by a senior engineer
1 day: to hear back, from the engineer

Shared working hours between Bulgaria and Ankara, winter and summer

Ankara runs on UTC+3 all year because Türkiye does not use daylight saving time. In winter Bulgaria is on UTC+2, so Ankara is one hour ahead: our 09:00 start is 08:00 in Bulgaria, our 18:00 finish is 17:00 there, and a 09:00 start on your side is 10:00 in Ankara. That leaves 8 shared hours in a standard 09:00 to 18:00 day. In summer the country moves to UTC+3, the clocks match and all 9 hours are shared. The weekly call fits in the shared hours in either season, though in winter your last hour, 17:00 to 18:00, falls after our day ends. We work async by default, with a releasable increment every week and one short weekly call, so nothing depends on who was in the meeting.

Bulgaria applies the GDPR together with its Personal Data Protection Act, which as of October 2026 was last amended in State Gazette No. 69 of 31 July 2026, under the supervision of the Commission for Personal Data Protection. As of 2 October 2026, Türkiye is not on the European Commission's list of adequacy decisions. The EDPB's Guidelines 05/2021 treat remote access from a third country as a transfer when the transfer criteria are met, even if an engineer only displays personal data on screen for support or troubleshooting. A company that lets our engineers into systems holding personal data therefore needs a Chapter V tool such as the Standard Contractual Clauses in Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/914. Under Clause 14 both parties warrant that they have no reason to believe the destination country's laws and practices prevent the importer from complying. It is worth confirming the paperwork with your lawyer and designing so engineers rarely need live personal data.

NIS2 and supplier security for companies in Bulgaria

Bulgaria implemented NIS2 through amendments to its Cybersecurity Act, adopted by Parliament on 5 February 2026 and published in the State Gazette on 13 February 2026. Coverage applies automatically by sector and size, from medium-sized enterprises up. In-scope entities must send an early warning within 24 hours, an incident notification within 72 hours and a final report within one month, and fines reach EUR 10 million or 2% of global turnover for essential entities and EUR 7 million or 1.4% for important ones. Article 21 of the NIS2 Directive makes supply chain security part of the duty, so an in-scope client has to look at the security of suppliers like us. What we can show is the process: every change read before it merges, a security review covering secrets handling, input validation, access control and dependency risk, and continuous integration re-running the checks on every change.

Task, agent, checks, review: the loop behind the engineering work

Each piece of work starts as a scoped task written by an engineer, with acceptance criteria and the boundaries the agent must not cross. A coding agent such as Claude Code or Cursor reads the existing code, plans, implements, writes or updates tests, and runs the type checker, linter and test suite before proposing a diff. A senior engineer reviews every diff, and agents never merge their own work. Agents make volume work such as migrations and test coverage cheaper. Judgement costs the same, which is why the review gate matters more, not less. Our engineering work includes the Zing Coach (zing.coach) rebuild from Webflow to Next.js, the revival of RateItAll (rateitall.com) with its 12M+ reviews, and the Detailed SEO Extension, used by 600,000 SEOs and maintained through its acquisition by Ahrefs.

European clients contract with us cross-border, with no long contract to begin and no lock-in. Our prices are published in US dollars, while Bulgaria has used the euro since 1 January 2026, so the invoicing currency is worth fixing in the written scope. One local rule shows up in almost every web build. The Commission for Personal Data Protection's guidance for online traders, on the cookie rule Bulgaria transposed through the Electronic Commerce Act, says analytics cookies need consent unless used in anonymised form and not shared, and marketing cookies such as Facebook Pixel need explicit consent. The banner must have no pre-ticked categories or nudging colours and fonts, allow free refusal or per-category choice without restricting access, and come with a separate cookie policy listing cookie types, purposes, retention periods and third parties.

Proof

Published project examples

design.computer

Release Coach AI

Inspire Film

Reveal Software

Poppin

Zing Coach

AI-accelerated development

from$2,000

per month

Senior engineers building your product with AI coding agents: web, mobile, SaaS or browser extension, reviewed before anything ships.

Web, mobile, SaaS and browser extensions
AI-assisted delivery under senior engineer review
Scope and capacity agreed in writing, renews monthly

AI-accelerated development, billed monthly. We confirm scope, capacity and start date in writing before checkout.

Questions

The things people ask before starting.

What is the time difference between Bulgaria and Ankara?

None in summer and one hour in winter. Ankara stays on UTC+3 all year, while the country moves between UTC+2 and UTC+3. In winter our 09:00 to 18:00 day runs from 08:00 to 17:00 local time, leaving 8 shared hours, and in summer all 9 hours overlap.

Do we need Standard Contractual Clauses to outsource development to Türkiye?

Usually yes, if our engineers can access personal data in your systems. Türkiye has no EU adequacy decision as of 2 October 2026, and the EDPB treats remote access from a third country, even viewing data on screen, as a transfer when the transfer criteria are met. Standard Contractual Clauses are one Chapter V tool that covers it.

How much does a software development monthly engagement cost for a company in Bulgaria?

Work runs as AI-accelerated development, starting from $2,000 per month, with scope agreed in writing. It is a starting point in US dollars, not a quote. There is no long contract to begin, and the scope, including the invoicing currency, is agreed in writing after a discovery call.

Is my company in Bulgaria covered by the amended Cybersecurity Act?

Possibly, if it is a medium-sized or larger entity in a NIS2 sector. The amended Act applies automatically by sector and size, and the Directive's sectors include cloud computing, data centre and managed service providers. In scope, the security of your suppliers becomes part of your own obligations.

Solutions

Locations

What happens after you write to us.

01
You describe the product
One paragraph on what you are building, roughly when you need it, and who it is for. No brief, no form with fifteen fields.
02
You get a reply within a day
From the engineer who would do the work, not a sales team. If we are not the right fit we say so, and where possible we point you somewhere better.
03
You get a scoped plan
Scope, price and timeline in writing before anything is committed. You decide with the numbers in front of you.

No long contract to begin, no lock-in to our tooling, and the code is yours from the first commit.

Start a conversation

Contact

Looking for an engineering partner for the long haul?

A short note about the product, the timeline and who it is for is enough to start. You will hear back from the engineer who would do the work, not a sales team.

hello@curiosive.com See what we have shipped

Ankara / Türkiye · Working across European and US time zones

Software Development for Bulgaria From a Studio in Ankara

Shared working hours between Bulgaria and Ankara, winter and summer

NIS2 and supplier security for companies in Bulgaria

Task, agent, checks, review: the loop behind the engineering work