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Our Partnership with Nordic Semiconductor

needCode is a Nordic Semiconductor Design Partner and Solution Partner – approved in both roles.
Nordic Semiconductor is the company whose silicon defined ultra-low-power wireless. Its nRF Series has been the default platform for Bluetooth LE product development for over a decade, and nRF Connect SDK – built on Zephyr RTOS – is the environment where most modern BLE products are engineered.
nRF has been our first-choice BLE platform since the nRF51 generation. Part of our engineering team came from Nordic Semiconductor itself. That partnership is now formal – and it runs in both directions Nordic recognises: we design products on Nordic silicon, and we supply positioning and secure-ranging components that other Nordic customers build into theirs.
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Nordic Solution Partner LNordic-Design-Partner

Approved in both roles

Nordic runs two separate partner tracks, and qualifies each against evidence rather than intent. Design Partners must show completed commercial projects on nRF silicon, working demonstrators, and a production track record. Solution Partners must show a deployed, commercially available solution that other Nordic customers can integrate into their own products.

needCode was approved in both — listed as a Design Partner in EMEA, and as a Solution Partner in the Bluetooth Positioning Systems category.

Most partners hold one or the other. Holding both means we can be engaged two ways: as the engineering team that builds your product on nRF, or as the supplier of positioning and secure-ranging components you integrate into a product your own team is building.

We qualified on work already shipped — BLE products on nRF52, nRF53, and nRF54 under nRF Connect SDK and Zephyr, mesh networks deployed at building scale, secure OTA architectures maintaining installed bases in the thousands, and UWB stacks in production on customer silicon.

What the partnership adds is directness

Earlier access to silicon and SDK roadmaps, a direct line into Nordic's engineering and regional teams, and a shared path to market for customers who arrive at Nordic looking for an engineering partner rather than a chip.

What "Nordic-native" actually means

01

Former Nordic engineers on the team

Part of our engineering team has worked inside Nordic Semiconductor. They work in nRF Connect SDK and Zephyr the way Nordic's own teams do — with an internal integrator's view of the platform, not an SDK user's.

02

nRF since the nRF51

Nordic has been our default BLE platform across generations of silicon. We develop on nRF52, nRF53, and nRF54 today, and our BLE product history runs back to the nRF51 era. That continuity means we know how the platform behaves under migration, not just under greenfield development.

03

Full-stack, not application-layer

We work from the radio and link layer upward. For a silicon vendor we contributed to controller firmware and PHY handling (1M, 2M, Coded PHY), then integrated and optimised the host stack and built the application layer above it. We understand the protocol end to end, from PHY to GATT to phone behaviour.

04

Standards-level involvement

We have a long-standing relationship with the Bluetooth SIG. Beyond implementing the Core and Mesh specifications, we contributed to shaping the Bluetooth Mesh specification itself — and we guide products through SIG qualification.

What we build on Nordic silicon

BLE firmware and application layer

GATT service and profile design, connection and bonding management, command/response protocols with sequence correlation and retries, MTU-aware transfer, device provisioning, and secure OTA/DFU — built on the Nordic BLE stack under nRF Connect SDK and Zephyr OS. Our connection state machines are designed against real-world failure modes: GATT 133, connection-parameter conflicts, stale bonds, iOS and Android background behaviour.

Bluetooth Mesh at scale

With Silvair we built the first Bluetooth-qualified Mesh stack to run on a Nordic SoC, using Nordic's radio timeslot API to schedule mesh activity alongside the BLE stack without disrupting connection timing. Our mesh implementations have been validated in networks of up to 1,000 nodes, with attention to provisioning, relay behaviour, and message latency at scale.

Power optimisation

Power is treated as a first-class constraint, not a late-stage fix. Our BLE Power Optimization Lab covers connection-interval and PHY selection, advertising and duty-cycle tuning, sensor sampling schedules, and data-batching strategy — with consumption measured on real hardware using the Nordic Power Profiler and current-probe instrumentation, to reach week- and month-scale battery life on coin cells.

Multi-protocol and coexistence

Bluetooth LE including Direction Finding and Channel Sounding, Bluetooth Mesh, Thread, Matter, Zigbee, proprietary 2.4 GHz, LTE-M on nRF91, and Wi-Fi 6 on nRF70 — including multi-protocol coexistence on a single SoC.

Security and regulatory readiness

Arm TrustZone, Secure Boot, signed and encrypted DFU, secure provisioning, and key and certificate handling. Delivered under ISO 9001:2015 and ISO/IEC 27001:2022, with alignment to the RED Delegated Act and NIS2.

Test automation and validation

CI/CD pipelines, hardware-in-the-loop test rigs, remotely accessible and maintained hardware benches, standards conformance suites, and cross-device interoperability testing against physical iOS and Android handsets.

Companion mobile applications

iOS (CoreBluetooth), Android, and Flutter — several published and maintained on the App Store and Google Play, working with nRF-based devices across both ecosystems.

Productization

Hardware design and PCB layout from schematic to production-ready, rapid prototyping, pre-production validation, pilot production, transfer to production, and long-term lifecycle maintenance.

Where Nordic BLE meets Ultra-Wideband

Ultra-Wideband is our second core discipline – and it is where our Nordic work becomes distinctive rather than merely competent.

Every secure UWB ranging session needs a trusted out-of-band channel to discover the peer and exchange session keys before ranging begins. In practice, on CCC Digital Key, FiRa, and Aliro systems, that channel is Bluetooth LE — and in the designs we build, it runs on an nRF SoC.

That makes Nordic silicon a structural part of our UWB architecture, not an adjacent component:

  • CCC Digital Key
    Automotive access, with BLE out-of-band discovery and key exchange on nRF.
  • Aliro
    Smart lock and access-control systems on Nordic platforms.
  • RTLS
    FiRa- and Omlox-based real-time location, including tag and anchor hardware
  • Custom ranging and FiRa data transfer
    Plus UWB radar-style presence and motion detection

For customers building secure access or precise positioning products, this means one team owning both radios – and the handoff between them, which is where most integration failures actually live.

Explore our UWB capabilities

Shipped on nRF

Fire-protection system – installed base in the thousands

Modernised with a secure OTA/DFU architecture supporting fleet-wide lifecycle updates across a deployed estate.

Smart lighting and building control – global lighting-as-a-service

BLE Mesh implementation deployed as part of a commercial lighting-as-a-service offering, engineered for interoperability and scale.

Smart-home mesh system – firmware and gateway apps

Device firmware plus iOS and Android gateway applications, including network diagnostic tooling for field troubleshooting.

Connected wearable – on-device AI on a Nordic SoC

For Xtrava Health's Butterfly.care infant monitor we ported a PC-grade neural network onto a Nordic SoC to run vital-sign and safety inference on-device — well before edge AI became a mainstream topic.

Ongoing R&D – ahead of the roadmap

We are actively evaluating BLE PAwR (Periodic Advertising with Responses) and BLE Channel Sounding on the nRF54 family, and have prototyped a modular dual-band gateway coupling nRF70 (Wi-Fi 6) and nRF91 (LTE-M) with nRF54-based environmental sensors.

We also phase into work already in flight

Taking over from a previous team or a stalled design, phasing out the prior setup, and carrying the product through to production on nRF.

On Nordic nRF silicon, or choosing it?

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Industries we build for on Nordic

Industry

What we build

Automotive & SDV
Digital key (CCC), TPMS, child presence detection, infotainment connectivity
Access & Security
Smart locks (Aliro), access readers, phone-as-a-key using UWB and Channel Sounding
Positioning & Tracking
Indoor positioning and RTLS, asset tracking, indoor navigation, BLE beacons at scale using PAwR and Bluetooth 6.0 Channel Sounding
Building Automation & Smart Home
Bluetooth Mesh lighting control at building scale, LED drivers and switches, occupancy and environmental sensors, HVAC control, gateways and hubs
Wearables & Connected Health
Smartwatches and activity trackers, continuous glucose monitors and biosensors, ECG and vital-sign monitors
Smart Agriculture
Crop and livestock monitoring, virtual fencing, environmental sensing in remote conditions

Who this partnership is for

You are building a product on nRF and need engineering depth

Firmware, mesh, power, security, mobile, and certification — from a team that has taken nRF products through qualification and into volume production.

Your project has stalled or changed hands

We regularly take over in-flight designs, phase out the previous setup, and carry the product through to production.

You need BLE and UWB in the same product

Secure ranging, digital key, and precise positioning need both radios working together. We own the whole path, including the out-of-band handoff.

You are a silicon vendor or platform owner

We build SDKs, bring-ups, and developer experience — we are the team behind a publicly available UWB SDK, and we know what makes a platform adoptable by third-party developers.
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FAQ

Yes. needCode is approved in the Nordic Semiconductor Partner Program in both available roles — as a Design Partner (listed under EMEA) and as a Solution Partner (listed under Bluetooth Positioning Systems). Both listings are public on nordicsemi.com, and our partner profile is at response.nordicsemi.com/nordic-partner-needcode.

A Design Partner provides engineering services on Nordic silicon — hardware, RF, embedded software, or security design. A Solution Partner supplies components, stacks, or platforms that other Nordic customers integrate into their own products. needCode holds both designations, which means we can either build your product or supply the positioning and ranging building blocks your team integrates.

We develop on nRF52, nRF53, and nRF54 Series SoCs, with additional work on nRF91 (LTE-M) and nRF70 (Wi-Fi 6). Our BLE product history on nRF goes back to the nRF51 generation. All current development is done in nRF Connect SDK on Zephyr RTOS.

Yes. We deliver hardware design and PCB layout from schematic to production-ready design, alongside firmware, application layer, mobile applications, and validation — through pilot production and transfer to production.

Yes. Taking over in-flight or stalled designs is a routine engagement model for us — we phase out the previous setup and carry the product through to production.

ISO 9001:2015 (Quality Management) and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 (Information Security). We also support customers through Bluetooth SIG qualification, FiRa and CCC Digital Key certification, and RED and NIS2 regulatory readiness.

Kraków, Poland — a single EU engineering hub. We serve customers across EMEA and the Americas, working remote-first with on-site visits as needed.

Partnerships:

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Let's build on Nordic together

Whether you are starting from a chipset selection decision or need to unblock a product that has stalled in certification, we bring nRF depth and a production track record to the table.
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Bartek Kling / CEO
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