Hippo was founded on a simple belief: digital services should work for people.
With a nationwide team of over 700 specialists, we design and deliver AI-enabled digital services where human insight, data, and engineering work as one. We support complex organisations to scale digital delivery, modernise technical foundations, and upskill internal teams - building systems that learn, adapt, and perform at scale.
Consultants, experts and staff
Locations across the UK
Human-centred services. System-intelligent delivery.
Hippo is a digital services partner that ensures technology works intuitively for people and intelligently behind the scenes. Over the last ten years, we have partnered with some of the UK’s most critical public sector bodies and fastest-growing private brands to deliver exceptional, high-impact user experiences.
From our roots in Leeds to a nationwide presence in London, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, and Glasgow, Hippo has scaled deliberately to solve bigger problems. By bringing The Data Shed into the herd in 2023, we widened our data and engineering capabilities. We don’t layer AI onto fragile legacy systems; we provide the scale, processes, and people required to sustain intelligent digital transformation.
What we do
Hippo builds intelligent digital systems, grounded in human need and built for measurable impact.
At Hippo, we believe that delivering user-centric experiences in large-scale Agile projects is not just a matter of design but a holistic approach that encompasses every aspect of delivery. This approach was born from the visionary thinking of our co-founders, Adam Lewis and Robert Coop. It all started back in 2011 when Adam was leading the delivery for an NHS project and needed to appoint a partner with User Experience skills (amongst others) that would deliver not only wireframes and concepts but also lead significant aspects of the project to ensure that the user’s needs were always at the forefront.
Unfortunately, he found that many User Experience companies were used to working in a way that required the hand-off of the delivery aspect to third-party engineering firms, which went against the principles of Agile delivery, which advocates integrated, multidisciplinary teams.
After failing to find that partner, Adam needed to build his own internal capability, integrating capabilities from several suppliers. Rob was brought in to lead the Experience Design work. Fast forward to 2016, when they successfully delivered the Identity and Access Management service. The Government Digital Service released the Service Standard mandating agile and user-centred design for all public-facing government projects. They both knew from there that what they could offer would be in massive demand, and they could do it better and with more transparency than a lot of other companies. And that was the birth of Hippo.
Why we’re called Hippo
We were determined to find a name that was simple and memorable.
Our goal was to create a brand that was easily recognisable and made a lasting impression on everyone who came into contact with it.
Being connected to the iconic semiaquatic mammal gives us an immediate talking point, especially with all the hippo-related artwork around our offices. When people join us, they become a Hippo and part of our herd, which reinforces our brand and makes us feel even more connected to our name.
