SHLD Systems is a network of independent consultants specializing in infrastructure, cloud engineering, networking, DevSecOps, and Kubernetes.

The challenge behind their new website was not only about design and visual identity. We needed to find a way to represent a distributed collective, show each member’s expertise, and make the website a useful tool to support their professional services.
The website needed to clearly explain who they are, what they do, and how their different skills come together to offer complete solutions to their clients.
This idea became the foundation of the project, shaping the design, the content, and the structure of the website.


SHLD Systems’ design system reflects the precision and resilience that define the collective. At its core are three complementary typefaces:
The entire system is built with Tailwind CSS, chosen to make development simpler and faster while keeping styles and components consistent across the website.
Every design decision follows the same idea: creating a clear, flexible, and consistent visual system for SHLD Systems.

To make content management easier across the collective, we integrated Payload CMS as a headless CMS.
The setup uses a granular access control system, allowing each member to manage only the content related to their area of expertise. This approach reflects the way SHLD Systems operates: independent specialists working across different, but closely connected, domains.
With Payload CMS:
To unlock more value from the collective’s distributed knowledge, we configured Payload’s MCP Server to connect the CMS directly to SHLD Systems’ internal LLM.
This allows the AI to securely access and reason over the structured data stored in Payload — from members and areas of expertise to projects and other collective data. Instead of treating each consultant’s information as an isolated dataset, the LLM can understand how different skills and areas of expertise connect across the collective.
With the Payload MCP integration:
The result goes beyond a simple CMS integration. Payload becomes the structured knowledge layer behind SHLD Systems’ internal AI, turning the expertise of its distributed members into a connected and actionable resource.