Plaid fully stands up metrics in three weeks with DX

Plaid connects people’s financial accounts to the digital tools they rely on, a mission that demands scaling securely and meeting high user expectations. As the company grew over 250 developers, engineering teams faced mounting complexity. Productivity declined, and the team lacked a way to measure and address the root causes. Solving this quickly was critical.

“How can I make a case to the business to invest more in developer productivity without data to ground us, keep us accountable, and make sure we’re actually making progress?” asked Russ Nealis, Platform PM.

Plaid relied on homegrown surveys and frameworks like DORA, but struggled to pinpoint challenges or gather clear data to guide decisions. Their surveys were time-consuming and lacked the granularity to analyze results by team, role, or geography. “Surveying is critical work, but the process was painful and slow,” recalls Nealis. The approach drained resources without solving the core problem.

DX offered an immediate solution. “It was a no-brainer,” Nealis explains. “We were already spending time on this type of work. To build what DX offers internally would cost a lot of money and still be non-differentiated.” Within a week, Plaid replaced their surveys with DX Snapshots, gaining a clear view of developer sentiment globally and down to the team level. Over the next two weeks, they also set up quantitative metrics with DX—integrating data from GitHub, Jira, and Buildkite—as well as real-time analytics and feedback from platform tools.

“I honestly don’t know how you would operate as a platform team without data from DX,” Nealis says. “DX makes it easy to integrate with our systems, but it’s more than just the tools—it’s the guidance on how to use them effectively. We quickly moved from running reactive surveys to having a proactive system that helps us prioritize and measure success. Now, when people are discussing whether or not to do something, they go to DX and share links to reports.”

In just three weeks, DX enabled Plaid to capture data and insights needed to establish their developer productivity program. The fast turnaround solved a pressing problem for Plaid and continues to guide their Platform team in improving developer productivity.

For more on Plaid’s developer productivity journey, check out our podcast.