Underdog saves 4,500 developer hours annually with DX

Underdog Fantasy, a fast-growing sports gaming company, scaled its engineering team of over 100 developers to support rapid product growth. To maintain productivity and deliver at scale, leadership focused on fostering a developer experience that prioritized efficiency and empowerment. “Everyone wants a high-output engineering culture,” says Aaron Nunley, Sr. Director of Software Engineering. “But we knew we couldn’t achieve that without understanding the full experience of our developers.”

Traditional metrics like cycle times and churn rates lacked the depth to uncover root causes of inefficiencies and often led to gamification. “I want people to solve problems for a living, not fight their developer tools,” Nunley explains. Underdog needed a solution that provided actionable data while avoiding these pitfalls.

DX became the natural choice. It offered a more holistic approach to measuring and improving developer experience. “The distinction with DX is that it is designed to help us take a more holistic approach to improving our engineering organization,” says Nunley.

DX provided teams with the data to address workflow inefficiencies independently, while surfacing larger challenges—like optimizing requirements and reducing time lost—to leadership for action. “DX gives teams the data they need to solve their own problems while helping leadership focus on larger organizational challenges,” Nunley adds. “If you put time into these developer productivity initiatives, it makes a difference. People feel more empowered to make their own work processes and practices better.”

Since implementing DX, Underdog has seen measurable improvements. Ease of delivery increased by 7%, and code quality improved by 15%. These gains reduced engineering friction and saved the team over 4,500 developer hours annually—time developers now spend solving problems and building features that drive the business forward.

Looking ahead, Underdog plans to use DX to further accelerate delivery, improve code reviews, and enhance the codebase experience. With DX as a cornerstone of its engineering strategy, Underdog is well-positioned to scale while maintaining quality, efficiency, and a supportive developer environment.