Unlocking Developer Productivity in a Fintech Unicorn
The Company: Dock
- Industry: Fintech
- Size: 1500 people, 1000 in technology
- Funding: Almost 300 million USD
- Core Business: Provides a range of financial stack components as a service.
The Problem: Regulatory Constraints & Developer Autonomy
- Regulatory Needs: Dock operates in a heavily regulated environment, requiring PCI certification.
- Traditional Approach: A gated process via the security team. Developers submit SQL queries via Jira tickets, leading to delays and manual checks by the security team.
- Business Impact: Slowed down feature releases, increased churn, and blocked investments.
The Solution: Hoop.dev
- Initiated By: Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Team in collaboration with security.
- Technology: AWS-managed databases and services.
- Goal: Enable developers to execute SQL scripts directly after peer reviews, reducing the load on the security team.
Features and Benefits
- Access Control: Gated access to databases via Hoop.dev.
- Script Submission: Via Slack, web, or terminal. Jira is out.
- Real-Time Review: Slack app for quick decision-making.
- Audit Trails: Automatically generated for compliance.
- SSO: Integrated with Okta.
Outcomes
- Speed: Support ticket resolution time dropped from days to minutes.
- Productivity: Developers freed to work on revenue-generating features.
- Security: Maintained compliance and security.
- Automation: Security team freed from low-impact manual tasks.
- System Simplification: Replaced VPN, Jira, and manual steps.
- Extra Time: For high-impact, strategic projects.
Indirect Results
- Ease of M&A: New companies can integrate Hoop.dev workflows quickly.
- Promotions: High visibility of the Hoop.dev project led to career advancement for its champions.
Hoop.dev was not just a technical solution for Dock; it was a business enabler. It helped Dock maintain its competitive edge by balancing regulatory compliance with developer autonomy and speed.
