Why founding a DevEx team is like starting a startup | Minh Pham, Titus Stone (Ibotta)

Establishing a Developer Experience (DX) team requires treating the initiative as a "startup within a startup," balancing technical improvements with the need to justify investments to executive leadership. At Ibotta, Senior Engineering Manager Minh Pham and Distinguished Engineer Titus Stone navigated this by shifting from siloed, one-off training efforts to a structured, data-driven strategy. By aligning DX initiatives with business-critical metrics—such as deployment speed, mean time to recovery, and tool adoption rates—the team successfully secured sustained support. This approach emphasizes that effective DX is not merely about providing tools, but about fostering a culture of communication and continuous engagement. Ultimately, the team’s mission centers on reducing friction and enhancing developer satisfaction, which directly impacts the organization’s ability to ship high-quality software efficiently while maintaining long-term engineering retention.