Introduction
Skyscanner is a global travel leader that helps millions of users find the best prices on flights, hotels, and car rentals. Its platform serves millions of users daily, supported by a world-class engineering organization of over 800 people. For Senior Engineering Manager Stuart Ross, a top priority was equipping this team with the tools and capabilities to master an increasingly complex technical landscape
To drive efficiency and accelerate key initiatives at that scale, his team turned to Cortex and achieved significant results:
Landed three major initiatives, each faster than the last. This continuous improvement set a new high bar for what the production platform team could deliver.
Simplified the tech stack by decommissioning multiple legacy systems. Getting critical functionality out-of-the-box allowed them to shut down redundant homegrown tools that were a drain on engineering time.
Replaced a patchwork of manual spreadsheets with a single source of truth. This eliminated the error-prone process of manually tracking progress in large, hard-to-update Confluence documents.
One team even reduced cycle time by 50% for a critical, traveler-facing system, validating the team's velocity improvements with hard data.
The challenge: Managing initiatives at scale in a fragmented toolchain
Before implementing Cortex, managing large, engineering-wide initiatives was a significant operational burden for Skyscanner. The platform team relied on a patchwork of manual tracking systems that were difficult to maintain and scale.
"There would usually be spreadsheets involved," Stuart explains. "If it wasn't spreadsheets, it would be large Confluence documents with big tables that were hard to update, particularly when there's lots of people trying to update them at the same time."
This manual approach was complicated by a fragmented toolchain. An early attempt at a homegrown IDP that was built and maintained by a small security team couldn't keep pace with the organization's needs. This led other teams to build their own supplemental tools to fill the gaps, which ultimately created a confusing landscape of numerous tools all trying to solve common challenges without a central source of truth.
The solution: A unified platform for a unified experience
The Skyscanner team knew they needed to consolidate. Instead of continuing to invest in disparate internal tools, they sought a comprehensive solution that could provide all the capabilities their engineers needed in a single product.
"We really needed a one-stop solution that could give us all of the features and capabilities that we needed through a single product. That was Cortex for us." — Stuart Ross, Senior Engineering Manager, Skyscanner
By centralizing their internal tooling strategy, Skyscanner's engineering leadership unlocked a new level of operational effectiveness. This pivotal choice enabled them to redirect their focus from maintaining a disjointed collection of systems toward executing high-impact initiatives.
The results: Faster initiatives and a more efficient platform
Since adopting Cortex, the production platform team has seen a dramatic improvement in its ability to execute. "We've completed three large engineering-wide initiatives," Stuart notes.
"Each of our large engineering-wide initiatives landed faster than the one before, setting a really high bar for us as a team." — Stuart Ross, Senior Engineering Manager, Skyscanner
This new velocity is driven by having a single pane of glass for tracking progress and understanding the health of their software ecosystem. It has also created new efficiencies, allowing the team to simplify their own technical footprint. "The other efficiency gain for us has been to really close down and shut down old systems that are no longer needed because we've now got that functionality out of the box with Cortex," says Stuart.
One powerful example of Cortex's impact came from a team that used the DORA dashboard to quantify their progress on a critical, traveler-facing system. The data showed they had reduced their cycle time by 50% from Q1 to Q2. Stuart adds, "They now use that data as a mechanism for applying that learning to other systems. I think it's been really powerful for them."
Driving a cultural shift in engineering effectiveness
"It's driving a really important message to anyone who works in an engineering function," he says. "Words like maturity and compliance, which historically can be labeled as negative, are now part of broader discussions around productivity and improving people's day-to-day lives. The community feel is definitely driving a real kind of change, and that's something I'm personally quite excited about."
Ready to accelerate your engineering initiatives? See how Cortex can help your team drive efficiency and build a more reliable software ecosystem. Book a demo today.
