Case Study: Cash App achieves faster builds and better remote cache performance with Gradle Develocity

Cash App boosts remote build cache savings by 3m 10s with Gradle

Cash App, with over 60 developers on its Android team, was seeking to proactively accelerate its complex builds. Partnering with Gradle and utilizing the Develocity platform, the team aimed to implement a remote build cache at scale. Their challenge was to ensure the cache delivered consistent performance benefits for a distributed team, avoiding slowdowns for developers in different geographical locations.

Gradle's solution involved using Develocity's build observability and custom Build Scan metadata to tag local builds with geolocation data. This allowed Cash App to analyze cache performance by location, discovering that developers on the West Coast saved significant time while those farther away sometimes experienced negative savings. The data justified disabling the cache for some users and provided a clear ROI for potential infrastructure changes, enabling Gradle to help Cash App make the remote build cache efficient and data-driven.

Cash App