OakNorth, the leading digital bank for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs, is rethinking how business banking is built and delivered. As a Senior Full Stack Engineer, Dan Bovey has been at the forefront of that innovation, working on OakNorth’s business banking product, a modern React Native application powered by a fresh banking infrastructure.
The engineering team at OakNorth operates in a mono-environment—shipping directly to production multiple times a day. That model, as Dan explains, demands both agility and discipline: “We’re working with real bank accounts and real money, so code quality and release governance are non-negotiable. Feature flags are critical to making that work.”
“Flagsmith empowers engineers to manage their own releases while ensuring we remain compliant through things like audit logs, roles, permissions, and change requests.”
Before moving to Flagsmith, OakNorth was using LaunchDarkly, another enterprise-level feature flag software, but it didn’t support its pace or ways of working.
“LaunchDarkly’s price was high, but more than that, the developer experience fell short,” Dan shared. Flags had to be managed via Terraform, which meant reverting a flag required a pull request, followed by time-consuming tests and checks. “That made reverting flags feel risky—definitely not the way feature flags should work. It became an anti-pattern.”
Additionally, the lack of a user-friendly interface limited visibility and slowed down collaboration between engineering and product teams.
OakNorth ran a proof-of-concept to evaluate alternatives. “We created a scorecard, and Flagsmith ticked all the boxes,” Dan said. “It was the clear winner.”
Key reasons included:
Dan emphasised, “It only took one engineer per app a couple of days to migrate. It was entirely smooth.”
With Flagsmith in place, OakNorth’s mono-environment release model is thriving.
Developers can ship to production with greater confidence, knowing the feature is safely hidden behind a flag until it’s ready.
“We might be working on a feature for months, but we’re still pushing code to production multiple times a day,” said Dan. “It’s safe because the flag is off in Flagsmith. Then when we’re ready, we roll it out gradually.”
OakNorth uses Flagsmith to run segment-based rollouts—often starting with internal users or handpicked customers. Product managers track impact in Mixpanel, while engineers appreciate the visibility and control they have in the Flagsmith UI. “It makes working with product managers much easier,” Dan explained. “It gives everyone clarity.”
The team is also looking forward to expanding their experimentation efforts: “There’s a lot of excitement around starting to do more A/B testing with Flagsmith.”
Moving from a mono-environment to a multi-environment setup with their savings team, Dan noted that Flagsmith is also helping him navigate increased complexity. “Flagsmith aligns really well with how we manage environments, and it’s great having the UI to switch between and compare easily.”
Overall, Dan says Flagsmith has improved developer experience, enhanced release safety, and made experimenting with new features easier than ever: “Flagsmith just works. It gives the team visibility, control, and confidence.”
Flagsmith’s feature flag software empowers engineering teams like OakNorth’s to release faster, with less risk. Whether you’re deploying in a mono or multi-environment setup, Flagsmith helps streamline your release strategy, making it easier to test, iterate, and move quickly. “I think all the engineers are happy to be working with a user interface rather than Terraform.”
Ready to ship faster and safer? Start your free trial of Flagsmith today.
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