How PrizePicks Boosted IaC with Terrateam


pickem

  • 90% reduction in time to process infrastructure changes (from weeks to hours)

  • 8x more engineers confident managing Terraform (from 2 to 16)

  • <1 hour average support response time, with same-day feature delivery

  • 0 disruptions during migration from Terraform to OpenTofu


The Challenge for PrizePicks

PrizePicks, a fast-growing sports entertainment platform, had a scaling problem with its Terraform-managed infrastructure. The 12-person DevOps team supported 200 engineers, but only two of them felt confident managing Terraform. This created bottlenecks, frustrated engineers, and slowed the entire organization.

Unfortunately that means those two people have to be engaged almost full-time and are constantly troubleshooting Terraform… it really limited the number of deployments you could do in a given time, and if those two people go on vacation then it was almost a universal work stoppage sometimes

Jeff Bragdon, Principal DevOps Engineer at PrizePicks


Concurrency issues caused frequent headaches. When multiple engineers tried to make changes simultaneously, race conditions could result in unexpected Terraform operations. Worse, infrastructure changes came to a halt whenever key members of the DevOps teams were unavailable.

The team’s previous solution made things even more difficult. Rigid workflows and lack of flexibility locked the team into a system that didn’t fit their needs, limiting access to Terraform state and offering poor support.


Why PrizePicks Chose Terrateam

Terrateam was exactly what the team was looking for. Unlike their previous solution, Terrateam runs Terraform with GitHub Actions and on the team’s own infrastructure, making sure they stay in control and avoid vendor lock-in.

What stood out the most was Terrateam’s simplicity. A single YAML file in their repository controlled everything from plan and apply rules to role-based access controls. This meant no extra overhead navigating to another UI and no need to overhaul how the team worked.

Beforehand, it was literally just me… there’s a lot of time that I would end up spending just managing team access. Fast forward to the integration with Terrateam… I’ve been totally removed from that loop.

Jeff Bragdon, Principal DevOps Engineer at PrizePicks


PrizePick’s Experience with Terrateam

Once Terrateam was in place, results were immediate. Changes that used to take weeks to process were now being completed in hours. Engineers, who previously depended on DevOps for every Terraform plan and apply, could now handle their own infrastructure changes. Automated pull request comments guided engineers that weren’t Terraform experts and made the process simple and transparent.

Terrateam’s flexibility stood out. Engineers could still run Terraform locally when required, and the system avoided locking the team into any proprietary workflows. When the time came to migrate from Terraform to OpenTofu, the transition was flawless.

Support was another highlight. Terrateam not only responded to support requests quickly but they also provided practical solutions. The support team became trusted partners, often delivering fixes or features the same day they were requested.

They’ve implemented feature improvements sometimes within a couple of weeks, sometimes in real time. The support has always been there, and any support issues I couldn’t figure out were usually answered within less than an hour.

Jeff Bragdon, Principal DevOps Engineer at PrizePicks


The Results

With Terrateam, infrastructure management at PrizePicks underwent a complete transformation. Engineers now handled their own deployments without relying on DevOps, freeing them to focus on higher-value initiatives. Tasks like provisioning GitHub teams and managing JumpCloud access, which used to take hours, were completed in minutes.

The migration to OpenTofu demonstrated Terrateam’s reliability. The team transitioned without disruptions or additional complexity. Terrateam’s minimal UI and flexible runner setup ensured that operations stayed simple and scalable, even as PrizePicks continued to grow.


Looking Ahead

PrizePicks plans to integrate Terrateam against all of their repositories, standardizing their CI/CD pipeline to maintain speed and governance at scale. They’re also exploring new ways to improve automation, including dynamic provider configurations and tighter password manager integrations with Terrateam’s flexible in-repository configuration file.

Overall, it’s been wonderful. Interactions have been great. Support’s been great. Any feature requests or improvements or bug fixes have been very responsive.

Jeff Bragdon, Principal DevOps Engineer at PrizePicks

GitOps-First Infrastructure as Code

Ready to get started?

Build, manage, and deploy infrastructure with GitHub pull requests.