How Brex Improves Code Quality and Productivity with Claude Code

When Andy Reed joined Brex as a content designer two years ago, he never imagined he would be writing code and building Figma plugins.

“I don’t know how I would have gotten even half my work done in the past month without Claude Code,” Reed said.

But that is exactly what happened when Reed embraced Brex Claude Code productivity and his story is just one example of how the intelligent finance platform is transforming the way their entire company works. To understand the full picture, we spoke with three Brex team members about how they are using Claude Code:

• Hércules Gimenes, Software Engineering Lead on the Product AI team
•  Sumeet Marwaha, Head of Data and Analytics
•  Andy Reed, Senior Content Designer

What emerged from these conversations was not just a story about productivity gains, though teams report 3 to 4x improvements on specific tasks. It is about fundamentally reimagining how the company works together to streamline workflows, inspire creative problem-solving, and drive collaboration at scale.

Let us get into it.

Quick TL;DR Summary

• Mindset shift: Brex engineers moved from writing code to reviewing and guiding Claude Code focusing on architecture instead of implementation details.
• Non-technical productivity: Content designer Andy Reed now makes PRs directly, built a Figma plugin, and completed a months-long backlog project in a few days using Claude Code.
• Data democratisation: Head of Data Sumeet Marwaha built Brex Explorer, a text-to-SQL tool that lets any employee query data in plain language — no SQL knowledge needed.
• 3 to 4x speed gains: Teams report 3 to 4x improvements on specific tasks, with the Data team describing a 4x speed increase across 2x more contributing people.
• 50% company-wide adoption: Claude Code has reached 50% adoption across Brex within six months, with the Data team targeting 100% adoption.
• Best practices at scale: Brex built structured CLAUDE.md files per directory, automated documentation checks, and custom context-aware commands now standard across the company.

What is Brex and Why Does This Matter?

Brex is an intelligent finance platform that provides corporate cards, expense management, and financial software for businesses. It serves thousands of companies, from startups to enterprise, and manages large volumes of financial transaction data in a highly regulated environment.

This context matters when you talk about Brex Claude Code productivity. Fintech companies operate in complex codebases with strict compliance requirements, sensitive customer data, and tight engineering standards. If Claude Code works at this level of complexity and regulation, it works anywhere.

Brex runs a large monorepo built with Kotlin and Bazel a codebase structure where even experienced engineers struggle to understand how all the systems connect. The fact that Claude Code became a 50% company-wide tool inside Brex within six months says a lot about what it actually delivers in production conditions.

The Mindset Shift: From Writing Code to Guiding It

For Hércules Gimenes and the Product AI team, Claude Code was not just a productivity tool. It changed how they think about their role as engineers entirely.

“Claude Code offers a mindset shift,” he explained. “Instead of being in the driver’s seat, you’re the reviewer of the changes that Claude introduces. You’re guiding the vision and direction.”

This shift redefined what writing code means at Brex. Rather than spending time on implementation details, engineers now focus on architecture and problem solving. The result is not just faster code it is better code.

Breaking Down Barriers Between Technical and Non-Technical Roles

While the Product AI team was discovering new ways to iterate on code quality, Andy Reed was having a completely different kind of breakthrough.

As a content designer, Reed had always relied on engineers for anything that touched the codebase. Updating a simple string meant filing a ticket and waiting. It was slow, frustrating, and blocked his ability to move independently.

Claude Code changed that. Reed now makes pull requests directly. But the bigger shift came when he tackled a project that had sat on the backlog indefinitely: integrating comprehensive content guidelines into every component of Brex’s design system.

“It would have taken me probably weeks if not months doing it manually,” Reed explained. Using Claude Code, he completed the project in a few days, systematically pulling content-specific guidelines from internal style guides, accessibility standards, and external best practices  and embedding them directly into the design system components.

Democratising Data Access Across the Organisation

Sumeet Marwaha’s Data and Analytics team was solving a different problem: making data accessible to everyone at Brex, not just people who know SQL.

The team built Brex Explorer a text-to-SQL interface powered by Claude Code and MCP servers. Now, a sales manager can ask in plain text: “How many customers exist with over $10 million in their Brex account in Jacksonville, Florida and were onboarded in the last year?” The system translates the query, runs it, and summarises the results.

No SQL knowledge needed. No data analyst required. Just a question, typed in plain English.

The second major impact came from their AI data engineering agent. Tasks that previously required deep specialist knowledge  like adding new data tables with all the necessary file edits and test configurations  can now be completed by any engineer on the team, regardless of their data background.

“It’s like a 4x speed increase across maybe 2x more people that are contributing,” Marwaha noted.

How Brex Scaled Claude Code Best Practices Company-Wide

Adoption at scale only works if the tool is used consistently and well. As Claude Code spread across Brex, teams developed best practices that are now standard across the organisation:

• Structured Context Management: Each major directory in the monorepo now has its own CLAUDE.md file containing domain-specific context. New engineers can understand Mastercard integration details or banking regulations without relying on tribal knowledge from a colleague.
• Automated Documentation: The Product AI team implemented CI/CD checks that verify when code changes might outdate documentation, prompting automatic updates. “Having up-to-date documentation is something you can trust it’s so powerful,” Gimenes emphasised.
• Context-Aware Commands: Teams created custom slash commands that automatically load relevant context before executing. The /submit-pr command, for instance, fetches git status, recent changes, and related PR information before submitting.
•  Start with Discovery: Before making changes, engineers now use Claude Code to understand the codebase first. “Being able to find what you need is not really stored in some staff engineer’s brain anymore,” Marwaha observed. “It’s in the codebase, accessible to everyone.”

These practices did not come from a central mandate. They emerged organically from teams solving real problems, then got shared and adopted across the organisation because they actually worked.

What Brex Is Building Next with Claude Code

Brex teams are already planning the next phase of what becomes possible with Claude Code embedded into their workflows.

The Data team is preparing to tackle projects that were previously too complex to justify including analysing trillions of credit card transaction itemisation data points, work that was impractical before Claude Code made it feasible. They are also building role-specific agents, including one designed to automate RevOps tasks.

The Product AI team is working toward more sophisticated context management, where documentation updates itself automatically as code changes, and context remains decentralised but always accessible to anyone in the organisation.

The direction is clear. Claude Code at Brex is not a productivity tool that gets used in one department. It is becoming the connective layer between how Brex builds software and how every person at the company technical or not contributes to that process.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, Brex Claude Code productivity is not a single number or a single use case. It is a shift in how an entire company thinks about building software.

Engineers are refining problems more deeply instead of rushing to implement. Content designers are making pull requests and building plugins. Data analysts are querying trillions of rows in plain English. And the entire organisation is accessing codebase knowledge that used to live only in senior engineers’ heads.

The 3 to 4x productivity gains are real. But the more lasting change is structural  Claude Code has made Brex a company where technical work is no longer limited to people with technical backgrounds. That is the kind of shift that compounds over time.

FAQs

1. How is Brex using Claude Code to improve productivity?

Brex uses Claude Code across three distinct areas: engineering teams use it for faster iteration and better code quality; non-technical employees like content designers use it to make direct code contributions; and the data team uses it to build tools that make data accessible to the entire company without requiring SQL knowledge. Teams report 3 to 4x productivity improvements on specific tasks.

2. Who at Brex uses Claude Code?

Claude Code has reached 50% adoption across Brex as a whole, and it is not limited to engineers. Andy Reed, a Senior Content Designer, uses it to make pull requests and build Figma plugins. Sumeet Marwaha, Head of Data and Analytics, used it to build Brex Explorer, a text-to-SQL tool. The tool spans technical and non-technical roles across the company.

3. What is Brex Explorer and how does it work?

Brex Explorer is a text-to-SQL interface built by Brex’s Data and Analytics team using Claude Code and MCP servers. It allows any employee to type a question in plain English and receive a structured data query result without needing to write SQL or understand database schemas. It significantly reduces dependence on data analysts for routine data requests.

4. What are CLAUDE.md files and why does Brex use them?

CLAUDE.md files are context files that Brex places in each major directory of their monorepo. They contain domain-specific information like Mastercard integration rules or relevant banking regulations that Claude Code reads automatically when working in that part of the codebase. This eliminates the need for new engineers to rely on colleagues for tribal knowledge.

5. How did Claude Code help Brex’s content designer?

Andy Reed, a Senior Content Designer with no prior coding background, used Claude Code to complete a months-long backlog project in a few days integrating content guidelines across every component in Brex’s design system. He also built a Figma plugin that reviews designs against Brex’s standards. Both projects would have required significant engineering time before Claude Code.