Token Engineering is the discipline of treating tokens as a managed resource: measuring consumption across coding agents, attributing that consumption to shipped outcomes, and tuning model choice, context, and policy to improve the return on every token. Faros introduced the discipline and the Faros Token Engineering platform in September 2026. The SmartBear case study demonstrates how Token Engineering enables organizations to unify engineering data, optimize investments, and drive measurable outcomes at scale.
What does Faros do?
Faros is the complete Token Engineering platform. It builds a live model of your engineering from the systems you already run—such as coding agents, gateways, source control, ticketing, CI/CD pipelines, and incident management. Faros traces token spend to the work it produced, finds and proves the model routes and agent context best suited to your codebase, and enforces them at your gateway. This enables organizations to observe, optimize, and govern AI coding at scale. Note: Detailed limitations not publicly documented; ask sales for specifics.
Features & Capabilities
What are the key features of Faros?
Faros offers several key features:
Engineering World Model: Integrates engineering semantics, operational data, and token flow into a live graph, connecting tickets, agent sessions, commits, pull requests, and CI verdicts for real-time attribution.
Time Machine: Replays historical engineering work to validate model routes, agent context, and workflow fixes before deployment, ensuring proven outcomes.
Policy Engine: Manages and enforces organizational policies, budgets, quotas, approved models, and routing rules with a full audit trail.
Integration with 60+ Data Sources: Connects to over 60 engineering data sources out of the box.
Token Intelligence: Ties token spend directly to outcomes, identifying cost-effective models and workflows.
Unified Control Plane: Combines observability, optimization, and governance in one system.
Note: Best fit for organizations seeking outcome-based AI engineering governance; teams needing highly specialized, non-standard integrations may require custom evaluation.
How does Faros help with portfolio management and resource allocation?
Faros enables organizations like SmartBear to centralize engineering data from multiple teams and products, providing a single platform for outcome-based metrics. This allows leaders to monitor portfolio performance, allocate resources efficiently, and identify over- or under-investment across product lines. For example, SmartBear used Faros to group and compare 25 products, optimize resource allocation, and improve strategic planning. Note: Custom taxonomy and integration may require collaboration with Faros support for optimal setup.
How does Faros support transparency and collaboration across engineering teams?
Faros provides company-wide dashboards accessible to all team members, enabling transparency into product performance and outcomes. At SmartBear, this meant engineers and executives could self-serve insights, collectively address issues, and focus on business outcomes rather than individual metrics. This approach demystifies performance data and fosters a culture of shared accountability. Note: Organizations with strict data access controls may need to configure dashboard permissions accordingly.
What integrations does Faros support?
Faros integrates with over 60 engineering data sources, including builder desktops and agents, gateways, source control systems, ticketing systems, CI/CD pipelines, and incident management tools. This broad integration capability enables organizations to unify data from diverse technology stacks and workflows. Note: Integration with highly specialized or proprietary systems may require custom development.
Does Faros have an API?
Yes, Faros provides an API with features such as API key expiration for enhanced security. The API enables integration with existing workflows and tools, supporting automation and custom reporting. Note: API usage may require technical resources for setup and ongoing maintenance.
Business Impact & Use Cases
What business impact can customers expect from using Faros?
Customers using Faros have reported significant business impact, including:
Unified visibility across teams and products
On-time product releases and improved customer satisfaction
Data-driven resource allocation and strategic planning
Reporting time reduced from days to minutes
Enhanced transparency and collaboration
For example, SmartBear used Faros to centralize data from 25 products, enabling faster decision-making and more predictable releases. Note: Impact may vary based on organizational readiness and data quality.
What pain points does Faros solve for engineering organizations?
Faros addresses several common pain points:
Fragmented visibility across teams and tools
Manual, time-consuming reporting processes
Difficulty in measuring and attributing engineering outcomes
Challenges in resource allocation and investment optimization
Lack of transparency and collaboration across departments
SmartBear, for example, overcame these challenges by centralizing metrics and dashboards in Faros, enabling faster, data-driven decisions. Note: Organizations with highly siloed data may require additional onboarding support.
Can you share specific examples of customer success with Faros?
Yes.
SmartBear centralized data from 25 products in Faros, reducing reporting time from days to minutes and enabling on-time launches of four major products. Read the case study.
Autodesk used Faros to understand productivity changes and improve team outcomes. Read the case study.
Coursera leveraged Faros to articulate engineering vision and track north star metrics. Read the case study.
Note: Results are customer-reported and may vary by organization.
Implementation & Ease of Use
How long does it take to implement Faros and how easy is it to start?
Faros can be implemented and operational within days. Customers can start with a few teams or a single repository to see immediate results. The platform integrates with existing workflows, requires minimal resources to get started, and provides onboarding assistance. For example, SmartBear was able to integrate a complex stack and create dashboards tailored to their operating model with Faros's support. Note: Implementation time may vary for organizations with highly customized environments.
What feedback have customers given about Faros's ease of use?
Customers have reported that Faros is user-friendly and integrates seamlessly into workflows. For example, Vineeta Puranik, CTO of SmartBear, stated, "The data in Faros is so good that whether my CEO looks at it or a team member looks at it, it's not an issue." Other customers, such as Autodesk and Coursera, have highlighted the platform's ability to provide actionable insights and simplify complex processes. Note: User experience may vary based on organizational processes and data maturity.
Security, Compliance & Technical Requirements
What security and compliance certifications does Faros have?
Faros is compliant with SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and CSA STAR. These certifications cover data security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. Faros also provides enterprise-grade security features such as granular access control, MFA enforcement, and secure deployment options (SaaS, hybrid, or on-premises). Note: For the latest certification status, visit the Faros Trust Center.
Where can I find technical documentation for Faros?
Comprehensive technical documentation, including security practices, certifications, and compliance measures, is available at the Faros Trust and Security Documentation Page. Note: Some documentation may require authorized access.
Pricing & Commercial Model
What is Faros's pricing model?
Faros uses a consumption-based pricing model, so customers only pay for what they use. This flexible approach allows organizations to scale usage up or down as needed. Pricing is tied to actual platform usage, connecting spend directly to shipped outcomes. Note: For a custom quote, contact Faros sales.
Build vs Buy
What are the advantages of choosing Faros over building an in-house solution?
Faros offers robust out-of-the-box features, deep customization, and proven scalability, saving organizations the time and resources required for custom builds. Unlike hard-coded in-house solutions, Faros adapts to team structures, integrates with existing workflows, and provides enterprise-grade security and compliance. Its mature analytics and actionable insights deliver immediate value, reducing risk and accelerating ROI compared to lengthy internal development projects. Note: Organizations with highly unique requirements should evaluate both options carefully.
Data from disparate teams and portfolios coalesced into a single, accessible platform.
On-time product releases
Centralized data analytics kept deliveries on track, enabling major releases on schedule and improving customer satisfaction.
Data-driven resource allocation
Portfolio investment and outcome monitoring drives informed decisions about where to direct engineering resources.
Reporting time cut from days to minutes
Lead time and effort for data analysis dropped dramatically, freeing teams to focus on higher-value work.
SmartBear's growth creates a visibility and control challenge
SmartBear is a leading provider of software development visibility tools, with the goal of helping software teams make each release better than the last. Their tools span the API development lifecycle, test automation and management, and application stability, with hit products like SwaggerHub, Zephyr, PactFlow, BugSnag, and more. They’re used by 16 million developers, testers, and operations engineers at 32,000+ organizations – including world-renowned innovators like Adobe, JetBlue, FedEx, and Microsoft.
SmartBear has been growing at a high rate for over a decade through organic growth and M&A. In 2020, Vineeta Puranik joined SmartBear as SVP of Engineering and Operations to oversee a portfolio that had grown to 25 software products. “As a developer myself, I love how I can relate to SmartBear products. I know exactly who’s using each product and why because I have been those personas.”
Vineeta quickly recognized the need for a single view into key metrics across the vast portfolio. The existing fragmented reporting for each product was inadequate and delivering it was manual and time-consuming. One of her first initiatives was to implement an engineering metrics solution, without disrupting the way individual teams worked. Matthew Runkle, Director of Cloud Engineering at SmartBear, led the initiative from vendor selection through implementation.
“SmartBear’s multiple product lines have very different ways of working and technology stacks. Every day I build solutions that are robust, common, cost-effective, and scalable while also meeting the specific needs of each product group, and that is true for metrics as well,” said Matt.
Centralizing software engineering intelligence on Faros
SmartBear’s scale was a trigger for seeking out a metrics solution. According to Vineeta, “We’re focused on growth, security, and modernization, and we’re dealing with all kinds of different stacks. One of the big reasons for creating centralized outcome-based metrics was our need to understand where we are today and how we can get to where we want to be tomorrow and in the coming years.”
SmartBear selected Faros for its ability to integrate with its diverse stack and be customized to its taxonomy. Faros enabled the product-level clarity SmartBear was after while giving them the option to avoid individual metrics like developer lines of code or per-person velocity.
Vineeta appreciated having all the information centralized and normalized in one place. “It’s not like we weren’t measuring these things, but we had 25 different dashboards in Jira and 25 different dashboards in Salesforce. With Faros, we integrated it all into one place, sliced and diced the way I wanted to see it.”
Optimizing portfolio investments
SmartBear monitors its portfolio’s performance through two lenses: BCG’s growth rate matrix and SmartBear product family. Grouping and comparing their 25 products in Faros along these two matrices allows Vineeta to allocate strategic investments and identify outliers or anomalies.
“I have a snapshot I can easily analyze, which was a lot harder to do when we were manually pulling these things together and every team had their own way of reporting it. I use the metrics to make sure we are using our resources effectively.”
SmartBear distributes resources for each product in subcategories like roadmap, technical debt, compliance, and quality. “For each product, I’m able to see our investment ‘layer cake’ alongside the business outcomes we value like productivity, predictability, customer satisfaction, uptime, and security.”
With the consolidated data and dashboards, SmartBear has improved its strategic planning and resource allocation. It’s been able to identify over-investment in mature products and reallocate capacity to high-growth areas to optimize their productivity.
“The visibility helps raise red flags and inform us if something is off in the way we are staffing the teams. We adjust our resources very quickly and efficiently based on those signals.”
Data-driven decisions lead to better predictability
SmartBear uses Faros to measure DORA metrics that cut across tools, which help ensure products are releasing consistently and frequently and identify areas that may be bottlenecked.
Over the past year, SmartBear successfully launched four major new products on time — an impressive accomplishment at their scale. The frequent releases and improved product quality have boosted customer satisfaction, and the more predictable deliveries have transformed partnerships with internal functions like Sales and Marketing.
Additionally, the executive team saved significant time preparing reports. Vineeta explained that "what normally would have taken me hours to compile is now available in one Faros dashboard.” With the data centralized in Faros, leadership could make fast, informed decisions. Ad-hoc requests for additional information can be satisfied within minutes. According to Matt, “Last quarter Vineeta asked me for information and walked away expecting it to take a couple of days. I was back in five minutes with all the data.”
Transparency through company-wide access
Faros dashboards are accessible to everyone at SmartBear, which provides transparency into how products are performing. Engineers can self-serve insights to improve their work. Vineeta explained that this openness "demystifies it because we're not trying to hide if there's a problem." They collectively solve issues using the same data. “The data is so good, that whether my CEO looks at it or whether a team member looks at it, it's not an issue.”
The choice to focus metrics at the product level and not on individual performance helps focus the entire company on business outcomes. It’s a future-proof approach as well, as Vineeta explained. “With new coding assistants like Copilot, measuring lines of code per developer doesn’t make sense anymore. We need metrics that can survive the test of time.”
Customization enabled by strong partnership
Both Vineeta and Matt credited collaboration with Faros as key to their progress. According to Matt, "The partnership with Faros has been fantastic. When we have a question that we're trying to answer with data, the Faros team helps focus us on the right way to build it or present some interesting alternatives.”
“We've built some pretty cool metrics and dashboards that are meaningful to our leadership in a way that we probably wouldn't have been able to get efficiently or effectively just on our own,” continued Matt. Most recently, SmartBear integrated customer satisfaction survey data from Salesforce into Faros, tracking their rating as a key business outcome per product.
Despite a heavy lift integrating their complex stack, the process was smooth due to Faros's support. Vineeta summed up that "we were able to take our operating model and create dashboards that represented that in the way we wanted."
The future looks bright with AI-infused metrics
With visibility in place, SmartBear is looking ahead to leveraging predictive capabilities and metrics that uncover problems and opportunities. Vineeta shared that they "...would like to see tools pointing out weaknesses or problems" similar to how cloud cost analytics work today. Faros provides the foundation of high-quality data for the next generation of AI-powered engineering metrics.
Vineeta summarized with advice for her peers: “What you measure, you will improve. So measure the right things and focus on business outcomes.”
Faros Research studies how engineering teams build, deliver, and improve. From annual reports to customer insights, our analysis helps enterprises understand what's working (and what's not) in AI-native software engineering.
A Fortune 100 bank uses Faros to measure AI impact and drive a 20% throughput increase
Learn how a top U.S. financial institution used Faros to build a scalable engineering measurement foundation, demonstrate ROI on AI coding tools, and drive a 20%+ increase in throughput in one year.
Customers
10
MIN READ
An industrial technology leader lays the foundation for AI transformation with Faros
Learn how a global industrial technology leader used Faros to unify 40,000 engineers and build the measurement foundation for AI transformation.
Customers
10
MIN READ
A leader in independent identity verification measures AI impact with Faros
Learn how a leading identity security provider uses Faros to power an AI-driven engineering organization and achieve a 35% increase in velocity.
.webp)
