Delivered next-generation platform in nine months instead of multiple years for self build
Delivers single-digit query times against projected data growth, where previous solution would take 60+
Redirected hundreds of engineering hours each quarter toward product innovation
Ships new capabilities three times faster through automation
Leverages Google Cloud roadmap to accelerate product development
Kitman Labs uses Google Cloud to help build the blueprint for performance with a future-proof data architecture.
Kitman Labs uses Google Cloud to help build the blueprint for performance with a future-proof data architecture.
Preparing for a data explosion
BigQuery delivered sub-two-second query performance against the massive dataset while providing a serverless architecture that eliminated infrastructure management. Looker offered native Gemini integration, an advanced semantic layer, and embedded analytics capabilities that aligned with our long-term roadmap.
Craig Bailey
Director of Platform, Kitman Labs
Modern sports organizations rely on hundreds of technologies to capture athlete information, including wearable sensors, GPS tracking, medical systems, strength and conditioning platforms, video analytics, and IoT devices. Every system contributes valuable insights, but together they create enormous complexity, confusion, and fragmentation.
That’s where Kitman Labs comes in. Founded in Ireland in 2012, Kitman Labs launched its Injury Profiler solution in 2013 with its first client—Leinster Rugby. Since then, the company has become a world leading sports science and performance intelligence company, scaling to work with more than 2,000 organizations in 26 countries including leagues, federations and teams from the NFL, Premier League, MLS, NCAA, and other elite sports organizations worldwide.
Its cloud-based Kitman Labs® iP: Intelligence Platform enables teams to centralize athlete data, monitor performance, reduce injury risk, and make more informed decisions throughout an athlete's career. “Our mission is to unlock the limits of human accomplishment,” says Lauren Robinson, Director of Product at Kitman Labs. “Through architecture that breaks down data silos, delivery of insights and intelligence, we enable our clients to reach their greatest potential through shared intelligence.”
That mission became increasingly difficult as professional sports entered an era of explosive data growth. Kitman Labs forecasts that clubs will soon collect more than 100 data points per athlete every day, producing more than eight million data points annually for a single club and exceeding 15 billion data points each year across its customer base. These internal statistics are based on 25 athletes per squad for 10 squads over a year. To meet this demand, the company recognized its existing reporting architecture would eventually struggle to keep pace with the volume and complexity of customer data. Customers also expected enterprise-scale performance, regardless of dataset size, sophisticated business intelligence capabilities, and AI-powered experiences that could deliver answers instantly.
Rather than building every capability internally, the company wanted to embrace a partnership strategy that would allow engineers to innovate more quickly instead of maintaining infrastructure.
Near real-time intelligence with
My iP on Google Cloud
Selecting the right cloud platform was a deliberate process. Kitman Labs evaluated six technology vendors and completed three proof-of-concept projects, creating a 2-billion-row synthetic dataset—equivalent to approximately 250 years of customer data—to rigorously test performance at enterprise scale.
“Google Cloud consistently outperformed the competition,” says Craig Bailey, Director of Platform at Kitman Labs. “BigQuery delivered sub-two-second query performance against the massive dataset while providing a serverless architecture that eliminated infrastructure management. Looker offered native Gemini integration, an advanced semantic layer, and embedded analytics capabilities that aligned with our long-term roadmap. Together with Google Cloud's AI portfolio, this enabled us to accelerate innovation instead of building foundational capabilities from scratch.”
Using these solutions, Kitman Labs engineers worked with Google Cloud Partner Devoteam to create My iP, the intelligence layer embedded within Kitman Labs' Intelligence Platform. My iP brings dashboards, reports, self-service analytics, and AI-powered insights into a single workspace where users already manage athlete performance.
Working together, Devoteam and Kitman Labs engineers designed a state-of-the-art ELT pipeline using Datastream for semi real-time Change Data Capture (CDC) from their Ruby/React databases directly into BigQuery, utilizing Dataform for complex data transformations. A multi-tenant Looker Embed environment managed entirely through Infrastructure as Code (using a custom Looker Terraform provider developed by Devoteam) was created to align with Kitman Labs’ organizational needs. Behind the scenes, Google Cloud technologies work together to deliver near real-time intelligence at global scale. Datastream continuously captures operational data and streams it into BigQuery. Dataform organizes and transforms the data using a medallion architecture optimized for analytics. Looker provides embedded dashboards, semantic modeling, and self-service business intelligence directly within My iP. Finally, Gemini Enterprise powers AI experiences that allow users to use conversational analytics within Looker Embed to ask complex questions using natural language.
Now, non-technical users can perform advanced querying using natural language. For example, a performance director can request, “Show me every athlete who had a soft-tissue injury in their third season and how their training load changed during the six weeks beforehand.” Within seconds, My iP searches across a decade of historical athlete data, applies business context, validates the underlying data model, and returns trusted insights. Google Cloud data engineering agents accelerate pipeline development and data transformations for Kitman Labs' own engineering teams.
Helping coaches and athletes
make decisions in seconds
For Kitman Labs, the results were dramatic. What represented more than five years of previous development effort was replaced by a modern platform delivered in roughly nine months, with customers gaining access to initial functionality in only three months.
The impact of My iP is measured not only in technical performance but also in how quickly sports organizations can make critical decisions. “Queries that once required more than 60 seconds now complete in under two seconds. For our users, that means a sports scientist is able to get an answer to a question before the coach has left the room and the conversation has ended," Bailey says.
Queries that once required more than 60 seconds now complete in under two seconds. For our users, that means a sports scientist is able to get an answer to a question before the coach has left the room and the conversation has ended.
Craig Bailey
Director of Platform, Kitman Labs
By eliminating delays, coaches can adjust training plans immediately, medical teams can identify injury risks earlier, and performance staff can collaborate using a shared, real-time view of every athlete. Years of athlete information that previously existed across disconnected systems are now unified within a single intelligence layer.
The platform has also transformed Kitman Labs' own product development process. The company is now shipping new features three times faster than before, while hundreds of engineering hours every quarter have been redirected from infrastructure maintenance toward product innovation. Rather than spending valuable time managing data platforms, engineers can focus on delivering new capabilities that help customers improve athlete performance.
With Google Cloud's AI capabilities built natively throughout its architecture, Kitman Labs will continue to expand My iP with increasingly intelligent, conversational experiences that help organizations uncover deeper insights, anticipate performance trends, and make trusted decisions in real time.
Kitman Labs is a world-leading sports science and performance intelligence company.
Industry: Technology
Location: Ireland
Products: Datastream, BigQuery, Dataform, Looker, Gemini Enterprise
About Google Cloud partner – Devoteam
Devoteam is a Google Cloud Partner and a Managed Service Partner with 650+ experts holding 20 Google Cloud Competencies. Devoteam has migrated 1M+ users to Google Workspace and helped hundreds grow on Google Cloud. A leader in AI, modernization, security, and work transformation, Devoteam won five 2026 Google Cloud Partner of the Year awards, including Global Workspace Partner of the Year.
