Engineering productivity platform Uplevel Inc. announced a $20 million early-stage fundraising today that brings its total amount raised to $34 million.

The Series A round was led by Cota Capital and saw participation from seed investors such as Norwest, Madrona and Voyager, plus new individual investors including Bruce Chizen, former chief executive officer of Adobe Inc.

Uplevel is a five-year-old startup that has largely stayed under the radar until now despite offering a unique productivity platform that could be helpful to many kinds of enterprises. Using Uplevel’s tools, it’s possible for engineering teams to analyze the effectiveness of their individual developers by grabbing data from the various software tools they use

Uplevel’s software analyzes this data to show how developers spend their time, and it can highlight if a particular worker is perhaps spending too much time in meetings, or doesn’t have enough focus time, for instance. It can also determine if someone has been assigned more tasks than can be realistically handled.

Uplevel co-founder and Chief Executive Joe Levy explained that the platform’s main advantage is that it helps to prevent employee burnout. “We are helping organizations work more effectively, retain their engineering talent, and deliver products their teams are proud to build,” he said.

Indeed, many executives today increasingly worried about both the effectiveness and wellness of their workforces amid challenging new working conditions. Companies are of course very keen to ensure their best employees don’t burn themselves out through an overload of work, but they have no easy way to determine if individual employees are under too much pressure. Although there are many tools available that can measure progress and productivity, Uplevel stands apart for its focus on the mental health of employees.

It’s this data-driven focus on healthy productivity that has driven Uplevel’s growth over the last few quarters, officials said.

Uplevel’s software goes further than just identifying which employees are under stress, as it can also make recommendations to ensure healthier work conditions. The company is also apparently very keen to practice what it preaches. Earlier this year, it began testing a four-day workweek for its own employees, who worked Monday to Thursday without additional hours or a salary reduction.

In a blog post, Levy said the experiment went “better than expected,” and the 35-person company got just as much work done, while increasing job satisfaction. The experiment has now been extended until the end of the year.

Uplevel said it has managed to double its customer base over the last year, adding the likes of Remitly Inc., Avalara Inc. and Qualtrics Inc. In addition to today’s funding, Uplevel said it is hiring a new chief technology officer, Nimrod Vered, who previously held roles at Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc., among others.

Uplevel was coy on how it plans to use the capital from today’s round, simply saying it will help engineering organizations around the world better meet their product goals without burning out their teams.

Image: Uplevel