What Is Growth Engineering? Here's How It Really Works

In this episode, Amir chats with Jason Fellin, Head of Growth Engineering at OnX Maps, to unpack what makes growth engineering unique. Jason shares how his team focuses on speed, experimentation, and measurable business impact rather than long-term architecture. From hiring strategies to cross-functional collaboration with marketing, this conversation offers a tactical look at building and leading a growth engineering org.

🧠 Key Takeaways:

Validate, Don’t Overbuild: Growth engineering emphasizes testing hypotheses quickly rather than building production-grade features from the start.

Non-traditional Skills Matter: Jason looks for candidates with backgrounds in psychology, finance, or even startups—people who bring statistical thinking and business curiosity.

Tight Marketing Integration: The growth team plays a critical technical role in enabling marketing through experimentation, CRM tools, and MarTech stack support.

Execution Is Kanban, Not Scrum: Speed and flexibility drive the team’s Kanban approach, enabling more fluid iteration on experiments and faster follow-ups on wins.

⏱️ Timestamped Highlights:

00:00 – Intro to Jason Fellin and OnX Maps’ product ecosystem

02:05 – What growth engineering is and why it’s different

04:07 – Skill sets that matter on a growth engineering team

07:19 – Adapting to short-lived code and failed experiments

09:44 – Measuring business impact and tracking team contributions

11:46 – Relationship between growth engineering and marketing

16:04 – Why the team uses Kanban instead of Scrum

19:28 – Advice for engineers who want to move into growth

22:58 – How to connect with Jason

💬 Quote of the Episode:

“We scope to validate, not build… Anything that we build can just be tossed in the wayside of the digital dustbin.” – Jason Fellin

💡 Career Tips (from the episode):

Cultivate a scientific curiosity—always ask “What would happen if…?”

Learn basic statistics—you don’t need deep math, but you should understand how experiment data informs decisions.

Focus on business impact—engineers with a product mindset and interest in KPIs thrive in growth roles.

Practice scoping for speed—know when to prioritize fast iteration over scalable architecture.