The Roles in a Growth Team

The Roles in a Growth Team

A well-composed growth team includes a mix of skills that together cover strategy, execution, analysis, and creative problem-solving. While the exact roles vary by company size and stage, there are several core functions that every effective growth team needs. Getting the composition right is one of the most important decisions you make when building a growth capability, because the team's skills determine the types of experiments they can run and the speed at which they can iterate.

Core Roles

• Growth Lead: Sets the strategic direction, prioritizes experiments, and ensures alignment with business objectives. This person is the bridge between the growth team and executive leadership. They own the North Star Metric, maintain the experiment backlog, and facilitate the sprint cadence. The growth lead needs a combination of strategic thinking, analytical skills, and people management ability. Our guide to assembling a growth team covers the hiring process in detail.
• Data Analyst: Designs experiment measurement frameworks, analyzes results, and identifies opportunities in the data. This role is critical for ensuring experiments produce reliable, actionable insights rather than misleading or inconclusive results. The analyst needs strong statistical skills, proficiency with analytics tools, and the ability to communicate complex findings in simple terms.
• Growth Engineer: Builds the technical infrastructure for experiments, from landing pages and A/B tests to integrations and automation. Speed of implementation directly impacts experiment velocity. A growth engineer needs to be comfortable building quickly, accepting technical debt in the name of speed, and iterating based on results.
• Designer: Creates the visual and user experience elements for experiments. Good design is often the difference between a test that produces clear results and one that fails due to poor execution. The growth designer needs to work quickly, be comfortable with imperfect solutions, and focus on conversion impact rather than aesthetic perfection.
• Growth Marketer: Manages channels, creates content, and executes campaigns. Brings deep knowledge of specific acquisition and retention channels like paid search, social advertising, email marketing, or content marketing. The growth marketer translates experiment ideas into channel-specific implementations.

Supporting Roles

Depending on your business and growth stage, additional roles may be valuable:

• Product Manager: Especially important when growth experiments involve product changes. Ensures that growth experiments align with the product roadmap and user experience standards.
• Copywriter: Dedicated writing support can dramatically improve the quality and speed of experiments that involve messaging, email sequences, or content creation.
• CRO Specialist: Focuses specifically on conversion rate optimization, bringing specialized expertise in landing page optimization, form design, and user flow analysis.

Scaling the Team

Small companies may have one person covering multiple roles. A single growth generalist who can analyze data, write copy, build simple landing pages, and manage ad campaigns can drive significant results. As the team grows, these roles become more specialized, allowing deeper expertise in each area.

The key is ensuring that all core functions are covered, even if individual team members wear multiple hats in the early stages. A growth team that lacks any one of these capabilities will have blind spots. A clear organizational design supports the team in covering all essential functions that limit its effectiveness. If you cannot hire for a role, identify whether someone in the organization can dedicate part of their time to the growth team, or whether the gap can be filled through freelancers or agency support.

Team Composition Principles

When building your growth team, prioritize versatility over specialization in the early stages, hire for learning ability and adaptability over specific tool expertise. Understanding group dynamics helps you build a team that collaborates effectively, ensure the team includes both analytical and creative thinkers, and look for people who are comfortable with ambiguity and energized by experimentation. The best growth teams are not necessarily the most experienced. They are the most curious, collaborative, and willing to learn.