A Growth Lead
This role is everywhere right now
Curious about the “Growth Lead” role you keep hearing about in tech circles?
If you’re following trends in tech or SaaS, you’ve likely heard about the “Growth Lead” position.
This role is everywhere right now—and it’s not just another name for a marketing manager.
A Growth Lead focuses on user acquisition, activation, retention, and revenue, turning growth strategies into tangible results.
What Is a Growth Lead?
A Growth Lead (or Growth Manager) drives business growth by attracting new customers, increasing engagement, and improving retention. They connect marketing and product teams and use data to find the best growth methods.
Where Growth Leads Work
Usually at startups or fast-growing companies, either within marketing or a dedicated growth team. They play a key role in helping businesses scale effectively.
A Growth Lead is responsible for finding and executing the fastest and most effective ways to grow a company’s user base and revenue.
Unlike traditional marketing roles focusing mainly on awareness or branding, Growth Leads are hands-on and constantly experiment to find what works.
They work across teams to ensure ideas aren’t just discussed—they’re implemented.
What Does a Growth Lead Do?
Execute Growth Strategies
Growth Leads don’t just develop plans—they implement them. This means launching new features, running experiments, optimizing onboarding, and tracking every result.Optimize Acquisition Channels
They test and improve digital marketing, SEO, paid ads, content, and partnerships, constantly measuring what efficiently brings in the most users.Collaborate Across Teams
Growth isn’t siloed. A Growth Lead works closely with product, engineering, and customer support to ensure product changes drive growth.Run Growth Campaigns
Growth leads launch and manage campaigns—like new feature rollouts or referral programs—and handle everything from writing emails to testing landing pages and measuring conversions.Make Data-Driven Decisions
They live in the data: watching key metrics, analyzing user behavior, and adjusting tactics based on what works.
Data Science Changing the Role
Growth today is powered by data. The best Growth Leads are increasingly becoming data scientists in their own right. Here’s why:
Experimentation & Testing: Running ongoing A/B tests requires designing experiments, understanding statistical significance, and interpreting results.
User Segmentation: Data science skills help Growth Leads identify high-value user segments, spot churn risks, and tailor campaigns for specific groups.
Attribution Modeling: Understanding which channels drive growth relies on building and analyzing complex attribution models.
Predictive Analytics: Growth Leads who know how to build or use predictive models can forecast campaign outcomes and user behavior before implementing major initiatives.
If you want to excel as a Growth Lead today, learning SQL, Python for data analysis, or even basic machine learning concepts isn’t optional—it’s a competitive advantage.
Artificial Intelligence Will Evolve the Role
Automated Experimentation: AI can help generate, run, and analyze hundreds of growth experiments at scale, much faster than humans alone.
Personalization at Scale: AI-driven tools can automatically tailor messaging, onboarding flows, and product recommendations to individual users.
More brilliant Insights: AI can surface hidden patterns in user behavior and suggest new growth opportunities that would be hard for a human to spot.
Optimization Loops: With AI, Growth Leads will spend less time pulling reports and more time acting on live insights from real-time dashboards.
In short: The best Growth Leads will learn to harness AI tools—understanding what’s possible, how to ask the right questions, and when to trust (or question) automated recommendations.
The Need for Growth Leads
Having a good product doesn’t guarantee growth. Companies need someone who owns the process of turning ideas into actual results—someone who can experiment, measure, and scale what works.
That’s where the Growth Lead comes in. Is This You?
If you’re excited by rapid experimentation, love using data (and want to learn more about data science and AI), and want to see the direct impact of your work on a company’s success, the Growth Lead role might be your perfect fit.
Want more tech growth insights like this?
Subscribe to receive weekly posts on growth strategy and how it shapes the future of scaling in your inbox.