At Ellevation, we believe that ownership is one of the most powerful catalysts for growth — both for our engineers and for our product. One of the ways we put this belief into practice is through a model we call Feature Leading. A Feature Lead is an engineer who owns a product feature from the moment it’s identified as ready for engineering — working closely with product and design from the start — through to deployment and release. It’s a role that blends technical leadership with a deep sense of ownership — and it’s something every engineer on our team is empowered to take on.
Why Feature Leading?
The Feature Leading model emerged from a simple question: How can we give engineers more opportunity to lead while making our product development process more effective? Too often, ownership gets concentrated with a handful of senior engineers or managers. We wanted a structure that intentionally distributes ownership, encourages collaboration, and grows leadership muscle across the team. Feature Leading enables all of that — and more. By placing an engineer in the driver’s seat of a feature, we unlock several key benefits:
- Clear technical planning. With a dedicated lead, the team starts with a well-thought-out development plan that accounts for architecture, testing, deployment, monitoring, and more.
- Better communication. The Feature Lead becomes the go-to person for status updates, risks, and technical context — for both engineers and stakeholders like product and design.
- More growth, less bottlenecking. As engineers lead more complex features over time, they build the skills and confidence to take on increasingly challenging work — freeing up senior devs to coach and unblock instead of quarterbacking every project.
What We Value
Feature Leading isn’t just about shipping features — it reflects a set of values that guide how we build together:
- Small, safe steps. We prioritize shipping in small increments with full test and deploy readiness. Feature flags help us release safely and iteratively.
- Empowerment and learning. Every engineer has the opportunity to lead. Complexity scales with experience, not with title.
- Collaboration, not silos. Feature Leads may guide the work, but everyone contributes. Team feedback, design reviews, and async discussions ensure shared understanding.
- Balance planning with discovery. We aim to de-risk early — but we also expect to learn and adjust as we go.
- Communication is key. Feature Leads provide continuity and context to teammates and stakeholders alike.
What Does a Feature Lead Do?
While the emphasis is on why, here’s a high-level view of what the role entails:
- Work closely with product and design to shape the problem space, define requirements, and translate those into a step-by-step development plan
- Suggest faster or more effective alternatives if they better serve the user or the business
- Identify risks and unknowns early, and bring in collaborators to help
- Work with the team to break down work into JIRA tasks that are parallelizable and clear
- Lead design discussions (synchronously or asynchronously), and produce lightweight documentation
- Consider end-to-end delivery: testing, deployment, feature flags, post-launch monitoring
- Reflect with the team when the work wraps up, optionally through a retrospective
None of this happens in a vacuum. Feature Leads are supported by staff engineers, engineering managers, and product partners. For newer engineers, the process often starts with a co-led or mentored feature. As experience builds, so does confidence — and eventually, so does complexity.
Growing Leaders, Building Better Software
Feature Leading has become a core part of how we work. It’s not just about being efficient or reducing coordination overhead (though it helps with that). It’s about creating the conditions where engineers are trusted, challenged, and supported to do some of the best work of their careers. For us, it’s a model that scales. As our team grows, and our product evolves, Feature Leading ensures that technical ownership grows alongside it — distributed, thoughtful, and accountable.
