Gradient AI Career Growth & Development

How does your team cultivate a culture of learning, whether that’s through hackathons, lunch and learns, access to online courses or other resources?

We foster a culture of learning by anchoring our work in a bold shared vision. When the path forward challenges us, it sparks growth and encourages each team member to develop new skills, adopt better approaches and rise to meet the moment. Ambitious goals act as a catalyst, pushing us beyond what is comfortable and into new territory. In contrast, when the vision is small or the demands too familiar, it is easy to stay still. But with a clear and inspiring vision, we build collective momentum as we embrace the discomfort that comes with learning and transforming together.

How does this culture positively impact the work your team produces?

A strong vision acts as a forcing function. It sparks movement, shared ownership and momentum. It gives teams clear direction, aligns incentives and creates an environment where learning and growth happen naturally. When someone learns and shares a better pattern, the whole team benefits. Over time, this builds a virtuous cycle that continuously accelerates progress.

Take our legacy API. It was generating revenue but was flawed, fire-prone and hard to maintain. The team was talented and staffed, but progress was stalled. What changed? We introduced a bold, company aligned vision: Scale the API and make it foundational for new products.

That shift created urgency and clarity. We quickly mobilized to redesign the API and, in the process, introduced major improvements — better patterns, updated processes and modern architecture. These changes happened not because someone mandated them but because the vision made them obvious and exciting. The result? A better API, stronger team momentum and a culture of growth fueled by purpose.

What advice would you give to other engineers or engineering leaders interested in creating a culture of learning on their own team?

First, there will always be tradeoffs between product needs and engineering health. But if you consistently prioritize business goals at the cost of engineering well-being, morale will suffer. Cast a vision that includes building excellent systems and processes. Make space for best practices and time to implement them, so engineers can grow by working on and owning increasingly better technical solutions.

Second, if senior leadership is not providing a strong vision, you still need to create and push one. You will eventually need leadership to support it, but you cannot wait for them to go first. Their attention is often pulled in many directions, and they rely on your initiative to surface opportunities, identify gaps and keep momentum alive. That momentum is what drives learning, adoption of better patterns and team growth. Your vision can be the spark that unlocks long-term progress.