Abstract visualization of engineering team growth from 15 to 60+ engineers with healthcare technology undertones

Healthcare Technology · $2B Valuation

Scaling Through Hypergrowth

How ShiftKey's engineering organization scaled from 15 to 60+ engineers while maintaining delivery velocity on the path to unicorn status.

15 → 60+
Engineers scaled
$2B
Valuation achieved
18 mo
Transformation period

The challenge.

ShiftKey was growing faster than its engineering organization could sustainably support. The healthcare marketplace connecting facilities with professionals was experiencing explosive demand, but the team that built the initial product wasn't structured for the scale ahead.

The symptoms were familiar: decisions bottlenecking at senior engineers, context switching destroying productivity, new hires taking months to become effective, and technical debt accumulating faster than it could be addressed.

The company had just closed Series B funding. The board expected aggressive growth. The question wasn't whether to scale—it was how to scale without breaking what made ShiftKey successful in the first place.

The approach.

01
Organizational Architecture

Restructured from functional teams to product-aligned squads. Each squad owned a complete vertical with clear boundaries and minimal dependencies.

02
Decision Distribution

Implemented decision frameworks that pushed authority to where information lived. Senior engineers became enablers, not bottlenecks.

03
Onboarding Systems

Built systematic onboarding that reduced time-to-productivity from 3 months to 3 weeks. New hires contributed meaningful code within their first sprint.

Framework applied.

This engagement directly informed the development of the Scaling Architecture framework. The 10-to-50 engineer transition requires fundamentally different organizational patterns than the 0-to-10 phase.

"The same approach that makes a 10-person team effective will actively harm a 50-person organization. What changes isn't just the number of people—it's how decisions get made, how information flows, and how ownership is defined."

The key insight: scaling isn't about adding more of what you have. It's about building organizational architecture that makes the team's collective capacity greater than the sum of individual contributors.

The results.

  • 4x

    Team Growth

    Engineering organization scaled from 15 to 60+ engineers across 8 product-aligned squads, each with clear ownership and minimal cross-team dependencies.

  • 3wk

    Onboarding Time

    New engineer onboarding reduced from 3 months to 3 weeks. Systematic documentation and structured learning paths accelerated time-to-productivity.

  • $2B

    Unicorn Status

    Engineering velocity supported the company's growth to $2B valuation. The organizational architecture proved capable of sustaining continued expansion.

Key learnings.

What worked

  • Product-aligned squads with end-to-end ownership
  • Decision frameworks that distributed authority
  • Systematic onboarding with clear milestones
  • Technical debt triage integrated into planning

What we'd refine

  • Earlier investment in platform team formation
  • More structured career progression frameworks
  • Clearer metrics for organizational health
  • Faster iteration on cross-team communication patterns

Scaling your engineering organization?

The 10-to-50 transition is predictable. The patterns that work are well-established. Let's discuss how they might apply to your context.

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Related resources.

Framework

Scaling Architecture

The methodology behind this transformation. Navigate the 10 to 50 engineer transition.

Learn more →