When it comes to driving innovation, engineers at AMP “get their hands dirty” — literally.
In order to fully understand the impact of the company’s trash sortation technology, Director of Hardware Engineering Jake Fitzgerald said engineers spend some time at a trash sorting laboratory in Colorado, where they can use actual waste material for testing. Practices like this one empower engineers and other technologists to harness their own ingenuity and put it into use in the real world.
“Both the software and hardware teams are constantly improving our sorting efficiency by brainstorming hypotheses, testing them and then rolling those innovations into production,” Fitzgerald shared.
Innovation is a catalyst for companywide progress, motivating team members to push the boundaries of technology — and build camaraderie in the process. This is certainly the case at Ibotta, where Software Engineering Manager Sam Johnson and those on his team foster creative thinking through various practices, such as hosting weekly “Discovery Sessions” with product and design partners.
Creating an environment that prioritizes innovation doesn’t just positively impact Ibotta’s customers — it brings team members closer together, too.
“Our focus on innovation absolutely shapes our team’s culture for the better, creating an environment built on close collaboration, shared ownership and continuous learning,” Johnson said.
Read on to see what else Fitzgerald and Johnson, along with representatives from Peaksware and Homebot, had to say about how their teams foster innovation as well as how this shapes their work and bolsters their teams’ cultures.
Ibotta’s performance marketing platform enables brands to deliver digital promotions to consumers through a network of publishers.
What practices does your team employ to foster innovation, and how have these practices led to more creative, out-of-the-box thinking?
Fostering innovation is central to the culture at Ibotta and how my squad operates. We champion rapid experimentation and collaborative exploration, guided by an evolving, cyclical approach inspired by Basecamp’s Shape Up methodology. While we’re still iterating on this process, it generally involves distinct phases: time dedicated to collaboratively defining a problem space and scoping potential opportunities for solution paths into “Experiment Cards;” focused periods where small project teams build out solutions with autonomy; and dedicated time between projects for personal learning and other important tasks like addressing tech debt.
We also hold weekly “Discovery Sessions” with product and design partners to explore new or existing problem spaces, often involving other business stakeholders. This rhythm — blending focused work with dedicated exploration and learning — empowers the team to transform novel ideas into tangible, impactful solutions for our users and the business.
“This rhythm — blending focused work with dedicated exploration and learning — empowers the team to transform novel ideas into tangible, impactful solutions for our users and the business.”
How has a focus on innovation increased the quality of your team’s work?
We find that focusing on innovation directly lifts the quality of the software we produce because it pushes us to bring different ideas and technical perspectives together. Our process is built around this collaboration; engineers are deeply involved right from the start, working closely with product, design, analytics and other stakeholders throughout. This means we’re not just coding requirements — we’re collectively understanding the “why” and exploring the “how” together, ensuring diverse viewpoints strengthen the technical approach.
Working in quick cycles, getting user feedback quickly — aiming for data on day one — and using “Experiment Cards” for clarity keeps everyone aligned. This rhythm gives ideas space to evolve. Often, the best solutions emerge from connecting insights across disciplines. It lets us build on existing foundations in creative, technically sound ways. For example, our most recent new feature release was born from a hackathon project where members of my team worked with a few ML engineers on a new search solution proof of concept, and it evolved through our process, becoming a high-impact solution that meaningfully advanced search in our direct-to-consumer apps.
How has a focus on innovation bolstered your team’s culture?
Our focus on innovation absolutely shapes our team’s culture for the better, creating an environment built on close collaboration, shared ownership and continuous learning. We prioritize giving people space to recharge and explore new ideas, ensuring things stay fresh and skills keep growing. There’s a strong sense of support and open communication, where sharing learnings and discussing ideas is just a part of our regular rhythm.
Beyond the structures, tackling interesting problems together is inherently fun. Discussing challenges, testing solutions and learning new tech builds energy. Seeing that work become cool, impactful features deepens our connection to the work and each other. Even though our team’s focus has shifted recently to a specific product area, sticking with this way of working is really important. It keeps people genuinely engaged and excited to dig into challenges creatively, making it a more supportive and, yes, fun place to work, which really reflects the overall culture we strive for at Ibotta.
AMP is an AI-powered sortation company that aims to modernize the world’s recycling infrastructure and maximize the value in waste, offering solutions that are designed to reduce labor costs, increase resource recovery and deliver more reliable operations.
What practices does your team employ to foster innovation, and how have these practices led to more creative, out-of-the-box thinking?
Automated sortation of trash is a really hard problem with real-world dynamics and issues. The engineering team at AMP has a trash sorting laboratory in Colorado, where we can use actual waste material for testing and innovation. With this ability, we encourage our teams to “get their hands dirty” and explore new innovations by testing and prototyping in the lab, and if they have merit, bring them into the real world and implement them into one of our production sorting facilities.
“The engineering team at AMP has a trash sorting laboratory in Colorado where we can use actual waste material for testing and innovation.”
Moreover, seeing problems firsthand and getting into the field has yielded many new innovations. We have all of our engineers visit one of our production sorting facilities in Ohio or Virginia. After a visit, the team returns with many ideas about how to improve our systems and gets to work putting those learnings into code or computer-aided design and then quickly implemented into our lab for testing.
How has a focus on innovation increased the quality of your team’s work?
Both the software and hardware teams are constantly improving our sorting efficiency by brainstorming hypotheses, testing them and then rolling those innovations into production. We’ve seen quarterly increases in sort efficiency at our production recycling facilities between 3 and 5 percent. We have also spun out new products, like the AMP MicroJet, Delta-C and the AMP VAC, by being present in these environments and coming up with solutions to real-world problems.
How has a focus on innovation bolstered your team’s culture?
Working alongside and interacting with the production operators who spend all day in the plants has heightened AMP’s culture. Solving hard problems together strengthens the bond between engineering and operations and creates some great experiences that are impossible to duplicate outside of running materials recovery facilities.
Peaksware’s software brands help athletes and musicians excel in their craft, offering solutions for tracking and analyzing endurance training, composing music and more.
What practices does your team employ to foster innovation, and how have these practices led to more creative, out-of-the-box thinking?
At TrainingPeaks, a Peaksware brand, fostering innovation is a priority. We believe it happens when engineers have ownership, collaborate freely and stay aligned. One practice that illustrates how we make that work is our back-end, web and mobile “guilds.” These guilds represent the major areas of our product, not exclusive membership lists. Any engineer can drop into the regular sessions to propose enhancements, share lessons learned, suggest standards or ask for help on a challenging problem. They are judgment-free forums where even the most junior members can add a topic to the agenda and have it thoughtfully discussed.
“We believe [innovation] happens when engineers have ownership, collaborate freely and stay aligned.”
In the back-end guild, for example, you will often find engineers enthusiastically sharing their proofs of concept on a new database-migration tool, sharing their knowledge on service-oriented architecture principles or engaging in a thoughtful discussion about our architectural vision and the next steps needed to achieve it. These discussions not only allow engineers to be more aligned on decisions but also give them a space to build momentum behind innovative ideas while still benefiting from the experience of senior engineers.
How Innovation Fuels Impact at Peaksware
- “Consistent Environments and Clear Ownership: By containerizing our services, databases and other tools, engineers can stand up a production-like stack on a laptop in minutes. Pairing that with well-defined domain boundaries and code ownership means each team knows exactly which code paths they own. The combination removes ‘works on my machine’ surprises, shortens onboarding, makes ownership much clearer and increases code quality.”
- “Safe, Fast Delivery Pipeline: Automated database migrations now travel through the same continuous integration/continuous delivery workflow as application code, so schema changes are version-controlled, peer-reviewed and deployed with one click. Feature flags let us ship changes dark, turn them on gradually, run A/B experiments and roll back instantly if something misbehaves. Together, these practices allow frequent releases without the stress of manual checklists or high-risk hotfixes, raising both release velocity and confidence.”
How has a focus on innovation bolstered your team’s culture?
When we allow for innovation, we encourage a culture where engineers feel empowered to share their ideas, implement proofs of concept and build better processes that allow more thorough testing and quicker, safer failures. In this regard, the relationship between culture and innovation is very much cyclical; the more we make room for new ideas, the more our culture grows to nurture them. Pursuing innovative solutions becomes its own shared passion, and that shared passion pulls people together.
Homebot’s platform offers homeowners personalized home finance insights and connects them with real estate professionals.
What practices does your team employ to foster innovation, and how have these practices led to more creative, out-of-the-box thinking?
Our team fosters innovation through a combination of structured and informal practices designed to encourage continuous learning and cross-pollination of ideas. We benefit from dedicated personal learning time, supported by a company-sponsored stipend for courses, books and other materials. Regular brainstorming sessions and design reviews provide space for open, creative problem-solving. These sessions are particularly valuable when we’re making significant architectural decisions.
“Regular brainstorming sessions and design reviews provide space for open, creative problem-solving.”
One recent initiative that’s sparked cross-team curiosity is an engineering book club focused on machine learning systems and AI. What began as a learning opportunity for a few interested engineers has grown into broader discussions about applying ML in new areas of our platform, expanding our toolkit and mindset across engineering. Personally, I find the design reviews especially impactful. My teammates often raise thoughtful questions or suggest alternate approaches I hadn’t considered, which leads to more robust, scalable designs and fewer blind spots. These conversations consistently challenge assumptions, reduce siloing and ultimately lead to more innovative, well-rounded solutions.
How has a focus on innovation increased the quality of your team’s work?
Focusing on innovation, particularly in how we collaborate, has significantly improved the quality and sustainability of our team’s work. Our data platform team is composed entirely of senior engineers, each with deep expertise in different areas. Rather than defaulting to assigning work based on existing expertise, we’ve embraced a more innovative approach — encouraging domain experts to mentor others and guide contributions to avoid further knowledge-siloing.
A recent example is our migration to a new orchestration platform aimed at improving reliability, stability and enabling functionality not available in the previous system. One engineer brought deep experience with the new platform, while the rest of the team was relatively unfamiliar. By intentionally building in time for others to ramp up and experiment, we uncovered new and more efficient patterns for building data pipelines and developed approaches we may have overlooked had we relied solely on prior expertise. This not only improved the quality of our implementation but also broadened the team’s skill set and deepened shared ownership of the system.
How has a focus on innovation bolstered your team’s culture?
A focus on collaborative innovation has deeply enriched our team culture by creating opportunities for shared growth and genuine connection, which is especially important for a hybrid-remote team like ours. Practices such as regular design reviews, impromptu pair-programming sessions and learning-focused initiatives like our engineering book club have become more than just vehicles for technical growth — they’re also ways for the team to stay connected and engaged.
We also make space for regular team bonding outside of work, where the focus is purely on having fun together. Recently, we nearly set a record at a local escape room. After all, what better way is there for engineers to bond than solving a technical problem together? Experiences like that reinforce the camaraderie we build through our day-to-day collaboration. Ultimately, the way we innovate and collaborate has created a team culture that’s both high-performing and human — a place where people feel energized, included and excited to collaborate.
