The Engineering Leadership Podcast

Automating the product development workflows and supporting bottom-up experimentation w/ Iccha Sethi #275

Developing the modern builder framework and managing the cross-pollination of roles at scale w/ Pratima Arora #274

Best practices for scaling AI adoption across a large org & the trade offs you will have to make w/ Sagnik Nandy #273

Building your support network, picking the right projects, and why eng leaders make good investors w/ Amit Gupta #272

Engineering leadership evolves through distinct phases, shifting from technical contribution at established firms like Qualcomm to the high-speed, resource-constrained environments of early-stage startups. Success in these roles requires moving beyond execution to mastering sales, recruiting, and strategic decision-mak...

Building software factories and making the transition from a pre-AI to post-AI world as a large company w/ Zohar Einy #271

Utilizing AI to assist in EPD and non-EPD functions & how curiosity can drive organizational change w/ Ali Dasdan #270

Implementing reusable and powerful agentic tools across your organization w/ Ozzie Osman #269

Navigating from individual AI adoption to team-level transformation while scaling w/ Jakub Oleksy #268

Scaling GitHub’s infrastructure requires navigating unprecedented growth driven by the rapid adoption of AI agents, which behave like high-speed human collaborators. Jakub Oleksy, VP of Infrastructure and Enterprise at GitHub, details the strategic shift to Azure to secure necessary capacity and the ongoing effort to d...

Hiring top-tier talent, leveraging open source models, and staying competitive in the age of AI w/ Benny Chen #267

Applying Agentic AI to the Supply Chain, Building Systems to Withstand Chaos, and Leveraging your Curiosity w/ Pooja Brown #266

Hiring top-tier talent, the importance of adopting an evolutionary mindset, and taking critical feedback to solve technical problems w/ Sergiy Nesterenko #265

Building a deep-tech startup requires solving "hair-on-fire" problems rather than pursuing "nice-to-have" features. Sergiy Nesterenko, founder of Quilter, argues that founders must identify a small, commercially viable initial use case—such as parts testing—to generate traction, attract top-tier talent, and secure fund...

Determining bets, using customer insights to pivot, and gaining developer buy-in & trust w/ Tomas Reimers #264

Founding a company requires navigating high-stakes career transitions and identifying genuine product-market fit through rigorous, logical frameworks. Tomas Reimers, co-founder of Graphite, emphasizes using regret minimization and worst-case scenario analysis to evaluate the risks of leaving stable corporate roles. Tru...

Utilizing AI internally to iterate faster and empower smaller teams to upskill w/ Vivek Raghunathan #263

Engineering organizations must evolve beyond simple code generation to fully integrate AI into product development, infrastructure, and leadership strategies. Snowflake Engineering navigates this transition through a four-stage maturity model that progresses from individual coding agents to AI-first infrastructure oper...

The Product Paradigm Shift: How Livekit Navigated High Stakes Scaling Challenges to Build the Future of Voice-First AI Interfaces w/ Russ d’Sa #262

Building an empowered career w/ Jean Hsu & Cate Huston #261

Engineering leadership is undergoing a fundamental shift as AI and macroeconomic changes disrupt traditional career paths. Rather than fixating on rigid corporate ladders or vanity metrics like team size, leaders should prioritize becoming "force multipliers" who transform output into tangible impact. Building an empow...

Redefining profit, centering human flourishing, and building an incorruptible mission-driven roadmap w/ Eric Ries #260

Affirm’s AI-native transformation & how it’s driving operational excellence w/ Geddes Munson #259

Operational and engineering excellence at Affirm hinges on aligning technical initiatives with the company’s mission to provide transparent financial products. A significant turning point occurred following a major Black Friday outage, which forced a cultural shift from prioritizing pure speed to balancing rapid delive...

Building reliable and proactive agentic systems at scale: how Shopify’s reflexive AI culture was instrumental in their development of Sidekick w/ Andrew McNamara #258

Building comprehensive, reliable agentic platforms requires a foundational commitment to rapid prototyping and rigorous evaluation frameworks. At Shopify, the integration of AI into daily workflows—with 95% of employees utilizing these tools—accelerates development and enables the creation of "Sidekick," an AI co-found...

How the R&D Org at Twilio Drives Business Strategy and Transformation w/ Inbal Shani #257

Strategic realignment of R&D organizations requires shifting from siloed, output-focused models to unified platform strategies that prioritize customer problems over specific products. Successful transformation hinges on the principle that structure must follow strategy, with organizational design adapting to support l...

Scaling TensorFlow, Navigating Startup Pivots, ML Edge Infrastructure and AI Inference Strategy w/ Rajat Monga #256

Rajat Monga, CVP of AI Frameworks at Microsoft, details his career trajectory across the frontier of AI infrastructure, from co-founding Google Brain and TensorFlow to navigating startup pivots and current edge AI development. Building core infrastructure requires a "refounding" mindset, where teams must periodically r...