The Engineering Leadership Podcast
We share the most critical perspectives, habits & examples of great software engineering leaders to help evolve leadership in the tech industry. Join our community of software engineering leaders @ www.sfelc.com!
10
Applying Agentic AI to the Supply Chain, Building Systems to Withstand Chaos, and Leveraging your Curiosity w/ Pooja Brown #266
<p>In this episode, Pooja Brown (Founder @ Inventry.ai) shares her insights on balancing being a founder & technologist, especially within the mid-market manufacturing industry. We cover why founders need to lead with curiosity as they seek out customer problems to solve, strategies for solving complex problems related to supply chain, and strategies for selling your products. Pooja also dissects important fundraising tactics, how to identify areas that AI tooling can enhance within your business, reading customer signals, and bolstering your engineering skills by leveling up business capabilities.</p> <p> </p> <h2>ABOUT POOJA BROWN</h2> <p>Pooja Brown is a t...
Hiring top-tier talent, the importance of adopting an evolutionary mindset, and taking critical feedback to solve technical problems w/ Sergiy Nesterenko #265
<p>In this episode, Sergiy Nesterenko (CEO @ Quilter) joins the pod to share how he turned a personal technical challenge into his own company, even before the market caught up. He shares his unique journey from SpaceX to Quilter and addresses common eng leader / founder challenges, including taking critical feedback to solve tough technical problems, knowing when your most important role is educating the market / customers, and choosing the right customers. Sergiy and Jerry also dissect insights into principles around building circuit boards, and common misconceptions around hiring top-tier talent, finding investors, and procuring customers as an early-stage company.</p> <...
Determining bets, using customer insights to pivot, and gaining developer buy-in & trust w/ Tomas Reimers #264
<p>Tomas Reimers, Co-Founder & CPO @ Graphite, reveals his journey to becoming a founder and some of the major moments from Graphite’s product development story. He dissects frameworks for determining when it’s time to quit your full-time job to pursue becoming a founder and analyzing the costs vs. benefits of that decision. We cover how to decide what customer problems to solve, understanding how software development trends impact what you’re building, and product market fit and selling considerations. Lastly, Tomas shares valuable strategies when it comes to selling to developers.</p> <p> </p> <h2>ABOUT TOMAS REIMERS</h2> <p>Tomas...
Utilizing AI internally to iterate faster and empower smaller teams to upskill w/ Vivek Raghunathan #263
<p>Vivek Raghunathan, SVP of Engineering @ Snowflake, joins the Engineering Leadership Community Podcast to discuss all things AI – most importantly, how Snowflake is utilizing AI internally to iterate faster with smaller, focused teams. Vivek shares how AI and lower coding costs ultimately help Snowflake implement tighter feedback loops between customer & eng teams to speed up product development rollout and how Snowflake empowers their orgs to upskill when it comes to AI. Jerry & Vivek also break down what quality leadership looks like across the board and the role of AI in shaping today’s eng leaders.</p> <p> </p> <h2>ABOUT VIVEK...
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
<p>Russ d’Sa (CEO & Co-founder @ LiveKit) joins the show to deconstruct the "Product Paradigm Shift" toward voice-driven interfaces and agent-centric UX . We dive into LiveKit’s high-stakes scaling lessons: from powering OpenAI and Character AI’s voice mode, how they navigated real time bottlenecks to hit the next level of scale, the architectural necessity of a multi-cloud strategy, and the foundations of a co-founder relationships that can effectively blend engineering & business strategy.</p> <p> </p> <h2>ABOUT RUSS D’SA</h2> <p>Russ is a startup vet who founded his first company in the 2007 YC batch and was the 2nd fronte...
Building an empowered career w/ Jean Hsu & Cate Huston #261
<p>In this episode, Patrick discusses what it means to build an empowered career & explore creative career portfolios with Jean Hsu (VP of Engineering @ Range) and Cate Huston (author of The Engineering Leader and fractional CTO @ Twill). Both share their unique engineering leadership journeys & how they built creative career paths through exploration & finding room for optionality. We dissect the identity crisis that eng leaders face – whether they are ICs or managers – and how to navigate the tension between individual & team productivity, especially taking into consideration AI. Lastly, Jean and Cate share insights on letting go of societal norms, unique ways to e...
Redefining profit, centering human flourishing, and building an incorruptible mission-driven roadmap w/ Eric Ries #260
<p>In this episode, we’re joined by Eric Ries, creator of The Lean Startup, to discuss insights from his latest book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad… and How Great Companies Stay Great. Eric shares what inspired him to write the book and why we need to move beyond and redefine what true profit looks like. He shares the history behind businesses transitioning from serving public interests to shareholder primacy and why leaving behind a people-first business approach can actually reduce profitability. Additionally, Eric discusses financial gravity, the “harder is easier” principle, and how these practices connect to AI & current...
Affirm’s AI-native transformation & how it’s driving operational excellence w/ Geddes Munson #259
<p>In this episode, Geddes Munson (SVP of Engineering @ Affirm) joins us to discuss operational / engineering excellence, scaling, and AI-native transformation! We explore Affirm’s approach to operational and engineering excellence and how a 2024 outage became a turning point in refining that focus. We deconstruct “AI retooling week”, the internal tools it inspired (including an incident tracing system), how the AI-native transition is impacting operational / engineering excellence, and how to connect these projects to business goals. Plus, we take a look at their early work building in agentic commerce, infrastructure decisions they made years ago setting them up for success now, h...
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
<p>Andrew McNamara, Director of Applied Machine Learning @ Shopify, joins the ELC podcast to share insights on building agentic platforms at scale, like Sidekick, that must keep reliability for its users at the forefront. Andrew describes the building philosophy behind Shopify and what it means to cultivate a culture of prototype-first while prioritizing hiring early-stage talent. We cover Sidekick’s development journey and how user feedback impacted its product vision, why evaluation is so important for determining ground truth sets, and the benefit of user-driven use cases. Andrew also dissects how they went about making product design decisions, such as bu...
How the R&D Org at Twilio Drives Business Strategy and Transformation w/ Inbal Shani #257
<p>Inbal Shani (CPO and Head of R&D @ Twilio) deconstructs the transformation of the R&D org at Twilio! We explore the shift from a GM-led model to a unified platform strategy and “why structure must always follow strategy.” Inbal shares her framework for moving from output-focused metrics to input goals, prioritizing “time-to-value,” and the nuances of measuring AI products. We discuss using "R&D roadshows" as a strategic company transformation tool and why engineering leaders must master product positioning. We also dive into mental models for future-proofing your business, from "working backwards" to solve customer problems, to embedding systems...
