We share the most critical perspectives, habits & examples of great software engineering leaders to help evolve leadership in the tech industry.
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Engineering VP Simone Kalmakis details her approach to applying leadership skills across varied technical domains and industries, from health-tech to AI and robotics. She outlines a framework for successful industry transitions, including immersive onboarding via personal projects, and explains her "depth over breadth" leadership model for prioritizing focus among multiple teams. The discussion also covers strategic deep dives, transparent communication for team alignment, and aligning one's career with personal mission and impact.
Ben Kus, CTO at Box, reveals their playbook for enterprise AI innovation, detailing how generative AI transformed their approach to unstructured data. He explains Box's "platform-first" strategy for building secure and scalable AI features, emphasizing the necessity of security from "day negative one." The conversation also covers their "multi-speed" organizational model for balancing startup agility with enterprise stability and a deep dive into the future of agentic AI, including critical guardrails and the paradigm shift of context engineering.
Engineering leadership is undergoing a seismic shift, requiring playbooks to be rewritten, in real-time. In this special episode, hosts Patrick Gallagher and Jerry Li give you an inside look at the ELC Annual 2025 experience, and how the two-day conference will equip you with new mental models, skills, and frameworks required to lead. Get a preview of tactical takeaways from deep operational dives into companies like OpenAI, Amplitude, and HeyGen. Discover how the conference will help you redesi...
Michael Grinich, CEO of WorkOS, unveils his company's innovative approach to product development, where engineers are empowered to act as end-to-end product owners, eliminating traditional PM and design leads. He explains how WorkOS cultivates deep customer insight through direct user engagement and real-time feedback channels like Slack, alongside a culture of curiosity and comfort with ambiguity. The episode also highlights Michael's critical role in "cutting scope" to ensure focused, high-velocity execution and the profound impact of small, elegant features, demonstrating how this model ships superior products faster.
Influencing without authority is the hidden superpower of security leadership—and a crucial skill every engineering leader must master. In this episode, Srinath Kuruvadi (Head of Cloud Security @ JPMorgan Chase) breaks down how to influence without formal authority and advocate when ROI isn’t immediately clear. We cover tactics for shaping problems from the POV of other stakeholders, Plus, strategies to establish shared outcomes, insights on optimizing your time, emerging AI x security trends, a...
John Amaral discusses the evolving role of engineering leaders, emphasizing vision-first leadership and the shift from "Shift Left" to "Shift Out." He introduces "Do-It-as-a-Service," highlighting how AI can offload toil and reimagine product experiences using the Jobs-to-Be-Done framework. The episode also explores Root.io's AI-native approach to security, operationalizing vision, and fostering creative thinking in engineering teams.
We’re pausing the pod this week as we gear up final planning for ELC Annual 2025 - the premier event for engineering leaders. New episodes return next week (on a biweekly schedule!). This is our biggest event of the year… 1,000+ CTOs, VPs & Directors in San Francisco @ ELC Annual 2025 for two days of leadership breakthroughs, tactical peer learning & curated connections! We’d love for you to join us. 🎟️ Early Bird pricing ends soon – secure your spot at the best rate. 🔗 Get your ticket...
This episode features Dhruv Parthasarathy, CTO at Commure, on scaling engineering organizations for speed and impact within the complex healthcare industry. He shares insights on designing structures to push decision-making to the lowest levels, cultivating multi-talented "polymath" engineers, and effectively onboarding less experienced talent. Dhruv also explains how Commure strategically leverages scope and identifies compounding wins to accelerate product development, turning customers into co-creators.
Loïc Houssier, VP Engineering at Superhuman, shares his playbook for driving velocity in engineering organizations, adapting to the AI era. He discusses strategies for cultivating a product mindset, building exceptional product experiences, and navigating the complexities of AI's impact on quality and productivity. Loïc also provides insights into cultural transformation and the future of productivity tools.
When Nissim Lehyani (VP of Product at Life360) used AI to build a math game for his son, he didn’t just prototype a game, he rewired how he thinks about product development and the relationship between engineering, product, and design. In this episode, Nissim shares how that personal “aha” moment sparked a shift in how his teams build, collaborate, and ship. We dive into how AI is accelerating product iteration from months to hours, why it’s time to drop the “M” from MVP, and how prototypes are ...
The Engineering Leadership Podcast announces the launch of their new ELC Forum. This discussion board is a dedicated space for engineering leaders to dive deeper into real challenges, get peer support, and discuss takeaways from recent episodes, technical credibility, and more. Future plans include AMAs with past speakers and connections for local communities.
This episode features Prashant Ramarao, SVP of Engineering and Head of AI at Yahoo, discussing his rapid career ascent from a technical individual contributor to leading large engineering teams. He shares invaluable lessons on transitioning mindsets, effectively communicating complex technical ideas to non-technical executives using frameworks like the "contact plan," and maintaining technical credibility through continuous learning and personal AI projects. Prashant also highlights the importance of strategic thinking, observing team dynamics, and embracing big problems for growth.
AI is reshaping the fundamental economics of startups—lowering product development costs, compressing GTM cycles, and rewriting the rules of competition. In this episode, Craig McLuckie (Co-Founder & CEO @ Stacklok, co-creator of Kubernetes) unpacks “the epoch of the startup,” a moment of massive disruption where fast-moving founders have a unique edge over incumbents. We explore how Craig is navigating this new era from rethinking cost structure, value capture, and defensibility to leveragi...
Anush Elangovan (VP of AI Software @ AMD) is helping lead a strategic evolution at AMD, from silicon/components provider to a systems and solutions company built for the AI era. In this episode, we explore the first principles behind AMD’s unified AI hardware and software strategy and how the company is building a fully open-source AI ecosystem. Anush shares how his team creates a tight feedback loop between core engineering and customer deployment, and the daily rituals they use to operate at t...
When Farnaz Azmoodeh (CTO @ Linktree) stepped into her new role, she unexpectedly took on product & design just three months in—owning all of engineering, product, and design during a critical period of change. In this episode, Farnaz shares hard-won lessons from that transition, including the mindset shift from delivery to discovery, balancing data vs. intuition in decision-making, knowing when to pivot your product strategy, and building small / fast-moving cross-functional teams. We also ...
Wade Chambers, Chief Engineering Officer @ Amplitude, joins us to discuss what it looks like to empower individual engineers & overall engineering teams and recommendations for creating a culture that cultivates ownership! First, Wade defines what true ownership looks like – and what it doesn’t look like. We cover frameworks for identifying & cultivating high ownership in individuals & across teams, implementing systems that encourage ownership, communicating shared vision / goals, a...
In this episode, we’re back with more insights from our local community leaders — discussing leadership insights on strategic decision-making, managing technical debt and fostering true cross-functional partnerships! Funmi Oludaiye (New York City) shares strategies for building strong cross-functional relationships between eng & business leaders. Ketan Gupta (London) breaks down the STIR framework for managing tech debt & aligning it with business value. And Sasha Hall (Toronto) works th...
In this episode, Vinod Marur (SVP of Engineering @ Databricks) shares his approach to recalibrating leadership priorities as organizations scale. Vinod breaks down his personal recalibration framework—why he does it every 3–6 months, signals that it’s time to reassess, and how to design communication and collaboration structures that reduce information asymmetry during periods of rapid growth. We dive into rewriting hiring playbooks, tailoring recruitment pitches, and the impact of AI on hiring....
Jon Hyman (Co-Founder and CTO @ Braze) shares the pivotal moments that shaped the company - from being the only person on call in the early years to identifying (and pivoting) product-market fit. Jon discusses how they navigated early-stage failure modes, carved out areas of product ownership, and made the shift to enterprise customers. Plus how leadership priorities evolve pre- vs. post-IPO and the next evolution of Jon’s leadership growth after almost 14 years at Braze. ABOUT JON HYMAN Jon Hym...
This episode features Rukmini Reddy, SVP of Engineering at PagerDuty, discussing the evolving landscape of engineering leadership from 2021 to 2025. She highlights the increasing importance of financial acumen and offers actionable frameworks for leading teams through transitions, including processing emotions with “hugging the elephant” and using five essential questions. The conversation also explores strategies for AI adoption, covering evangelism, experimentation, enablement, and enforcement, guiding leaders to foster curious optimism in their organizations.
ABOUT ELIOT HOROWITZ Eliot Horowitz is the Founder and CEO of Viam, an engineering platform unlocking AI, automation, and data for devices in the physical world. With a deep commitment to advancing technology, Eliot leads Viam in helping companies build solutions across robotics, food and beverage, climate, marine, industrial manufacturing, and more. A career software developer and technology leader, Eliot co-founded MongoDB in 2007, writing the core code base for the pioneering database and lea...
Kevin Stewart discusses leading organizational transformation by focusing on clear communication, empowerment, and a customer-centric vision. He shares strategies for identifying root issues, building team ownership, and shifting from tactical to strategic leadership. The conversation highlights the importance of aligning teams with a compelling vision and delegating effectively.
Maher Hanafi, SVP of Engineering at BetterWorks, discusses his journey in accelerating AI learning, from initial upskilling to leading AI vision. He covers how to enable engineering teams to experiment with AI, transition from proof-of-concept to production, evaluate ROI, and build stakeholder confidence. The episode also highlights BetterWorks' AI roadmap, focusing on cross-domain features for enhanced performance management.
ABOUT JIM PALMER Jim Palmer is the Chief AI Officer at Dialpad. Previously he was CTO and Co-Founder of TalkIQ, a conversational intelligence start-up with expertise in real-time speech recognition and natural language processing, acquired by Dialpad in May of 2018. Prior to TalkIQ, he was the founding engineer on the eBay Now local delivery service. SHOW NOTES: Tips and cheat codes for navigating AI governance (3:30) Breaking down red teaming & adversarial testing in AI governance (8:02) La...
ABOUT JAMES CAMPBELL James Campbell is the co-founder and CTO at Great Expectations, the leading open-source data quality product. Prior to his life at a startup, James spent nearly 15 years working across a variety of quantitative and qualitative analytic roles in the US intelligence community, ultimately serving as Chief Data Scientist at CIA. He studied Math and Philosophy at Yale, and international security at Georgetown. He is passionate about creating tools that help communicate uncertaint...
ABOUT COLLEEN TARTOW Colleen Tartow, Ph.D. is Field CTO and Head of Strategy at VAST Data and has 20+ years of experience in data, analytics, engineering, and consulting. Adept at assisting organizations in deriving value from a data-driven culture, she has successfully led diverse data, engineering, and analytics teams through the development of complex global data management solutions and architecting enterprise data systems. Her demonstrated excellence in data, engineering, analytics, and div...
ABOUT DAVID MYTTON A dynamic approach to tech innovation, security, sustainability, and developer empowerment can be seen in everything David Mytton touches. As co-founder of Console and host of the Console DevTools Podcast , he delights in keeping developers ahead of the curve with the tools they need the most. As the founder of Server Density (acquired by StackPath ), he created a product that helped organizations manage mission-critical IT environments. As a sustainable computing researcher a...
ABOUT MELODY MECKFESSEL Melody Meckfessel is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Jasper.ai , the world’s leading AI marketing platform. In her role, Melody shapes the technical vision of the company, oversees product delivery, and spearheads AI research to develop new capabilities that accelerate business outcomes for enterprise marketers. Before joining Jasper.ai , Melody co-founded and served as CEO of Observable, a data visualization platform that empowers teams to understand their business...
ABOUT ANDY KORTZ Andy Kortz is currently the Chief Technology Officer at Integra Testing, where he leads technology transformation and drives operational efficiency in aggressive growth organizations. Andy also is a co-lead for the ELC Local Chapter initiative in Chicago. With over 20 years of experience in enterprise architecture and software development, Andy has consistently delivered innovative solutions while reducing IT expenses and improving application value. Drawing on his expertise in ...
ABOUT ANURAG AGARWAL Anurag Agarwal leads the Google Workspace engineering organization, overseeing products such as Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet that help billions of users and customers across the world to connect, create, and build together. With over 18 years of experience at Google, Anurag’s expertise spans a wide range of consumer and enterprise products and technologies. His career began in the Display Ads team, where he played a pivotal role in developing ...
