In this episode of Leaders of Code, Eira May, B2B Editor at Stack Overflow, and Natalie Rotnov, Senior Product Marketing Manager for the Enterprise Product Suite at Stack Overflow, unpack the key takeaways from the 2025 Developer Survey for tech and business leaders. The discussion focuses on the evolving developer relationship with AI, the continued struggle with tool sprawl, and actionable recommendations for leaders looking to deliver value and improve developer experience. The discussion cov...
Oct 23, 2025•31 min•Ep. 880
Ryan welcomes John Dickerson, CEO of Mozilla.ai, to talk about the evolving landscape of AI agents, the role of open source in keeping the tech ecosystem healthy, the challenges OS communities have faced with the rise of AI, and the implications of data privacy and user choice in the age of multi-agent AI systems. Episode notes: Mozilla.ai is building the agent platform that helps organizations safely automate real work with AI agents. Connect with John on Linkedin or email him at john@mozilla.a...
Oct 21, 2025•26 min•Ep. 877
Andrei Kvapil, founder of Ænix and core developer of Cozystack, joins Ryan to dive into what it takes to build a cloud from scratch, the intricacies of Kubernetes and virtualization, and how open-source has made digital sovereignty possible. Episode notes: Cozystack is a Kubernetes-based framework for building a private cloud environment. Connect with Andrei on Linkedin . Today’s shoutout goes to user Adam for winning a Populist badge for their answer to Regex replace text but exclude when text ...
Oct 17, 2025•29 min•Ep. 876
Ryan welcomes Dhruv Batra, co-founder and chief scientist at Yutori, to explore the future of AI agents, how AI usage is changing the way people interact with advertisements and the web as a whole, and the challenges that proactive AI agents may face when being integrated into workflows and personal internet use. Episode notes: Yutori is building AI agents that can reliably handle everyday digital tasks on your behalf on the web. Connect with Dhruv via his website . Congrats to the winner of tod...
Oct 14, 2025•35 min•Ep. 875
Ryan welcomes back Evan You, the creator of Vite and Vue.js, to discuss the evolution of build tools in web development, the unique features of Vite from its plugins to its hot module capabilities, and the future of Vite, including its integration with Rust. Plus, they touch on Vite’s new documentary and the power of open-source communities. Episode notes: Vite is a frontend build tool powering the next generation of web applications. Check out all of the work Evan is doing at his company VoidZe...
Oct 10, 2025•27 min•Ep. 874
Ryan sits down with Dimitri Stiliadis, CTO and co-founder of Endor Labs, to talk about how AppSec is evolving to address AI’s use cases. They discuss the implications of AI-generated code on security practices, the importance of human oversight in managing vulnerabilities, and how organizations should be balancing security and efficiency with AI. Episode notes: Endor Labs is AppSec for the software development revolution, helping you pinpoint critical risks whether your code is written by a huma...
Oct 07, 2025•28 min•Ep. 873
Gil Feig, co-founder and CTO of Merge, joins the show to explore Merge’s approach for reducing third-party APIs to a single call, the complexities of and need for data normalization, and the role that AI and MCP plays in the future of API functionality. Episode notes: Merge connects you to any third-party system for fast, secure integrations for your products and agents. Connect with Gil on LinkedIn and X . Shoutout to user Abhijit for winning a Lifeboat badge on their answer for Complex numbers...
Oct 03, 2025•26 min•Ep. 872
In the second part of this two-part Leaders of Code episode, Peter O'Connor, Director of Platform Engineering, and Ryan J. Salva, Senior Director of Product at Google Developer Experiences, dive beyond AI hype to explore the shifts reshaping how engineering teams operate and scale. From the critical role of documentation quality in AI workflows to the cultural transformations needed for successful adoption, Peter and Ryan discuss the deeper implications of integrating AI into modern software dev...
Oct 02, 2025•20 min•Ep. 871
Ryan sits down with Marco Palladino, CTO of Kong, to talk about the rise of AI agents and their impact on API consumption, the MCP protocol as a new standard for agents, the importance of observability and security in AI systems, and the importance for businesses and entrepreneurs to leverage opportunities in the agentic AI space now. Episode notes: Kong is an all-in-one API platform for AI and agentic workflows. Marco previously joined the podcast in 2024. Connect with Marco on Twitter . Congra...
Sep 30, 2025•28 min•Ep. 870
Ryan welcomes Pia Nilsson, GM for Backstage and head of developer experience at Spotify, to discuss the evolution and adoption of Backstage, the impact of AI on dev experience, and how Spotify approaches platform engineering and standardization to help teams solve for specific needs. Episode notes: Backstage is an open-source IDP by Spotify that reduces everyday friction, cognitive overhead, and operational toil for developers. We previously talked to the Backstage team in 2022. Poor Ryan. If on...
Sep 26, 2025•27 min•Ep. 869
Jeff Hollan, director of product at Snowflake, joins Ryan to discuss the role that data plays in making AI and AI agents better. Along the way, they discuss how a database leads to an AI platform, Snowflake’s new data marketplace, and the role data will play in AI agents. Episode notes: Snowflake provides a fully-managed data platform that developers can build AI apps on. We’re happy to have Stack Exchange data available on the Snowflake Marketplace . Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn and Twitter . ...
Sep 23, 2025•29 min•Ep. 868
Ryan welcomes Sebastian Gierlinger, VP of Engineering at Storyblok, to talk about how headless content management systems (CMS) fit into an increasingly componentized software landscape. They run through the differences between headless and traditional CMS systems (and databases), prototyping and security concerns, and how a team building distributed systems can get that precious velocity by decoupling their content from its rendering. Episode notes : Storyblok provides a headless CMS they say i...
Sep 19, 2025•23 min•Ep. 867
Ryan chats with Karen Ng, EVP of Product at HubSpot, to chat about Model Context Protocol (MCP) and how they implemented it for their server for their CRM product. They chat the emergence of this as the standard for agentic interactions, the challenges of implementing the server and integrating it with their ecosystem, and how agentic AI has affected work at Hubspot. Episode notes: Hubspot is a customer-relationship management (CRM) platform that aims to help businesses grow. MCP is an open-sour...
Sep 16, 2025•24 min•Ep. 865
Ryan welcomes Geraint North, AI and developer platforms fellow at Arm, to dive into the impact of GenAI on chip design, Arm’s approach to designing flexible CPU architectures, and the challenges of optimizing large language models at the chip level for edge devices. Episode notes: Arm is a global compute platform that allows the world’s leading technology companies to innovate and deliver AI experiences. Arm just announced their Lumex CSS Platform, which provides a complete compute subsystem pla...
Sep 12, 2025•33 min•Ep. 864
In this two-part episode of Leaders of Code, Peter O’Connor, Director of Platform Engineering, welcomes Ryan J. Salva, Senior Director of Product at Google, Developer Experiences, for a deep dive into the future of software development. They explore how AI-assisted tools are reshaping the developer experience, going far beyond just writing code. From breaking down deployment bottlenecks to streamlining operations and transforming how teams collaborate, this conversation unpacks where developer t...
Sep 11, 2025•31 min•Ep. 862
Ryan is joined by our very own Ash Zade, Product Manager, and Alex Warren, Staff Software Engineer, to discuss our newly released stackoverflow.ai, how it’s enhancing user experience by combining human-validated answers with AI, and our future plans for deeper personalization and community integration. Episode notes: stackoverflow.ai is helping you get the technical answers you need with less friction, all powered by our 16 years of community knowledge. Connect with Ash on LinkedIn . Connect wit...
Sep 09, 2025•34 min•Ep. 861
Ryan welcomes Jeffrey van Gogh, Director of Engineering, Android Developer Experience, at Google and board member of the Kotlin Foundation. They discuss the evolution of the Kotlin language from JVM to multiplatform, how their governance board works with the community to stop breaking changes, and the intricacies of Kotlin’s multiplatform capabilities beyond just Android. Episode notes: The Kotlin Foundation’s mission is to protect, promote, and advance the development of the Kotlin programming ...
Sep 05, 2025•31 min•Ep. 860
Kylan Gibbs, CEO of Inworld, joins the show to discuss the technical challenges of creating interactive AI for virtual worlds and games, the significance of user experience, and the importance of accessibility and cost-efficiency in deploying AI models. Episode notes: Inworld provides solutions for AI applications that allow teams to build and deploy workloads, spend less time on maintenance, and accelerate iteration speed. Connect with Kylan on LinkedIn . Today we’re shouting out the winner of ...
Sep 02, 2025•30 min•Ep. 859
Travis Oliphant, creator of NumPy and SciPy, joins Ryan to explore the development of Python as a data science tool, the evolution of these foundational libraries, and the importance of community and collaboration in open-source projects, including Travis’ current work to support sustainable open-source through the OpenTeams Incubator. Episode notes: NumPy and SciPy are the fundamental packages and algorithms for scientific computing with Python. NumPy 2.3.0 and SciPy 1.16.0 are out now. The Ope...
Aug 29, 2025•38 min•Ep. 858
SPONSORED BY AWS Ryan welcomes Darko Mesaroš, Principal Developer Advocate at AWS and all around computer history buff, to chat about history of software development improvements and how they made developers made more productive. They discuss the technologies and breakthroughs that created greater abstractions on the underlying bit manipulations and made software development more powerful. Episode notes: If you’re looking to take advantage of the breakthroughs mentioned in this episode, check ou...
Aug 27, 2025•34 min•Ep. 856
Rich Harris, creator of Svelte and software engineer at Vercel, joins Ryan on the show to dive into the evolution and future of web frameworks. They discuss the birth and growth of Svelte during the rise of mobile, the challenges of building robust and efficient web applications, how companies can back more open-source community projects, and the dirty little secret about asynchronous operations and component frameworks. Episode notes: Svelte is a UI framework that uses a compiler to let you wri...
Aug 26, 2025•35 min•Ep. 857
In this episode of Leaders of Code, Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar and Christina Dacauaziliqua, Senior Learning Specialist at Morgan Stanley, talk about the importance of experiential learning in fast-paced environments. They emphasize the value of creating intentional learning environments where innovative tools meet collaborative communities to support growth for both individuals and organizations. The discussion also: Explores why leaders need to model continuous learning to inspir...
Aug 22, 2025•33 min•Ep. 854
Ryan welcomes Nathan Michael, CTO at Shield AI, to discuss what AI looks like in defense technologies, both technically and ethically. They cover how the Hivemind technology works in coordinating the autonomous decisions of drones in the field while keeping humans in the loop, whether Shield AI is building Terminators, and how software security works on an edge device that could fall into enemy hands. Episode notes: Shield AI produces Hivemind, a resilient autonomy platform intended to protect s...
Aug 22, 2025•27 min•Ep. 855
Ryan is joined by Tuhin Srivastava, CEO and co-founder of Baseten, to explore the evolving landscape of AI infrastructure and inference workloads, how the shift from traditional machine learning models to large-scale neural networks has made GPU usage challenging, and the potential future of hardware-specific optimizations in AI. Episode notes: Baseten is an AI infrastructure platform giving you the tooling, expertise, and hardware needed to bring AI products to market fast. Connect with Tuhin o...
Aug 19, 2025•22 min•Ep. 853
Ryan welcomes Evan You, the creator of Vue.js, to explore the origins of Vue.js, the challenges faced during its development, and the project’s growth over a decade. They dive into potential integrations for AI, future developments for Vue.js, and the sustainability of open-source projects. Episode notes: Vue.js is a progressive JavaScript framework that’s approachable, performant, and versatile for building web user interfaces. Check out what Evan and his team are doing to create the next gener...
Aug 15, 2025•29 min•Ep. 852
Wenjing Zhang, VP of Engineering, and Caleb Johnson, Principal Engineer at LinkedIn, sit down with Ryan to discuss how semantic search and AI have transformed LinkedIn’s job search feature. They explore the engineering efforts behind transitioning from keyword-based search and the impact of AI models on LinkedIn’s job seekers and employers. Episode notes: LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with more than one billion members. Connect with Caleb on LinkedIn . Connect with Wenjing...
Aug 12, 2025•37 min•Ep. 851
Ryan welcomes Paul Everitt, developer advocate at JetBrains and an early adopter of Python, to discuss the history, growth, and future of Python. They cover Python’s pivotal moments and rise alongside the internet, the increased adoption from transitions like Python 2 to Python 3, and the significant role Python plays in academia and data science today. Episode notes: JetBrains is improving the developer experience through a rich suite of tools. Connect with Paul on LinkedIn and X . Python is th...
Aug 08, 2025•31 min•Ep. 850
Quinn Slack, CEO and co-founder of Sourcegraph, joins the show to dive into the implications of AI coding tools on the software engineering lifecycle. They explore how AI tools are transforming the work of developers from syntax-focused tasks to higher-level design and management roles, and how AI will integrate into enterprise environments. Episode notes: Sourcegraph is building AI-code agents for enterprises to accelerate how companies build software. Connect with Quinn on LinkedIn , X , and o...
Aug 05, 2025•31 min•Ep. 849
U.S. Bank has undergone a significant digital transformation, implementing a multi-cloud strategy to accelerate innovation and improve customer-focused development. Operating in a highly regulated environment, the bank must navigate the challenge of balancing innovation with strict compliance requirements while meeting the evolving demands and needs of customers and employees. In this episode of Leaders of Code, Jody Bailey, Stack Overflow’s CPO, Anirudh Kaul, Senior Director of Software Enginee...
Jul 31, 2025•35 min•Ep. 848
Etsy is a global marketplace that keeps human connection at the heart of commerce. Connect with Mahir on LinkedIn . This week’s shoutout goes to user jsignell , who won a Populist badge for their answer to How do I tell if a column in a pandas dataframe is of type datetime? How do I tell if a column is numerical? . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
Jul 29, 2025•38 min•Ep. 847
