The Engineering Leadership Podcast

Apr 08 2025 223 ep. 42 mins 241
The Engineering Leadership Podcast artwork

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!

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From early days to IPO: Scaling leadership, enterprise growth, product ownership, & outgrowing your failure modes w/ Jon Hyman #215

Apr 08 2025 57 mins  
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

Essential questions & leadership principles to navigate change, fear & uncertainty w/ Rukmini Reddy #214

Apr 01 2025 45 mins  
In this episode, Rukmini Reddy (SVP of Engineering @ PagerDuty) shares invaluable leadership lessons on navigating transition, uncertainty, and fear. We cover actionable strategies like the five essential questions to lead your team through change, “hugging the elephant” to overcome fear, approaching org change from first principles, shifting from “informed pessimism” to �

Building platforms, ecosystems & open-source communities: Lessons from Viam & MongoDB w/ Eliot Horowitz @ Viam #213

Mar 25 2025 42 mins  
How do you build a platform that accelerates innovation by 10x-100x? Eliot Horowitz (CEO & Founder @ Viam) shares how insights from building MongoDB are shaping Viam’s approach to platform ecosystem development, user-centricity and open-source strategy. We explore the origin story behind Viam, principles for platform design for hardware/software development, modular systems, seam

Leading transformation, inspiring vision & empowering teams to operate autonomously w/ Kevin Stewart #212

Mar 18 2025 47 mins  
Kevin Stewart (SVP of Engineering @ Splice) joins us to discuss organizational transformation, inspiring vision, and empowering teams! We break down how to tackle root issues in leadership and decision-making, diagnose and prioritize org problems, make a compelling case for change to stakeholders, and override learned helplessness. Kevin also shares how Splice’s concept video bec

Accelerating & upskilling your AI learning journey w/ Maher Hanafi #211

Mar 11 2025 46 mins  
In this episode, we explore how to accelerate your AI learning journey with Maher Hanafi, SVPE @ Betterworks! Maher shares his progression from using LLMs as a proof of concept to tackling real-world use cases and complex challenges like data governance, data flow, enterprise AI, and AI agents. Maher also dissects the importance of team experimentation with real use cases, revisiti

Data governance, adversarial testing & more - Essential strategies to scale AI responsibly in a shifting regulatory environment w/ Jim Palmer #210

Mar 04 2025 48 mins  
Jim Palmer (Chief AI Officer @ Dialpad) discusses the current state and future of data governance, scaling AI responsibly, and practical strategies for companies at different stages of AI adoption. We break down the impact of red-teaming / adversarial testing on AI governance, mitigating risk, unexpected positive outcomes from red-teaming, and how to launch and scale adversarial te

Capturing & synthesizing unbiased insights from users, your open source community & yourself w/ James Campbell #209

Feb 25 2025 43 mins  
We sit down with James Campbell, CTO & Co-Founder @ Great Expectations, to discuss his founding journey, considerations for starting open source, making community-driven decisions, and navigating the tension between your product vision & product roadmap. We also cover the phases that Great Expectations has cycled through, balancing the role of personal biases when making product /

Upskilling: practices to improve hiring, storytelling & structuring personal/leadership problems with engineering principles #208

Feb 18 2025 43 mins  
In this episode, local ELC chapter leaders break down three essential skills every engineering leader needs to hone! Learn how to craft compelling narratives that showcase your product’s business value, how to apply engineering problem-solving principles to solve complex personal /leadership challenges, and how to level up your hiring practices to identify and attract top talent.

GTM Insights from Top DevTool companies w/ David Mytton #207

Feb 11 2025 51 mins  
David Mytton (CEO @ Arcjet & Co-founder @ Console) shares insights on “what makes a great DevTool company!” We unpack lessons on bootstrapping vs. seeking VC funding & why it’s important to stick with one; building prototypes; considerations for selling your company; and his founder journey with Server Density, Console & now with Arcjet. David also highlights GTM practices fo

Navigating Rapid Change: Skills to Cultivate Resilience, Adaptability & Creativity in Engineering Teams w/ Melody Meckfessel #206

Feb 04 2025 41 mins  
The tech industry and AI landscape evolves fast—so how can engineering leaders help their teams stay agile, innovative, and resilient in the face of rapid change? Melody Meckfessel (CTO @ Jasper) joins us to share how to develop the skill of navigating ambiguity, guide investment decisions on what to build / how, avoid over-complexity, & develop agile communication processes thro