The Engineering Leadership Podcast

What happens to platform engineering when natural language becomes the primary interface to infrastructure? Miriam Aguirre (Co-founder & CEO @ Ingenimax) joins us to explore how AI is fundamentally reshaping platform strategy, team structures, and the very role of the platform engineer. We deconstruct the shift from tactical "how" to strategic "why" and explore what it means to lead and build resilient systems in this new paradigm.

ABOUT MIRIAM AGUIRRE

Miriam Aguirre is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ingenimax, the company behind StarOps, an AI-powered platform engineering engine that helps teams deploy and manage kubernetes and other cloud-native systems in minutes, not months. Before Ingenimax, Miriam served as CTO and engineering leader at two startups that successfully scaled from early stage through IPO. Her career spans deep expertise in high-throughput, scalable systems and machine learning, with a focus on building the technical and organizational foundations for hypergrowth. Miriam is passionate about engineering leadership that turns complex technology into intuitive, reliable platforms, and about helping teams scale without losing their soul.

 

ToolHive Unlocks the Full Value of MCP & Your AI Agents

So you’ve invested in AI agents for code generation, but they’re limited to experiments or even stuck on the shelf. To do real, valuable work, those AI agents need access to your data and systems.

ToolHive helps you confidently connect the pieces by making it simple and secure for you to use the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

ToolHive includes a pre-vetted registry of MCP servers, containerizes every MCP server for consistency and leans on built-in security to keep your secrets safe.

Leaders trust ToolHive to put MCP into production and put their AI agents to work.

ToolHive is open source, so get started for free at toolhive.dev

 

SHOW NOTES:

• The Origin Story of Ingenimax (3:05)
• The recurring scaling problem: Why "scaling teams" means scaling systems first (5:23)
• How the age of AI forces platform strategy to evolve earlier in a company’s journey (8:48)
• The decline of vendor lock-in and the rising appetite for experimentation with tech (10:56)
• The paradigm shift that breaks the old model: natural language as the new interface (14:11)
• Why deep knowledge of fundamentals is now more important than syntax (16:56)
• Shifting requirements conversations from tactical inputs to strategic outcomes (20:22)
• Balancing standardization and flexibility with guardrails in an AI-driven environment (22:58)
• The challenge of getting from an AI prototype to a polished product (26:42)
• How platform team roles will evolve to focus more on curation (29:32)
• How to become a great technology curator (37:30)
• Rapid Fire Questions (39:56)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• The Book of George - From the author of the critically acclaimed Laura & Emma comes a The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. for our times: Kate Greathead's razor-sharp but big-hearted excavation of millennial masculinity.
• Can Animals and Machines Be Persons?: A Dialogue - This is a dialogue about the notion of a person, of an entity that thinks and feels and acts, that counts and is accountable. Equivalently, it's about the intentional idiom --the well-knit fabric of terms that we use to characterize persons. Human beings are usually persons (a brain-dead human might be considered a human but not a person). However, there may be persons, in various senses, that are not human beings. Much recent discussion has focused on hypothetical computer-robots and on actual nonhuman great apes. The discussion here is naturalistic, which is to say that count and accountability are, at least initially, presumed to be naturally well-knit with the possession of a cognitive and affective life.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, we’re addressing one of the biggest challenges current eng leaders are facing – balancing yesterday’s constraints with tomorrow’s potential! Chrystal Henke Ball (VP of Engineering @ Yahoo) shares insights on why it’s important to constantly challenge your assumptions and how vision can sometimes work as a bottleneck for your organization. We dissect how the traditional product lifecycle is evolving to become more fluid and what that means for the collaborative relationship between product, eng, and design. Additionally, Chrystal defines grit, why it’s important for leaders to model it, and strategies for cultivating the trait within your eng team in order to move past short-term challenges and focus on long-term goals!

 

ABOUT CHRYSTAL HENKE BALL

Chrystal Henke Ball a seasoned engineering leader, currently serving as VP of Engineering at Yahoo, where she leverages her experience to accelerate product development across core products such as Yahoo.com and the Yahoo News app. Prior to Yahoo, she led engineering organizations at Google Search, Pandora, Pachama, and Arcadis, building highly available systems, guiding architectural transitions, spearheading novel solutions, and delivering delightful user experiences. Chrystal excels at designing purpose-driven, scalable architectures, streamlining development processes, and mentoring teams to work effectively and openly together.

 

ToolHive Unlocks the Full Value of MCP & Your AI Agents

So you’ve invested in AI agents for code generation, but they’re limited to experiments or even stuck on the shelf. To do real, valuable work, those AI agents need access to your data and systems.

ToolHive helps you confidently connect the pieces by making it simple and secure for you to use the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

ToolHive includes a pre-vetted registry of MCP servers, containerizes every MCP server for consistency and leans on built-in security to keep your secrets safe.

Leaders trust ToolHive to put MCP into production and put their AI agents to work.

ToolHive is open source, so get started for free at toolhive.dev

 

SHOW NOTES:

• Navigating the challenge of balancing constraint vs. innovation (3:05)
• Considerations for balancing current capabilities w/ your roadmap to change (4:34)
• Frameworks for categorizing what’s fixed vs. in flux to aid decision-making (6:14)
• Conversation points for checking your assumptions (7:36)
• The new leadership challenge: vision as a bottleneck (14:45)
• Evolving feedback loops to address a more fluid product lifecycle (19:43)
• Defining product vision in today’s fast-paced, fluid landscape (23:57)
• Defining grit as an essential trait & ways to cultivate it as an eng leader (31:57)
• Building AI-incorporated products with trust as a foundational principle (40:46)
• Rapid fire questions (43:01)

 

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know - Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers -- and why they often go wrong.
• Terrestrials - A show for people of all ages that explores the strangeness that exists right here on Earth. In each episode, host Lulu Miller (co-host of Radiolab) will introduce you to a creature or earthly phenomenon that will defy your expectations of how nature is supposed to work. Along the way, you'll encounter a chorus of experts, including scientists, surfers, hip hop artists and…a "Songbud" named Alan (indie punk musician Alan Goffinski) who creates original songs for key moments of confusion, discovery or awe. New episodes drop Thursdays. Listen in with your whole family. Or all alone.

 

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How do you apply your leadership skills to a new, mission-driven industry and effectively lead teams across multiple technical domains? In this episode, Simone Kalmakis (VPE @ Viam) shares her playbook for successfully transitioning between industries from health-tech and climate to her current work in robotics and AI. We deconstruct the leadership models she uses to prioritize her time, manage multiple technical experts, and why she focuses on "depth with 1-2 teams > breadth". Plus, her framework for onboarding in a new domain, the lifecycle of a leadership "deep dive," and communication practices that build trust and empower your entire organization to stay aligned and motivated.

ABOUT SIMONE KALMAKIS

Simone Kalmakis is the VP of Engineering at Viam, a platform unlocking AI, data, and automation for devices in the physical world. She has deep experience applying AI and machine learning to big data and big missions, and is known for building healthy engineering organizations that drive business value and real-world progress.

Prior to Viam, Simone was Senior Director of Engineering at Arcadia, a climate tech company building an API platform for residential utility data to power solutions that fight climate change. Before that, she served as Director of Engineering at Flatiron Health, where she helped accelerate the development of cancer treatments through real-world data.

Simone began her career at Microsoft, developing machine-learned relevance algorithms for Bing. She’s also a successful founder––after Microsoft, she built and sold Symbi, a roommate-matching startup. She holds a degree in Mathematics and Economics from Yale University.

 

ToolHive Unlocks the Full Value of MCP & Your AI Agents

So you’ve invested in AI agents for code generation, but they’re limited to experiments or even stuck on the shelf. To do real, valuable work, those AI agents need access to your data and systems.

ToolHive helps you confidently connect the pieces by making it simple and secure for you to use the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

ToolHive includes a pre-vetted registry of MCP servers, containerizes every MCP server for consistency and leans on built-in security to keep your secrets safe.

Leaders trust ToolHive to put MCP into production and put their AI agents to work.

ToolHive is open source, so get started for free at toolhive.dev

 

Join us at ELC Annual 2025

ELC Annual is the premier event for engineering leaders. 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!

🔗 Get your ticket now → https://sfelc.com/annual2025

 

SHOW NOTES:

• Simone’s eng leadership journey from health-tech to climate to robotics (3:25)
• Lessons from being a founder & how it led to Viam (5:27)
• Co-founding lessons that Simone continues to apply (7:22)
• Navigating the transition from Flatiron Health to Arcadia (9:20)
• Transitioning from Arcadia to Viam (12:06)
• Use cases of physical devices impacting the environment through data / AI (14:28)
• How Simone sees Viam potentially working in a day-to-day capacity (15:42)
• How to structure your time when entering a new industry (17:51)
• Onboarding with a personal project to build user empathy, alignment & motivation (20:34)
• Finding where your expertise is the highest-leverage for your org (22:34)
• “The goal is not to maintain the same level of depth in each of your teams” (24:18)
• How to decide which teams get your deep focus (27:15)
• Building trust through transparent communication about your priorities (29:19)
• The lifecycle of a leadership “deep dive” from start to exit (32:20)
• Advice for leaders adopting this hands-on, flexible approach (36:15)
• Key questions to ask when seeking a more mission-aligned industry (38:01)
• Rapid fire questions (40:33)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• Viam - a full-stack solution for the kinds of devices that exist anywhere from your home, your office, in cars or boats, in warehouses or factories, at arenas, or other public places.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"If we were building Box today, what would we do?” Ben Kus (CTO @ Box) deconstructs their playbook for enterprise AI innovation. We cover their journey to reimagine & reorient the company to a new technical vision, how they run a “multi-speed” org that balances startup agility and & enterprise-grade stability, and their “platform first” approach to build AI features. Ben also explains why security/compliance was foundational from "day negative one" in their AI strategy, the evolution of agentic AI, determining the right guardrails for AI agents & the future of multi-agent systems, enterprise trends & more.

 

ABOUT BEN KUS

Ben Kus is the Chief Technology Officer at Box, where he leads technology and AI strategy to help enterprises securely unlock insights from their unstructured data. Ben’s career spans engineering, product leadership, and startup innovation—including co-founding Subspace (acquired by Box) and being an early employee at BigFix (acquired by IBM), where he later served as Chief Architect of Mobile Security. Ben holds a degree in Computer Science from UC Berkeley.

 

ToolHive Unlocks the Full Value of MCP & Your AI Agents

So you’ve invested in AI agents for code generation, but they’re limited to experiments or even stuck on the shelf. To do real, valuable work, those AI agents need access to your data and systems.

ToolHive helps you confidently connect the pieces by making it simple and secure for you to use the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

ToolHive includes a pre-vetted registry of MCP servers, containerizes every MCP server for consistency and leans on built-in security to keep your secrets safe.

Leaders trust ToolHive to put MCP into production and put their AI agents to work.

ToolHive is open source, so get started for free at toolhive.dev

 

Join us at ELC Annual 2025

ELC Annual is the premier event for engineering leaders. 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!

🔗 Get your ticket now → https://sfelc.com/annual2025

 

SHOW NOTES:

• How Generative AI sparked Box’s reoriented vision, by unlocking the value of unstructured data (3:29)
• Using GenAI to create structure out of unstructured data (5:28)
• Internal & external conversations that inspired Box’s new direction (7:18)
• Box’s “platform first” approach to building a secure and scalable foundation for all future AI features (10:02)
• Why security and compliance must be built in from "day negative one" not added on later (12:40)
• How to set a technical vision that can respond to future developments you can't yet predict (14:46)
• The “multi-speed” business model: Using a small, fast-moving internal group to test ideas before they enter the normal, slower development cycle (17:47)
• Example of a successful project: AI-driven data extraction & the evolution to critical feature (20:26)
• The story of an abandoned project and the challenge of knowing which ideas are revolutionary versus which aren’t worth continuing (22:17)
• Ben’s long-term vision for AI agents and why he believes they are an incredibly powerful technology paradigm (23:58)
• State diagrams & the journey behind building Box’s initial agentic AI systems (26:50)
• “Context Engineering”: The new paradigm of programming and the mental model shift required for engineers to adopt it (29:07)
• The future of AI benchmarks: Measuring what a person can accomplish with an agent, not just the agent’s performance alone (31:03)
• How to balance development speed with security risks, especially when agents can take actions and change the environment (34:00)
• Key questions to ask to determine the right guardrails for AI agents, including thinking about the worst-case scenario (36:41)
• Enterprise technology trends to watch, and why multi-agent systems will become the new “org chart” (37:56)
• Rapid fire questions (39:03)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality - Eliezer Yudkowsky’s alternate-universe Harry Potter fan-fiction wherein Petunia Evans has married an Oxford biochemistry professor and young genius Harry grows up fascinated by science and science fiction. When he finds out that he is a wizard, he tries to apply scientific principles to his study of magic, with sometimes surprising results.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 redesign your innovation engine, transform your team's workflows, and blur the lines between engineering, product, and business to drive impactful change. Through a unique mix of tactical sessions, peer-led roundtables, and curated mentorship, you'll learn how to find the community and coaching needed to lead through uncertainty and invest in your own career growth.

To learn more & get tickets, go to sfelc.com/annual2025

Use code podcast15 for 15% off tickets - group tickets / discounts available.

 

ABOUT ELC ANNUAL

The playbook for engineering leadership is being rewritten. ELC Annual 2025, happening September 10-11 in San Francisco, is where you'll gain the insights, strategies, and deep connections needed to lead in this new era. 50+ speakers, 50+ peer-led roundtables discussions, 1:1 matching to expand your network. Insights, connections & support.

Join the community of engineering leaders who are co-creating the future of our field.

Listener Discount → Use code podcast15 for 15% off

Group Tix → For teams looking to attend together, special group discounts can be found under the 'Tickets' section of our website!

Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2025

 

ToolHive Unlocks the Full Value of MCP & Your AI Agents

So you’ve invested in AI agents for code generation, but they’re limited to experiments or even stuck on the shelf. To do real, valuable work, those AI agents need access to your data and systems.

ToolHive helps you confidently connect the pieces by making it simple and secure for you to use the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

ToolHive includes a pre-vetted registry of MCP servers, containerizes every MCP server for consistency and leans on built-in security to keep your secrets safe.

Leaders trust ToolHive to put MCP into production and put their AI agents to work.

ToolHive is open source, so get started for free at toolhive.dev

 

Join us at ELC Annual 2025

ELC Annual is the premier event for engineering leaders. 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!

🔗 Get your ticket now → https://sfelc.com/annual2025

 

SHOW NOTES:

• The ground is shifting: Why the old playbooks for engineering leaders are being rewritten (0:55)
• Moving beyond AI hype to harnessing its real power in your products and workflows (2:44)
• How are teams & workflows changing? Redefining roles and upskilling your team for the AI era (9:06)
• Why the smartest insights don't come from the stage, but from deep, honest conversations with peers in roundtables (13:36)
• How curated one-on-one matches help you build a trusted network to rely on for years to come (16:08)
• ELC Annual isn't a tech conference; it's a career conference to invest in yourself and your leaders (17:49)

 

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What if your engineering team didn’t just write code, but owned product discovery, wrote the launch messaging, and handled early sales? In this episode, Michael Grinich, CEO and founder of WorkOS, deconstructs their playbook for collapsing the product/engineering stack: no design leads, only one PM, and engineers who own product end-to-end. Michael breaks down how they teach product thinking, build with deep customer insight, and why his most important job is often to "cut scope." You’ll learn how to remove the "lossy translation layers" between teams, build a culture of curiosity and customer obsession, and ship higher-quality products, faster.

ABOUT MICHAEL GRINICH

Michael is the founder and CEO of WorkOS, a developer platform that enables companies to become Enterprise Ready through features like Single Sign-On (SAML). Their customers include many of the fastest-growing startups including Webflow, Drata, Loom, and +200 others. Before WorkOS, Michael co-founded Nylas and studied CS at MIT.

 

ToolHive Unlocks the Full Value of MCP & Your AI Agents

So you’ve invested in AI agents for code generation, but they’re limited to experiments or even stuck on the shelf. To do real, valuable work, those AI agents need access to your data and systems.

ToolHive helps you confidently connect the pieces by making it simple and secure for you to use the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

ToolHive includes a pre-vetted registry of MCP servers, containerizes every MCP server for consistency and leans on built-in security to keep your secrets safe.

Leaders trust ToolHive to put MCP into production and put their AI agents to work.

ToolHive is open source, so get started for free at toolhive.dev

 

Join us at ELC Annual 2025

ELC Annual is the premier event for engineering leaders. 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!

🔗 Get your ticket now → https://sfelc.com/annual2025

 

SHOW NOTES:

• Marketing technical products exclusively to other tech companies (2:39)
• Building products end-to-end without PMs (6:36)
• How WorkOS utilizes fun, user feedback, and cohesive storytelling in their product-building process (9:31)
• Hiring engineers for curiosity & comfort operating in ambiguity (12:48)
• How engineers owning product discovery & directly engaging w/ users improve product insights (16:31)
• Using Slack for real-time integrated support & rapid product iteration (19:38)
• The complexities of creating simple, elegant products and marketing messaging (21:54)
• Cut scope ruthlessly to ship faster and better (26:20)
• Small, simple, deeply useful features make the biggest impact (30:30)
• The weekly cadence that keeps engineering aligned (32:52)
• Behind the scenes of MCP Night: A protocol party for devs (38:20)
• Rapid fire questions (41:29)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• MCP Night
• **WorkOS Launch Week**
• WorkOS AuthKit
• The Business Value of Computers: An Executive's Guide - Paul A. Strassmann addresses the practical needs of executives responsible for planning, budgeting and justifying information technology expenditures. It shows that there is no direct relation between spending on computers, profits or productivity.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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, and how his team is operationalizing curiosity & experimentation through The Innovation Lab.

ABOUT SRINATH KURUVADI

Srinath Kuruvadi is a globally recognized cybersecurity executive and cloud security leader with over two decades of experience driving security innovation at some of the world’s most influential technology companies, including Netflix, Meta, Google, Lyft, and JPMorgan Chase. Currently serving as Managing Director and Head of Cloud Security at JPMorgan Chase, he leads the enterprise-wide security strategy across APIs, containers, and cloud platforms, shaping the future of banking technology.

Srinath’s approach blends deep technical expertise with executive-level risk management. At Netflix, he headed cloud security for one of the largest AWS environments globally, pioneering scalable governance and identity systems that supported massive data throughput. At Meta and Google, he led the development of custom infrastructure security systems protecting billions of users, including Facebook’s Blackbird SIEM+SOAR platform.

Beyond his executive roles, Srinath is a strategic advisor and angel investor, with five successful startup exits including Bridgecrew, Lightspin, Oxeye, Gem Security, and Kivera. He is also a trusted advisor to venture capital firms like YL Ventures and Glilot Capital Partners, and served on Amazon’s Global CISO Advisory Council.

He holds multiple patents in web application security, database protection, and abuse detection, and has authored research on algorithmic solutions in industrial systems. Srinath is also multilingual and committed to lifelong learning, exemplified by a sabbatical that took him to over 35 countries for cultural, linguistic, and creative growth.

With a Master’s degree in Computer Science from North Carolina State University and a Bachelor's from BITS Pilani, Srinath is known for transforming security from a blocker into a business accelerator.

Join us at ELC Annual 2025

ELC Annual is the premier event for engineering leaders. 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!

🔗 Get your ticket now → https://sfelc.com/annual2025

 

SHOW NOTES:

• The hidden art of influencing without authority in security leadership (3:29)
• Why influencing remains an underestimated skill (5:08)
• Shifting from accidental to intentional influencing (6:53)
• Frameworks for aligning problems from other stakeholder’s POV (8:40)
• How to effectively influence without formal authority (11:14)
• Common pitfalls in identifying & aligning shared outcomes - and how to avoid them (14:10)
• Srinath’s strategy for clearly defining and aligning on shared outcomes from the start (15:42)
• Making a compelling case when immediate ROI isn’t clear (17:47)
• Practical prioritization frameworks for assessing security needs (20:55)
• Insights on personal time management for engineering leaders (22:53)
• Navigating current trends and potential pitfalls in AI for security (26:29)
• Inside the Innovation Lab: Operationalizing curiosity and AI experimentation (29:57)
• Rapid fire questions (33:47)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• FAIR methodology risk assessment - a research-driven not-for-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline of cyber and operational risk management through education, standards and collaboration.
• The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels - Michael D. Watkins gives you the keys to successfully negotiating your next move—whether you’re onboarding into a new company, being promoted internally, or embarking on an international assignment.
• Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World - David Epstein’s compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency. Failing a test is the best way to learn. Frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. The most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. As experts silo themselves further while computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Dr. Robert Cialdini explains the psychology of why people say "yes"—and how to apply these understandings. You'll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader—and how to defend yourself against them. Perfect for people in all walks of life, the principles of Influence will move you toward profound personal change and act as a driving force for your success.
• How to Win Friends & Influence People - Dale Carnegie’s timeless bestseller, packed with rock-solid advice that has carried thousands of now famous people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

John Amaral (CTO and co-founder @ Root.io) joins us to discuss the evolving role of engineering leaders and why vision-first leadership & building your “vision” muscle is more critical than ever. We dive into why “shift left” is dead and why SaaS is being replaced by “do-it” as a service. John also unpacks how to think in outcomes, apply the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework to eliminate toil, and reimagine product experiences. Plus, we look inside Root.io’s approach to building AI-native security products that ship daily. Whether you’re rethinking your org design or exploring the frontier of AI-powered engineering, this episode will reshape how you think about building, leading, and scaling teams.

ABOUT JOHN AMARAL

John Amaral, CTO and co-founder of Root.io, is a veteran cybersecurity leader with a proven track record of scaling and exiting successful companies. At Cisco, he led Product for Cloud Security—its fastest-growing Security and SaaS business. Before that, he ran product and engineering at CloudLock through its acquisition by Cisco in 2016. Earlier, as SVP of Product at Trustwave, John led its industry-leading security portfolio, culminating in a strategic acquisition by Singtel. Today, he’s building Root.io—a next-gen cybersecurity platform pioneering Agentic Vulnerability Remediation (AVR) to automate and eliminate software vulnerabilities at scale.

 

Join us at ELC Annual 2025

ELC Annual is the premier event for engineering leaders. 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!

🔗 Get your ticket now → https://sfelc.com/annual2025

 

SHOW NOTES:

• The evolving role of engineering leaders (2:13)
• “Shift Left is Dead” - Why it’s time to “Shift Out” (5:59)
• Applying Jobs-To-Be-Done & offloading toil with AI (11:00)
• Root.io’s AI-driven approach to security (15:03)
• Vision First Leadership (22:36)
• Empowering developers & shipping daily (27:38)
• Rethinking product & engineering orgs and building your vision muscle (30:47)
• Unlocking creativity through hobbies (36:37)
• Rapid fire questions (41:14)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• The All-In Podcast - When the pandemic prevented four friends from convening their weekly poker game, they took to the airwaves to socialize and discuss the news of the day. What started on a whim has quickly become one of the top-ranked podcasts in the world.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 now → https://sfelc.com/annual2025 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.