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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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!
Copyright: © 327413
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
In this episode, we go inside Commure’s engineering org w/ Dhruv Parthasarathy (CTO @ Commure & Athelas). We cover how to push decision-making down to move faster and reduce risk, structure teams for rapid iteration, and turn customers into product co-creators. Dhruv also shares how they cultivate polymath capabilities across EPD to accelerate velocity, why scope is one of the most underrated sources of leverage in engineering, and the frameworks they use to identify compound wins. If you’re scaling an eng org, leading in a complex domain, or designing your team for speed—this episode is packed with tactical frameworks you can apply immediately.
Dhruv Parthasarathy has spent the last 8 years focused on applying modern software and machine learning techniques in healthcare. Dhruv currently serves as the CTO of Commure, HATCO, and Augmedix. In the role of CTO, he leads product, engineering, and design teams. Prior to this, Dhruv helped found Athelas which eventually merged with Commure.
In these roles, Dhruv has designed and developed end-to-end solutions for revenue cycle automation, ambient documentation, patient engagement, and at-home diagnostics for oncology.
Before this, Dhruv was the Director of Machine Learning Programs at Udacity, where he led the development of the AI, Self-Driving Car, Deep Learning, and Machine Learning Nanodegree programs.
Dhruv also worked as a Product Engineer at Udacity, where he rebuilt the main signed-in experience and was responsible for the backend development. Dhruv obtained a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2013. Following this, they pursued a Master's degree in Computer Science with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence at MIT from 2013 to 2014.
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!
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.
Loïc Houssier (VP Engineering @ Superhuman) shares his evolving playbook for driving velocity in eng orgs today, building product-minded teams, and cultivating product taste. We cover leading culture / mindset transformation, creating exceptional product experiences, operational excellence when product quality is increasingly subjective. Plus the evolution of productivity tools!
Loïc Houssier is an engineering executive with 20 years of leadership experience spanning startups, scale-ups, and global enterprises. He specializes in helping high-growth companies scale with speed and discipline, combining technical depth with a strong operational mindset.
He currently leads engineering at Superhuman, the most productive email app ever made, where he joined at a pivotal moment in the company’s growth. Loïc brought a new level of executional rigor — embedding a culture of speed not just in the product (where every interaction happens in under 100ms), but in how the team ships, scales, and makes decisions.
Previously, he held senior engineering roles at Productboard, Firstbase, and DocuSign, where he led global teams through platform expansion, org design, and M&A. With a background in cryptography and early experience as a security researcher, Loïc is also a frequent mentor and speaker on engineering leadership and building resilient, high-velocity teams.
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!
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.
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 replacing PRDs as the central artifact of product work. Plus how product rituals and building cadence are evolving, strategies for scaling a prototype-first workflow, and we deconstruct the “lightning pod” model and how it’s changing the dynamics of product building & EPD collaboration.
Nissim Lehyani is the Vice President of Product at Life360, where he leads product strategy for the family safety platform used by over 60 million users worldwide. With more than two decades of experience across startups, global tech companies, and entrepreneurial ventures, Nissim is known for scaling impactful products that blend technical depth with business strategy.
Prior to Life360, he was Senior Director of Product at Indeed, where he oversaw a portfolio of 13 consumer products reaching 300M+ monthly users, and led a team of 40+ product managers across global markets. Nissim previously held leadership roles at GoDaddy, where he helped 18M+ SMBs grow their businesses through strategic partnerships with Facebook, Yelp, and Google.
As a founder, he built and led two ventures: Shopial (acquired by Magento) and Urban Place, raising millions to support small businesses and entrepreneurs. He also brings deep technical roots from his engineering leadership at Cisco and early career in Israeli Military Intelligence.
Nissim is a 2024 Product Leader Award winner and active mentor in the startup ecosystem through roles at Mixpanel and SV101 by ICON. He’s passionate about user-centric innovation, data-driven growth, and the intersection of AI, engineering, and product management.
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!
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.