The Best Engineering Podcasts for Tech Leaders in 2026

Most engineering leaders should start with three shows: The Engineering Leadership Podcast, from a community built for engineering leaders, for management and org design; The Pragmatic Engineer, hosted by a former Uber engineering manager, for how strong engineering orgs operate; and Latent Space for teams shipping AI features. CTOs who own company-wide AI strategy should add No Priors.

How we compared:

• Active in 2026: New episodes this year, confirmed against each show's own feed on October 27, 2026.
• Practitioner voices: Hosts and guests who have built or led engineering teams.
• Decision depth: Episodes go far enough into a real decision to change how a listener runs a team.
• Leadership relevance: The show speaks to CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and engineering managers.
• Editorial independence: No paid placements and no link or mention requirements. Howdy's own CTO Studio sits in a labeled bonus slot outside the ranking.

See our full process in the methodology section below.

Quick overview

Engineering leadership is a job most people learn while doing it. A good podcast lets you hear how another leader handled a reorg, a stalled migration, or a hiring push before it lands on your desk.

The nine shows fall into three groups. Leadership and management podcasts cover people, org design, and AI adoption at the team level. Technical deep dives explain how strong engineering orgs build software, and AI-focused shows cover what is changing in the tools and models themselves. CTO Studio, a video interview series produced by Howdy, follows as a labeled bonus.

The 9 best engineering podcasts at a glance

Cadence and hosts reflect each show's own 2026 feeds and listings, checked October 27, 2026.

Engineering leadership and management podcasts

1. The Engineering Leadership Podcast: Best for directors and VPs scaling teams

The Engineering Leadership Podcast comes from the Engineering Leadership Community (ELC), which also runs the ELC Annual conference in San Francisco. Hosts Jerry Li and Patrick Gallagher interview engineering leaders about the habits, frameworks, and org decisions behind high-performing teams. 2026 episodes lean heavily into how engineering orgs move from individual AI adoption to team-wide change.

Strengths:

• Every episode is built for leaders, with 2026 guests from companies like Affirm, Port, and LiveKit.
• Episodes run roughly 35 to 55 minutes, short enough for a commute.
• Show notes include timestamps, so you can jump straight to one topic.

Trade-offs:

• Show notes promote ELC's own conference and peer programs.
• Most 2026 episodes center on AI adoption, so classic people-management topics get less airtime this year.

Start with: Episode #271 with Zohar Einy, CEO and co-founder of Port, on building software factories and moving a large company from a pre-AI to a post-AI way of working (October 2026).

2. alphalist.CTO Podcast: Best for sitting and aspiring CTOs

Tobias Schlottke hosts the alphalist.CTO Podcast, a twice-monthly show built around interviews with CTOs and technical leaders. Topics range from architecture and infrastructure to scaling teams, structuring orgs, and technical recruiting, and guests often lead companies most engineers already know.

Strengths:

• Guests are mostly sitting CTOs, including leaders from ServiceNow, Yahoo, and Graphite in 2026.
• Interviews usually run close to an hour, which leaves room for detail on architecture and org decisions.

Trade-offs:

• At two episodes a month, the catalog grows more slowly than weekly shows.
• Many guests lead European companies, so US-specific context comes up less often.

Start with: Episode #136 with Neal Ford, formerly of ThoughtWorks, on what happens to software architecture when AI agents write the code (April 2026).

3. Modern CTO: Best for broad weekly listening

Joel Beasley started Modern CTO in 2017 while writing a book of the same name, and the show has passed 950 episodes. Guests span CTOs, product leaders, and founders, and 2026 episodes focus on AI coding, agentic products, and how technology leaders keep pace with both.

Strengths:

• New episodes every Monday and Thursday, so there is always something recent.
• 2026 guests include engineering leaders from LinkedIn, Gremlin, and Elastic.

Trade-offs:

• Topics range widely, including science episodes like one on resurrecting the woolly mammoth, so pick episodes by title.
• Shorter "Tech Titans" episodes run about 15 minutes and stay high level.

Start with: Episode #951 with Trevor Hinesley, co-founder and CTO at Soundstripe, on the five levels of AI coding and his team's policy of zero human-written code (June 2026).

4. Dev Interrupted: Best for leaders measuring AI's impact

Dev Interrupted is produced by LinearB and hosted by Andrew Zigler alongside Dan Lines and Ben Lloyd Pearson, with guest interviews on Tuesdays and a news roundup on Fridays. The show covers the shift to AI-native development and draws on LinearB's engineering benchmark data, which makes it useful for leaders who need numbers to bring to their executive team.

Strengths:

• Benchmark-backed episodes, including LinearB's 2026 research on how AI-assisted pull requests merge.
• Episode pages include full transcripts.

Trade-offs:

• LinearB produces the show, and episodes regularly feature its own data and products.

Start with: The software factory roundtable with HumanLayer's Dex Horthy, Warp's Aloke Desai, and LinearB's Dan Lines on PR ownership, observability, and why incident response still needs people (September 2026).

Technical deep-dive podcasts for engineering leaders

5. The Pragmatic Engineer: Best for engineering managers and senior ICs

Gergely Orosz, a former engineering manager at Uber, launched The Pragmatic Engineer podcast in 2024 as a companion to his newsletter. Episodes are long-form conversations with experienced engineers and tech leaders about how software actually gets built at Big Tech companies and startups, and many now cover context engineering, AI-assisted development, and what both mean for hiring.

Strengths:

• 2026 guests include Kent Beck, Charity Majors, and Dex Horthy.
• Each episode links to related newsletter deep dives for further reading.

Trade-offs:

• Episodes often run past an hour, and some top two hours.
• Some of the linked deep dives sit behind the paid newsletter.

Start with: The July 2026 "ask me anything" episode, where Orosz takes listener questions on the AI-native SDLC, hiring, types of engineering managers, and measuring AI productivity.

6. Software Engineering Radio: Best for technical depth on one topic per episode

Software Engineering Radio has published since 2006 and has been run by the IEEE Computer Society since 2012. Each weekly episode pairs a rotating host with a practitioner for a focused hour on one topic, from distributed systems to secrets management, and the show aims to stay useful long after release instead of chasing the news cycle.

Strengths:

• More than 735 episodes, with full transcripts on episode pages.
• Each episode stays on one topic, which makes it easy to use as a primer before a design review or vendor decision.

Trade-offs:

• Most episodes speak to individual engineers, so leadership-specific episodes are the minority.

Start with: SE Radio 731, where LinkedIn senior engineering manager Sonali Varde explains how AI is changing the engineering manager role (July 2026).

Podcasts on AI and the future of engineering

7. Latent Space: Best for teams shipping AI features

swyx (Shawn Wang) started the Latent Space newsletter in 2022 and launched the podcast with Alessio Fanelli in 2023. swyx still leads the show in 2026, alongside co-hosts Alessio and Vibhu and a rotating set of guests, and conversations stay on implementation tradeoffs like agent architecture, evals, and inference infrastructure. The newsletter listed more than 197,000 subscribers in August 2026.

Strengths:

• One to two episodes a week, plus separate feeds for engineering and AI for science.
• Guests are builders at AI labs and infrastructure companies, such as Modal CEO Erik Bernhardsson in October 2026.

Trade-offs:

• Episodes typically run 70 to 100 minutes.
• The show is AI-only, with little on people management.

Start with: The crossover with No Priors, recorded at Microsoft Build, where Satya Nadella talks through the rise of the full-stack builder (June 2026).

8. No Priors: Best for CTOs setting AI strategy

Investors Sarah Guo, founder of Conviction, and Elad Gil host No Priors, a weekly interview show with AI founders, researchers, and operators. The questions lean toward business models and strategy, which makes it a strong complement to the more implementation-focused shows above.

Strengths:

• 2026 guests include Satya Nadella, Andrej Karpathy, and Noam Brown.
• Most episodes run 30 to 45 minutes.

Trade-offs:

• The investor lens favors strategy and market questions over engineering detail.
• Many episodes cover AI outside software, such as energy and biology.

Start with: OpenAI research scientist Noam Brown on why traditional benchmarks fail modern AI models (June 2026).

9. Dwarkesh Podcast: Best for leaders tracking where models are headed

Dwarkesh Patel is known for long, heavily researched interviews with the people building frontier AI, along with scientists and historians. Guests in 2026 have included Dario Amodei, Terence Tao, and Jensen Huang.

Strengths:

• Direct conversations with frontier-lab CEOs and chipmakers about where AI is going.
• Full transcripts on episode pages make long interviews easy to search.

Trade-offs:

• Episodes regularly run past two hours.
• Many episodes cover history and science with no direct engineering angle.

Start with: Jensen Huang on TPU competition and Nvidia's supply chain (April 2026).

Bonus: A video interview series for engineering leaders

CTO Studio: Best for leaders who prefer video

CTO Studio is an on-camera interview series with CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and technical founders, recorded live in Austin and San Francisco. Journalist Josh Rubin and tech entrepreneur Jacqueline Samira host the conversations, which center on how AI is changing the way software teams build and how leaders make decisions through that shift. Because CTO Studio publishes as video, it sits here instead of in the numbered list.

Strengths:

• Interviews are free to watch on Howdy's YouTube channel and at ctostudio.com.
• Every guest page includes a written bio and a full transcript, which makes one specific answer easy to find.

Trade-offs:

• Video only, so it doesn't fit an audio-first commute.
• Howdy produces the series, which is why it sits outside the ranking.

Start with: Juan Carlos Rey of Siemens EDA, general manager of Calibre and CTO for electronic design automation, on why AI's first real breakthrough in chip design is usability and why he expects disciplined engineering teams to see technical debt shrink (recorded June 2026).

If you lead the company as well as the engineering team, Howdy's new platform, CEO Studio, brings interviews with founders and CEOs, hosted by Jacqueline Samira.

Disclosure: CTO Studio and CEO Studio are produced by Howdy, which publishes this list.

How to choose

• If you manage managers or run an org: Start with The Engineering Leadership Podcast, then add alphalist.CTO for the CTO view.
• If you're a new engineering manager: The Pragmatic Engineer and Dev Interrupted cover how strong orgs work and how to measure your team.
• If your team ships AI features: Latent Space covers implementation, and SE Radio works for single-topic primers.
• If you own AI strategy: No Priors gives the business context, and Dwarkesh Podcast covers where the models are heading.
• If you have 15 to 45 minutes: Try Modern CTO's Tech Titans episodes, No Priors, or The Engineering Leadership Podcast.
• If you'd rather watch: CTO Studio.

Why I wrote this: A note from the editor

I'm Maria Cristina, Senior Editor, Global Hiring at Howdy. Much of my work centers on CTO Studio, Howdy's interview series with engineering leaders, so I spend a lot of time with conversations about how CTOs and VPs of Engineering make decisions. When those leaders want to go deeper on a topic, many of the best answers live in podcasts run by other people.

The existing roundups I found weren't much help. Several still recommended shows that stopped publishing years ago, and most listed feeds without saying where to start. I came to Howdy from journalism, so I built this list the way I'd check a story: Every show confirmed against its own 2026 feed, and every recommendation tied to one specific episode you can open today.

Methodology

1. Build a long list. I started from 2026 roundups of engineering, engineering leadership, CTO, and AI podcasts, and from each show's own listings.
2. Confirm each show is active. Every podcast here released new episodes in 2026. Shows that had wound down were cut, including Changelog & Friends, which ended its run in March 2026, and The CTO Podcast from 7CTOs, whose Apple Podcasts listing shows no episodes after 2025.
3. Verify hosts and cadence. Host names and release frequency come from each show's 2026 feeds and listings, checked October 27, 2026.
4. Apply three criteria. Hosts and guests have built or led engineering teams themselves. Episodes go deep enough on a decision to change how a listener runs their team. The show speaks to CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and engineering managers, with technical deep dives included when they inform leadership calls.
5. Pick a starting episode. For each show, I reviewed 2026 show notes and transcripts and chose one episode that tackles a decision leaders face right now, such as AI adoption, team design, or hiring.
6. Keep it independent. No show paid to appear, and inclusion isn't tied to links or mentions. CTO Studio is produced by Howdy, so it sits in a separate, labeled bonus slot outside the numbered list.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best podcast for engineering leaders?

The Engineering Leadership Podcast is the strongest pick for management and org design, since it comes from a community built specifically for engineering leaders. For industry context, The Pragmatic Engineer offers the clearest look at how leading companies build software, and Latent Space leads for teams building with AI.

What podcasts should a new engineering manager listen to?

New managers get the most from The Engineering Leadership Podcast, The Pragmatic Engineer, and Dev Interrupted. Together they cover people leadership, how strong engineering orgs operate, and how to measure team performance as AI tools change the work.

What are the best podcasts for CTOs?

The alphalist.CTO Podcast and Modern CTO are built around interviews with CTOs, and CTO Studio offers the same format on video. No Priors is a useful addition for CTOs responsible for company-wide AI strategy.

Which engineering leadership shows are available on video?

CTO Studio is filmed as an on-camera interview series, with every episode on YouTube and at ctostudio.com. The Pragmatic Engineer and Dwarkesh Podcast also publish full episodes on YouTube.

Are these podcasts free?

Yes, every podcast on this list is free to stream on major podcast apps, and CTO Studio is free to watch on YouTube and ctostudio.com, though some offer paid newsletters or bonus content alongside the main feed.

Which podcasts work if I only have 30 to 45 minutes?

The Engineering Leadership Podcast and No Priors episodes typically run 30 to 55 minutes, and Modern CTO's Tech Titans episodes run about 15. The Pragmatic Engineer, Latent Space, and Dwarkesh Podcast regularly run an hour or more.

Which podcasts cover AI's impact on engineering teams?

Dev Interrupted and The Engineering Leadership Podcast focus most directly on how AI changes engineering teams, with 2026 episodes on software factories and team-wide AI adoption. Latent Space covers the implementation side. For a single episode, SE Radio 731 looks at how AI is changing the engineering manager role.

Which shows publish full transcripts?

Dev Interrupted, Software Engineering Radio, and Dwarkesh Podcast post transcripts on their episode pages. Every CTO Studio interview also includes a full transcript on the guest's page.

How did you choose which podcasts to include?

Every show had to publish in 2026, feature practitioner hosts or guests, go deep on real decisions, and speak to engineering leaders. No show paid to appear, and inclusion was never tied to links or mentions. The full process is in the methodology section above.

Nominate a podcast for this list

Host an engineering or engineering leadership podcast that belongs here? Inclusion is editorial and free, and Howdy's editorial team reviews every nomination against the criteria above. Submit your show through [ADD NOMINATION FORM LINK] with a link to your feed and one episode you'd point a new listener to.

Where Howdy fits

Several of the episodes above deal with how engineering teams should be built and staffed as AI changes the work. Howdy works on the hiring side of that question as a global workforce partner, helping US companies add engineers from the top 1% of LatAm talent as full-time members of their teams. The first candidate is presented within 24 hours of opening a search, and hires are made in one to two weeks. Book a demo to see how it works.