PreVetted Podcast

Federico Ramallo
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Technology
  • Updated Monthly

Federico Ramallo spotlights extraordinary people, their great stories and remarkable talent that's reshaping our world! Powered by Density Labs - https://densitylabs.io

  1. 6d ago

    #170 Ricky Sun: The Real-Time Graph Database Ending AI Hallucination in Production

    Ricky Sun is Founder and CEO of Ultipa, the real-time graph database he calls the world's fastest, and CTO of Aichax. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Ricky Sun explains how a real-time graph database and explainable, white-box AI keep connected data queryable in real time and stop hallucination before enterprise AI ever reaches production.Ricky's career runs through Yahoo, Microsoft, and Dell EMC before he set out to build companies of his own. At Ultipa he built a real-time graph database designed to traverse deeply connected data in microseconds, now used across finance, fraud detection, risk, and compliance. In this conversation he breaks down what a graph database is, why it answers questions a relational database cannot, and what it actually takes to make deep graph traversal fast at scale.We dig into where a real-time graph database sits alongside the vector databases and embeddings most teams reach for first, and why Ricky prefers the phrase graph augmented intelligence to plain artificial intelligence. He makes the case for explainability and white-box AI: why today's models are so hard to reason about, and how a graph turns a black box into something you can inspect, audit, and trust.From there we get into Aichax and its blunt promise that hallucination ends here, the season-long question of why roughly 95% of enterprise AI pilots never reach production, and how graph and explainability change that math. Ricky also talks standards, from the Linked Data Benchmark Council to the ISO GQL graph query language, and shares what he has learned building deep-tech engineering teams across the US and China over two decades.About Ricky Sun:- https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickysun/- https://www.ultipa.com- https://aichax.aiAbout Federico RamalloFounder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works.- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io- ✅ https://prevetted.ai🎙 PreVetted Podcast- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcastTIMESTAMPS:0:00 Introduction2:30 From Yahoo, Microsoft, and Dell EMC to founding Ultipa7:00 What a real-time graph database actually does13:00 Real-time graph database vs vector databases for AI19:00 Explainable white-box AI and graph augmented intelligence26:00 Ending hallucination: inside Aichax33:00 Why enterprise AI pilots die before production40:00 Graph analytics for fraud, risk, and compliance in finance46:00 Standards, ISO GQL, and the Linked Data Benchmark Council52:00 Advice for CTOs adopting graph and explainable AI#GraphDatabase #ExplainableAI #AIinProduction

    #170 Ricky Sun: The Real-Time Graph Database Ending AI Hallucination in Production

  2. 6d ago

    #171 Tom Trill: Digital RF and Building a Culture People Choose at Qualinx

    Tom Trill is the CEO of Qualinx, a Dutch deep-tech semiconductor company bringing radio frequency into the digital domain. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Tom and Federico Ramallo get into what it takes to build a venture-stage hard-tech company: the culture that makes people relocate across the world to join a startup in Delft, how AI is changing engineering craft and human judgment, and the deceptively hard question of what "good enough" really means.Tom brings more than 25 years of semiconductor experience, with senior roles across Samsung, Cypress, and Freescale, a stint as co-founder of an AI vision startup, and now the CEO seat at Qualinx. He explains the company's core invention, digital RF, which brings RF back in line with Moore's Law: a reconfigurable receiver chip covering roughly 20 MHz to 8 GHz at an order-of-magnitude lower power, aimed at GNSS, positioning, and the connected edge. The mission is ubiquitous connectivity, so small and cheap it fades into the background like running water.They also dig into the human side of deep tech: building a company of 70+ people across two dozen nationalities, why values need constant reinforcement through rapid growth, why long-tenured subject-matter experts still beat AI on the hardest problems, and how AI agents can reduce the noise for engineers without removing human accountability.About Tom Trill- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomtrill/- 🌐 https://www.qualinx.ioAbout Federico RamalloFounder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works.- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io- ✅ https://prevetted.ai🎙 PreVetted Podcast- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcastTIMESTAMPS:0:00 Introduction to Tom Trill and Qualinx1:38 Building a culture people choose to join10:04 AI, engineering craft, and human judgment19:22 Defining what is good enough27:02 Digital RF and ubiquitous connectivity34:10 Closing reflections on culture and craft#DeepTech #Semiconductors #DigitalRF

    #171 Tom Trill: Digital RF and Building a Culture People Choose at Qualinx

  3. Aug 10

    #169 Justin Marcucci: Scaling Digital Engineering from Founder to President of Apexon

    Justin Marcucci is President of Apexon, a digital engineering services firm backed by Goldman Sachs and Everstone Capital, where he leads the global commercial organization. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Justin Marcucci traces a rare path through digital engineering, founder, design-led operator, and executive at scale, and what it actually takes to build and lead teams that own outcomes. Justin started and ran Nickelfish, an interactive design agency, for thirteen years before Endava acquired it and he stayed on as Chief Digital Officer for nearly a decade, running North American and global industry P&Ls through Endava's global expansion and its 2018 NYSE IPO. He unpacks the inflection points that reshaped Nickelfish, what selling the company taught him about his own business, and what made a long post-acquisition integration actually work. Now at Apexon, an AI-first technology services firm, with over 5,000 employees across the USA, UK, India and Mexico, Justin talks through his first ninety days in the President seat, and how a company built out of four merged startups keeps design and user thinking at the center of an industry that has become AI- and engineering-led. He details Apexon's new AI Center of Excellence, its focus on enterprise and agentic AI architectures, and how AI is changing both client delivery and how he runs the commercial org. The conversation gets specific on the operator's craft: scaling teams in a consulting-led services business, hiring senior leaders who own outcomes instead of just executing, and how PE-backed growth differs from running a digital business inside a public company. Justin closes with what he'd tell someone earlier in their career trying to build something durable in digital. About Justin Marcucci: - https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-marcucci-1a6ab533/ - https://www.apexon.com About Federico Ramallo Founder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works. - 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/ - 🌐 https://densitylabs.io - ✅ https://prevetted.ai 🎙 PreVetted Podcast - 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast - 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod - 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Introduction 2:30 What the President of Apexon actually does 6:15 Starting Nickelfish and thirteen years running it 12:40 Selling Nickelfish to Endava: the lessons 18:05 Chief Digital Officer through Endava's IPO 24:30 Moving to the Apexon President seat 29:50 First ninety days and what surprised him 34:20 Keeping design and UX central in an AI-led industry 39:10 Scaling teams in a consulting-led services business 43:35 Hiring senior leaders who own outcomes 47:50 Using AI across delivery and the commercial org 52:15 PE-backed growth vs running inside a public company 55:40 Building a durable career in digital #DigitalEngineering #TechLeadership #ScalingTeams

    #169 Justin Marcucci: Scaling Digital Engineering from Founder to President of Apexon

  4. Aug 7

    Nirmal Jingar: How to Ship Enterprise AI to Production at Enterprise Scale

    Nirmal Jingar is a Senior Technology Leader specializing in artificial intelligence, enterprise platforms, and large-scale supply chain systems. He leads engineering organizations responsible for AI-driven decision platforms supporting one of the world's largest e-commerce supply chains, and has delivered hundreds of millions of dollars in cumulative business impact through AI, optimization, and platform modernization initiatives. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Nirmal breaks down what it actually takes to ship enterprise AI to production: designing supply chain systems for enterprise scale from day one, and building the ownership culture and guardrails that keep AI reliable in live, high-volume operations. Federico Ramallo and Nirmal dig into why forecasting against real order volume is the hard problem behind supply chain scale. When a Black Friday spike jumps from a planned 10,000 orders per minute to 50,000, everything downstream (inventory, warehouse staffing, carriers like FedEx and USPS) has to move. His advice to engineers: architect for 10x to 100x load from the start instead of optimizing a prototype. They get concrete on how AI is changing enterprise software development: AI now generates the majority of first-draft code across many engineering teams, fundamentally shifting the role of software engineers toward system design, review, governance, and decision making, and a review playbook Nirmal generated by having AI scan three years of pull-request comments across a team's repositories. He explains why AI-ready PRDs and tech specs, a deep wiki of architecture and history, and clear system and domain boundaries are what let large enterprises, not just greenfield startups, get real value from agentic coding. The conversation also covers leading distributed engineering teams across time zones (async-first communication, decision logs, extreme ownership), the enduring value of long-tenured subject-matter experts that AI cannot replace, and Nirmal's patented agent-based system for supply chain incident detection and root cause analysis. His throughline: AI agents should reduce the noise for humans, not remove human accountability. About Nirmal Jingar Sr. Technology Leader in Artificial Intelligence, Enterprise Platforms, and Supply Chain Systems. - 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/nirmaljingar/ - 🎤 TEDx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxUChqiyp2Y About Federico Ramallo Founder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works. - 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/ - 🌐 https://densitylabs.io - ✅ https://prevetted.ai 🎙 PreVetted Podcast - 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast - 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod - 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Introduction: shipping enterprise AI to production 2:50 The complexity of supply chain systems at scale 5:37 Where AI helps most in supply chain optimization 8:09 Human expertise vs. AI in engineering judgment 10:50 Designing supply chain systems for enterprise scale 13:34 Building a culture of ownership and accountability 16:05 Proactive communication in distributed teams 19:03 The human side of technology and team dynamics 21:35 Collaborating across time zones with async-first practices 23:51 Staying technically deep as an executive leader 27:24 How AI changed enterprise software development 33:55 AI-ready PRDs, tech specs, and a deep wiki for context 42:55 The future of engineering in an AI-driven world 45:33 Patented AI agents for supply chain incident detection #EnterpriseAI #SupplyChainAI #EngineeringLeadership

    Nirmal Jingar: How to Ship Enterprise AI to Production at Enterprise Scale

  5. Aug 5

    #167 Jonathan Myron: Scaling Engineering from 10 to 100 at SimplePractice

    Jonathan Myron is VP of Engineering at Healthie and an engineering leader with more than 25 years of experience building and scaling teams across healthtech, ad-tech, mobile, and SaaS. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Jonathan and Federico Ramallo trace his path from one of the first two employees at ReachLocal, where he co-developed the core product and earned a patent as a named inventor, to growing SimplePractice's engineering team from 10 to over 100 people. They dig into what actually breaks when a team scales that fast, and what Jonathan did differently to keep attrition low and eNPS high through the growth. SimplePractice went from roughly $20M to nearly $200M in revenue and from 20,000 to almost 200,000 customers while he led engineering, and he shares what that kind of run feels like from the inside. The conversation covers the difference between being a CTO at a startup and an SVP at a scaling company, moving teams from outsourced to in-house, and leading distributed and offshore teams, including years working with a team in Mexico. Jonathan also talks about how a Political Science degree turned into a self-made technical leadership career, how he coaches strong engineers into leadership, how he keeps globally distributed teams aligned across time zones, and how he uses AI in engineering work today. About Jonathan Myron - 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanmyron/ About Federico Ramallo Founder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works. - 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/ - 🌐 https://densitylabs.io - ✅ https://prevetted.ai 🎤 PreVetted Podcast - 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast - 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod - 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast #EngineeringLeadership #ScalingTeams #EngineeringManagement

    #167 Jonathan Myron: Scaling Engineering from 10 to 100 at SimplePractice

  6. Jul 31

    How to Align Your Home With Your Next Chapter: Kim Costa's Wheel House Method

    Aligning your home with your life is the difference between a house that quietly drags you down and one that supports who you're becoming. Kim Costa breaks down her eight-dimension Wheel House Method. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Kim Costa — Top 5% realtor, author of Live in Your Wheel House, and podcast host — shares how she went from two decades as a CFO and controller to building a movement around home-and-life alignment. We get specific on the eight dimensions of life, decluttering with purpose, multi-generational living, and designing a space that reflects your next chapter instead of your past. TIMESTAMPS:0:00 Introduction to Kim Costa and her journey2:38 The Wheel House Method: aligning life and home5:32 The eight dimensions of life8:16 Multi-generational living: solutions and challenges10:57 Navigating family dynamics in shared spaces13:48 Personal transformation and life changes16:28 The importance of romance and connection19:13 Creating a supportive home environment24:08 Gender roles and household dynamics27:32 Understanding personal strengths and weaknesses30:10 Navigating dietary differences in relationships33:59 The importance of environment in relationships35:20 A holistic approach to life and relationships42:15 Finding purpose and alignment in life RESOURCES MENTIONED:- Kim Costa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimecosta- Density Labs: https://densitylabs.io CONNECT:- Website: https://prevetted.fm- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/ ABOUT THIS CHANNEL:PreVetted Podcast spotlights founders and operators sharing the specific, in-the-trenches lessons behind building companies and lives that fit them. New interviews every week. Powered by Density Labs. #LifeAlignment #IntentionalLiving #NextChapter

  7. Jul 29

    #165 How to Lead Engineering Teams in the AI Era: JJ Friedman on Embedded, Cross-Border Talent

    JJ Friedman is the Director of Product Engineering at PLACE (formerly Remine), and this conversation is a clinic on engineering leadership in the AI era. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, JJ and Federico Ramallo dig into what actually moves a team forward: judgment over syntax, trust over control, and treating embedded engineers as long-tenure teammates rather than disposable project labor. JJ took an unusual route into engineering leadership. He studied philosophy and economics at Occidental College, played college basketball, then sold luxury real estate in Beverly Hills before open-source work pulled him into software. After a bootcamp he joined Remine, climbing from senior engineer to tech lead to director over nearly five years, through the company's acquisition by PLACE. Along the way he co-built Shipm8, a Kubernetes health-monitoring developer tool. He gets specific about what each transition required. As tech lead he took over a struggling two-year single sign-on and MLS dashboard project and shipped it live in four months by keeping the IDP foundation and restarting the product layer. He frames the real job of an engineering manager as translating between business and technical stakeholders, humbling your own ideas, and removing friction so the team can deliver. On AI, JJ and Federico land in the same place: craftsmanship is never replaced, and AI augments a strong team rather than replacing one. They talk through why the best engineers think through problems before writing code, why you should hand AI the tests, docs, and merge requests instead of the core build, and Federico's "AI arbitrage vs labor arbitrage" thesis, where a long-tenure team that holds business context is what makes agents productive. The back half is about people. JJ shares his third philosophy of contracting, hiring embedded talent you treat as full-time, which is how Density Labs engineers became tech leads and go-to front-end and mobile developers on his team. They cover mentoring junior engineers, building trust ("trust but verify," and a "do not assume" agent prompt), and what more leaders should understand about running cross-border engineering teams. About JJ Friedman: - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jj-friedman/ - https://remine.com About Federico Ramallo Founder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works. - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/ - Website: https://densitylabs.io - PreVetted: https://prevetted.ai PreVetted Podcast - Podcast: https://prevetted.ai/podcast - X: https://x.com/PrevettedPod - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Introduction to JJ Friedman and Remine 02:35 Journey from Sports to Engineering 05:11 The Open Source Experience 07:46 Understanding the Engineering Mindset 10:27 Craftsmanship vs. AI in Engineering 12:59 Career Progression at Remine 14:04 The Role of Management in Engineering 16:01 Building Trust and Communication 18:51 Navigating Business and Technical Needs 21:34 The Importance of Asking Questions 27:36 The Evolution of Collaboration with Density Labs 28:21 Philosophies Behind Contracting and Talent Acquisition 33:24 Building a Symbiotic Relationship with Contractors 34:24 Contributions of Density Labs Engineers 39:09 The Importance of Mentorship and Growth in Engineering 43:25 Understanding Cross-Border Engineering Teams 47:18 AI and Labor: A New Paradigm 54:03 Final Thoughts and Advice for Engineering Leaders #EngineeringLeadership #AIAugmentation #EmbeddedTeams #TechLeadership #CrossBorderTeams

    #165 How to Lead Engineering Teams in the AI Era: JJ Friedman on Embedded, Cross-Border Talent

  8. Jul 27

    #164 Rails Core to Independent Consultant: Kasper Timm Hansen on Ruby, Testing, and Craft

    Kasper Timm Hansen is an independent Rails consultant and member-owner of the Spinel co-op, and six years on the Rails Core team taught him that open source is not about getting your code merged. It's about the right code at the right time, and what you learn on the way there. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Kasper traces the path from a 2013 Google Summer of Code project to committer to Rails Core, and what he tells engineers who find contributing to open source too intimidating to start.Kasper gets concrete on the engineering-efficiency work he does now. He explains why slow test suites are the tax most growing Ruby on Rails apps quietly pay, how associated objects pull behavior out of God objects to keep domain models clean, and why he seeds test and development data from the same recipes, using his Oaken library, so you debug the story you already know.He also walks through "riffing," his scratch-file design method for exploring a problem before generating a single line of code, and rv, the Ruby version manager he built inspired by Python's uv that installs Ruby in about a second. The conversation closes on Rails 8 and what's next for Ruby.About Kasper Timm Hansen:- https://kaspth.com- https://spinel.coopAbout Federico RamalloFounder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works.- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io- ✅ https://prevetted.ai🎙 PreVetted Podcast- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcastTIMESTAMPS:0:00 Introduction to Kasper and his work5:12 Why a co-op, and what changes when everyone is an owner12:53 The road to the Rails Core team18:18 Advice for new open source contributors21:56 Where Rails teams actually get stuck24:47 Domain modeling and associated objects27:35 Fixtures, factories, and Oaken32:55 Rails 8 and what is next for Ruby33:36 Riffing: designing before you generate43:02 rv: installing Ruby in a second#RubyOnRails #OpenSource #SoftwareEngineering

    #164 Rails Core to Independent Consultant: Kasper Timm Hansen on Ruby, Testing, and Craft
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About

Federico Ramallo spotlights extraordinary people, their great stories and remarkable talent that's reshaping our world! Powered by Density Labs - https://densitylabs.io

Information

  • Creator
    Federico Ramallo
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    173
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Federico Ramallo
  • Show Website
    PreVetted Podcast