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. 1d ago

    #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

  2. 3d ago

    #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

  3. 5d ago

    #163 Why AI Agents Are Tools, Not Junior Engineers: Vasu Raj Jain on Staying Technical as a Leader

    Engineering leadership quietly breaks the day you stop touching the code. Vasu Raj Jain leads at Amazon Ads without ever leaving the codebase, and in this PreVetted Podcast episode he and Federico Ramallo turn that habit into a full playbook for staying technical, building trust, and putting AI agents in their place.Vasu is a Senior Software Engineer and Engineering Lead at Amazon Ads, where he owns the architecture for ad-serving infrastructure that handles 50M+ requests per second across Prime Video, live sports, shopping, and audio. He directly leads 30 engineers and influences 150+ across the org. He walks through the balancing act at the core of ad tech: advertiser reach, publisher trust, and customer privacy all have to stay in harmony, or the deal falls apart.His path into engineering was almost accidental. A childhood dream of becoming a pilot ended when he failed the National Defense Academy physical over his eyesight; a month of chemical engineering followed before he switched to computer science, co-founded a hyper-local street-food app, and moved from India to the University of Florida on a student exchange, where a theoretical mindset gave way to a builder's one.The heart of the conversation is how he leads without losing the code. Vasu splits a two-week sprint roughly into writing code himself, designing systems, and mentoring, and he deliberately asks his own team to assign him sprint tasks so he understands their execution layer and earns their trust by leading from example.On AI, Vasu and Federico agree hard: agentic AI is a tool, not a replacement for junior engineers. Agents run on your identity and your credentials, so when something breaks the accountability lands on the human who spun them up, never on the agent. Junior engineers bring context, judgment, and a human touch that a tool cannot. They also dig into Federico's thesis that long-tenure teams who hold the business context are what steer agents well, plus his own rule of never letting an agent commit its own code.About Vasu Raj Jain:- https://www.linkedin.com/in/vasujain00/About 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 Serving ads across Amazon at scale3:40 Relevant ads vs customer privacy5:18 Balancing advertisers, publishers, and customers7:37 The pilot dream and the exam that changed everything8:57 Resilience and adaptability12:35 Switching from chemical engineering to CS16:35 From India to the US on a student exchange19:20 Theoretical vs practical: the mindset shift26:51 From individual contributor to engineering lead27:11 Splitting the sprint: code, design, mentor36:22 Handling interruptions with agentic AI40:39 Why agents help humans instead of replacing them41:42 Managing agents vs mentoring junior engineers46:29 Agents are tools; accountability stays human50:16 Advice: never lose touch with the code53:58 Advice for moving from India to the US#EngineeringLeadership #AIAgents #StayingTechnical #TechLeadership #AdTech

    #163 Why AI Agents Are Tools, Not Junior Engineers: Vasu Raj Jain on Staying Technical as a Leader

  4. Jul 22

    #162 Technology Is the Greatest Equalizer: Mike Hess, Digital Accessibility & Workforce Development

    Mike Hess is the Founder and Executive Director of the Blind Institute of Technology (BIT), and his core message is simple: technology is the greatest equalizer for people with disabilities. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, Mike and Federico Ramallo dig into digital accessibility, WCAG, and workforce development, and why accessibility is also a real business advantage. BIT is a pan-disability workforce development organization. Its fully virtual, instructor-led Academy levels people up in digital accessibility and Salesforce certifications toward gainful employment, and 100% of BIT's instructors identify with a disability. Mike came up through a deep telecom and engineering career (Qwest, Level 3 Communications, switch engineering, COBOL) after entering tech through an IBM-funded program at the Community College of Denver as the Y2K boom took off. He was appointed by the Governor of Colorado to the Workforce Development Council and recognized with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Business Award. Mike explains why he calls technology an equalizer: Apple and Steve Jobs building screen-reader access into the first iPhone, Uber making independent ride-hailing possible for a blind traveler, and the RSA security tokens he could hear instead of see. He breaks down WCAG as a shared translation layer between assistive-technology users and developers, how modern JavaScript frameworks discard native HTML accessibility, and why Salesforce stands alone as the most accessible business enterprise application for B2B workforce development. They also get into the harder problem of perception. Drawing on Daniel Kahneman's concept of loss aversion, Mike describes the "squishy feeling" that keeps well-meaning people from hiring people with disabilities, and the five words that dissolve it: "How can I help you?" They cover the curb-cut effect, how closed captions and text-to-voice built for the disability community now serve everyone, and the roughly 1.3 billion people worldwide (north of $10 trillion in disposable income) that businesses overlook. Mike's closing advice to hiring managers: accessibility is not difficult, it is intentional. About Mike Hess: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-hess-9a4a826/ https://blindit.org 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 to the Blind Institute of Technology 1:13 Expanding Workforce Development for All Disabilities 3:27 The Impact of the ADA and Early Career Experiences 7:47 Resilience Through Economic Challenges 11:19 Building Resilience in the Disability Community 15:55 Creating Allies in the Disability Community 19:23 The Role of Technology as an Equalizer 22:39 Empowering Independence Through Accessible Technology 24:45 Understanding WCAG and Its Importance 26:43 Breaking Down Perceptions Around Disabilities 30:59 The Value of Accommodations for All 33:32 BIT's Dual Role in Workforce Development 36:22 Advice for Hiring Managers on Accessibility

    #162 Technology Is the Greatest Equalizer: Mike Hess, Digital Accessibility & Workforce Development

  5. Jul 20

    #161 Ashwin Gopinath: Building Organizational Memory for Enterprise General Intelligence at Sentra

    Ashwin Gopinath is the Co-Founder and CEO of Sentra, where he is building organizational memory for what he calls Enterprise General Intelligence (EGI). His thesis is that AGI will be commoditized, and the real differentiator will be how well a team retains and compounds its own knowledge, since every re-litigated decision is a memory failure. Before Sentra, Ashwin was an Assistant Professor at MIT, a research scientist at Caltech and Google X, and co-founded Palamedrix, a proteomics company acquired by Somalogic for $52.5M in under two years. What we covered: What Enterprise General Intelligence means, and why Ashwin believes every re-litigated decision inside a company is a memory failure.The problem he watched teams keep running into that made him decide Sentra had to exist, and how the product turns meetings, messages, and documents into searchable memory.His path from MIT professor and proteomics founder to building an AI platform, and what made him make the jump.How Sentra flags missed commitments and conflicting priorities before they escalate, and how the team figured out what counts as a real risk versus noise.Why his thesis that AGI will be commoditized changes how companies should be investing in their own knowledge today.Episode 161 of the PreVetted Podcast.

  6. Jul 17

    #160 Alex Treiner: The Real Startup Saga Behind Sherlock DNA, From Illumina Engineer to Novelist

    Alex Treiner is the Founder and CEO of Make Offshore, the Independent Sales Representative for Foxconn Baja California, and the author of "Sherlock DNA: A Startup Saga," a #1 New Release on Amazon based on his nearly nine years inside Illumina. A two-time immigrant and self-described serial reinventor, Alex went from electrical engineer to manager, inventor, and founder of multiple startups, including Tailio, which he sold to Nestlé Purina, before reinventing himself once more as a published novelist now developing the book into a TV drama series. In this episode, Alex joins Federico Ramallo to tell the story behind the story. He traces his path out of the Soviet Union to Israel and then the United States, why he speaks four languages each with the wrong accent, and how that immigrant's drive carried him into the early, high-stakes years of genetic sequencing. He explains what really happened during the nine-and-a-half month nightmare that opens the book, why he chose to fictionalize true events rather than write a memoir, and how he decided which parts of the story to dramatize and which to leave out. The conversation moves into craft and discipline: what it takes for an engineer to actually finish a full-length novel, how he found the patience to embrace imperfection in the creative process, and the difference between a good story and a bad one. Alex shares the pressure an engineer feels inside a billion-dollar race, what a relentless sprint does to a person, a marriage, and a team, and why he believes the screen is the right home for this story. He closes with practical advice for any founder or engineer sitting on a great startup story of their own. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction to Alex Treiner 03:00 Journey of a Two-Time Immigrant 05:57 The Reality of Kibbutz Life 08:51 Inside Illumina: The Birth of a Revolution 11:52 The Challenges of Engineering 14:53 The Protagonist's Journey in Fiction 17:58 Writing Techniques and Storytelling 20:47 The Emotional Rollercoaster of Writing 24:06 Discipline in Writing a Novel 26:35 The Journey of Writing a Book 29:02 Embracing Imperfection in the Creative Process 32:43 The Importance of Perspective in Storytelling 35:05 Navigating Pressure and Challenges in Engineering 39:22 The Wisdom of Experience and Learning from Mistakes 40:26 Translating Stories to the Screen 44:10 The Power of Sharing Stories of Resilience 49:11 Advice for Aspiring Authors and Entrepreneurs LinkedIn · Website Episode 160 of the PreVetted Podcast.

  7. Jul 15

    #159 Anton Pleshivtsev: Scaling Teams, Vendors, and Joining a Startup as VP of Engineering

    Anton Pleshivtsev spent over eight years at Bravado, climbing from Head of Engineering to VP, before stepping into a new chapter as Director of Engineering at Sendblue in the San Francisco Bay Area. He talks about the pivot from hands-on engineer to engineering leadership, what it's like to join a small, fast-moving startup after a long tenure at one company, and how he scaled, coached, and developed engineering teams as Bravado grew. His technical roots are in Python, Django, Redis, and high-load systems, and the conversation traces what changes when an individual contributor becomes a leader, and what keeps external vendor relationships from breaking down. What we covered: The pivot from hands-on engineer (Python, Django, Redis, high-load systems) to engineering leadership, and the shift in mindset that move requires.What it's like to join a small, fast-moving startup after a long tenure at one company, and the value of in-person team interactions.How he scaled, coached, and developed engineering teams as Bravado grew, building trust and relationships along the way.Navigating the challenges of management, and how he thinks about the engineering versus management career tracks.How he thinks about external vendors and contractors, what makes those relationships break down, and what makes them stick.The role of AI in engineering and management, interviewing for new engineering roles, the evolving role of product managers, and creating context for engineering tasks.Episode 159 of the PreVetted Podcast.

  8. Jul 13

    #158 Jonathan Hernandez: Faith, Cybersecurity, and Protecting Human Dignity in the Age of AI

    Jonathan Hernandez is an Information Security and Risk professional at Nationwide Children's Hospital and a CISSP-certified cybersecurity expert with experience across governance, risk, compliance, and ethical hacking. He is also a public speaker and a Master of Divinity student at Southern Seminary, and in this episode he shares the story behind the credentials, starting with the day he arrived from the Philippines at nineteen, looking for Disneyland and touching snow for the first time, and the loneliness and identity loss that followed. Jonathan talks about why he walked away from a booming tech career in Columbus to study theology full time while working full time, and how he came to believe that career change is not about money but about purpose. He explains how his faith became a real anchor during rejection, visa delays, and starting over from scratch, and why he refuses to let a title or a paycheck define his worth. We get into the place where his two worlds meet: ethics in cybersecurity. Jonathan shares how an ethical hacking professor's warning shaped him, why he grounds his ethics beyond just not getting caught, and how he uses his skills to protect churches, nonprofits, and everyday people who cannot afford enterprise grade security. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction to Jonathan Hernandez 02:01 Journey from the Philippines to the U.S. 04:58 Navigating Loneliness and Identity 10:00 The Intersection of Faith and Career 14:58 Redefining Success and Purpose 20:04 Living Out Faith in Technology 24:59 Protecting Human Dignity in an AI World 40:00 Final Thoughts and Reflections LinkedIn · Website Episode 158 of the PreVetted Podcast.

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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
    167
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Federico Ramallo
  • Show Website
    PreVetted Podcast