20 best software engineering podcasts for devs and founders

Every engineering or SaaS problem you face has been solved by someone somewhere. You only need to know where to tune in.

The best software engineering podcasts do more than deliver information. They compress years of hard-won experience into commute-length conversations, connect you to practitioners working through the same problems you are, and keep you current in an industry that does not slow down for anyone.

To make it easier to find what's most relevant, I've grouped the list into three categories:

• Software engineering podcasts for developers and tech leads: For engineers and technical leaders who want to get better at writing, deploying, and maintaining code.
• Developer marketing, devtool growth, and DevRel podcasts: For founders, product managers, SaaS builders, and developer marketing pros focused on taking a product from launch to traction to scale.
• Tech news and software industry podcasts: For those who want to keep up with industry shifts and cross-disciplinary trends that influence engineering and product decisions.

How we selected the best podcasts

To curate this list, I evaluated each podcast based on:

• Content quality: Does the podcast deliver actionable insights and cover topics in depth?
• Audience relevance: Is it tailored to developers, founders, and developer marketers?
• Guest expertise: Does it feature industry leaders and professionals with hands-on experience?
• Consistency: Are episodes released regularly and reliably?

TL;DR

Here are the best software engineering podcasts for developers, founders, and marketers:

Software engineering podcasts for developers and tech leads

• Software Engineering Radio: Long-form technical interviews that break down complex engineering topics.
• Software Engineering Daily: Daily conversations covering cloud, AI, tooling, and culture.
• Maintainable: Real talk on managing technical debt and sustaining software health.
• The Confident Commit: How great teams ship fast without sacrificing quality.
• ShopTalk Show: Front-end design, CSS, JS, accessibility, and performance insights.
• Developer Tea: Bite-sized episodes on better thinking and habits for developers.
• Coding Blocks: Archived treasure on clean code, performance, and architecture.
• The InfoQ Podcast: Briefings with senior engineers on modern software design and delivery.

Developer marketing, devtool growth, and DevRel podcasts

• Everything Outside Code: The messy middle of developer marketing, ops, and sales after launch.
• Developer Marketing Stories: Go-to-market lessons from dev-first products.
• Markepear: Campaign and positioning teardowns for developer tools.
• Plugin.fm: Growth and monetization tactics for indie devs and product makers.
• SaaS Club Podcast: Founder playbooks for SaaS traction, retention, and pricing.
• Open Source Startup Podcast: Building businesses around open source projects.
• Scaling DevTools: How devtool teams find product-market fit and scale.
• Dev Interrupted: Leadership insights on scaling teams and delivery pipelines.

Tech news and software industry podcasts

• Techmeme Ride Home: Daily tech headlines with actionable context.
• The Changelog: Stories from open source maintainers and contributors.
• Command Line Heroes: Narrative seasons on pivotal tools, ideas, and movements in software history.
• CoRecursive: Deep, story-driven looks at engineering challenges and decisions.
• Hanselminutes: Wide-ranging discussions linking software, culture, and practice.

Software engineering podcasts for developers and tech leads

This category covers software architecture, CI/CD, DevOps, and team workflows. These shows are built for engineers who want to go deep on craft.

Software Engineering Radio (SE-Radio)

Think of SE-Radio as the engineering conference you can attend weekly without the logistics or badge fees. Hosted by IEEE Software and the IEEE Computer Society, this show has been a reliable technical companion since 2006.

The aim is to build a lasting educational resource that speaks directly to professional software developers. Episodes land every week, and they don't hold back. Recent conversations have covered a range of topics, from the privacy and security of AI coding assistants to Kubernetes security and API design.

Each episode dives deep into architecture, DevOps, testing frameworks, and just about any core engineering topic you can think of. It's the kind of content where you'll press pause to take notes and come back later to revisit the nuance.

If your goal is to stay grounded in engineering fundamentals and ahead of emerging challenges, SE-Radio serves up both consistently.

Software Engineering Daily

If there's a backbone to the engineering podcast world, Software Engineering Daily is it. Since 2015, Jeff Meyerson has released over 1,500 episodes covering just about every corner of software development, from cloud architecture and AI to developer culture and career growth. It's the kind of show where you can scroll the archives and find an episode on almost any tech topic you're curious about.

The format is a deep one-on-one conversation with an engineer, founder, or researcher who's living the topic day-to-day. While the technical depth varies depending on the guest, the best episodes feel like an in-progress masterclass, pulling apart decisions, trade-offs, and lessons learned. Whether you want to keep up with emerging trends or go deep on a niche, there's something here worth queuing up.

Maintainable Software Podcast

Every developer says they care about clean code, but few podcasts spend most of their time on what happens after the first release. Maintainable, hosted by Robby Russell, is all about the art and discipline of keeping software healthy over time. Guests, from senior engineers to CTOs, share how they deal with technical debt, legacy systems, and the realities of scaling codebases.

The conversations are practical and grounded. You'll hear about the tools, processes, and cultural shifts that make maintenance sustainable, as well as the mistakes teams make when they treat it as an afterthought. For anyone who's inherited a project that felt like a ticking time bomb, this podcast is both therapy and a playbook.

The Confident Commit

The Confident Commit, hosted by CircleCI's CTO Rob Zuber, takes you inside the systems that keep delivery fast, reliable, and adaptable. This biweekly podcast is a candid exploration of the cultural and technical decisions that allow teams to ship at speed without losing quality.

Rob's guests are engineering leaders, DevOps experts, and product strategists who've wrestled with the challenges of scaling delivery. Together, they unpack topics like tightening feedback loops in CI/CD pipelines, designing observability into both tooling and team habits, and creating a developer experience that sustains productivity over the long haul.

It's a podcast for anyone who knows that engineering excellence comes from pairing technical precision with the discipline of shipping consistently and without burning out the people who make it happen.

ShopTalk Show

For front-end developers and web designers, ShopTalk Show is like dropping into an ongoing conversation between two pros who live and breathe the craft. Hosted by Chris Coyier (CSS-Tricks) and Dave Rupert, the show covers everything from CSS and JavaScript to accessibility, performance, and workflow tips, delivered in a casual, approachable tone.

The format is a mix of guest interviews, listener Q&A, and rapid-fire episodes where they tackle multiple front-end questions in one go. They don't shy away from the nitty-gritty, but they keep it light, making it easy to follow even when going deep on browser quirks or framework debates. If your work touches the web, this one earns a permanent spot in your feed.

Developer Tea

If most tech podcasts are a full-course meal, Developer Tea is the strong, focused espresso shot. Hosted by Jonathan Cutrell, it delivers short, thoughtful episodes, usually under 15 minutes, designed to give programmers something to chew on between coding sessions.

The topics range from career growth and problem-solving frameworks to mindset shifts that make you a better teammate and leader. Each episode gets straight to the point, offering a clear takeaway you can apply that day. For busy engineers who want consistent, bite-sized wisdom without the commitment of hour-long listens, Developer Tea fits easily into any routine.

The InfoQ Podcast

The InfoQ Podcast is produced by the team behind the InfoQ software development news site. It features senior engineers, architects, and technology leaders breaking down trends in AI, DevOps, architecture, cloud, and more.

Episodes are concise, usually under 30 minutes, but dense with insight. The questions go beyond surface commentary, digging into trade-offs, implementation details, and the reasoning behind big technical decisions. Whether you're a tech lead keeping your team ahead of the curve or an engineer trying to understand where the industry is moving, this podcast gives you direct access to the kind of conversations that happen at high-level meetups and conferences.

Coding Blocks (Archived, but worth exploring)

For over a decade, Coding Blocks was the go-to for developers who wanted to sharpen their craft without sitting through a dry lecture. Hosts Allen Underwood, Michael Outlaw, and Joe Zack tackled everything from clean code principles and design patterns to cloud architecture and performance tuning, always with enough humor to keep it engaging.

The show wrapped in 2024 with a farewell episode, When to Log Out, but the 300+ episode backlog is a goldmine. Topics like GitHub Actions, Apache Kafka, and data modeling remain just as relevant today, making it one of the most binge-worthy archives in engineering podcast history.

If you're looking for evergreen technical discussions with personality, this is still worth adding to your rotation.

Developer marketing, devtool growth, and DevRel podcasts

This category covers go-to-market execution, developer relations, product-market fit, and scaling devtool companies.

Developer Marketing Stories

Some shows tell you about developer marketing. This one puts you in the room with the people doing it. Hosted by Matthew Revell and Adam DuVander, author of Developer Marketing Doesn't Exist, Developer Marketing Stories strips away the gloss and digs into what it takes to bring developer-focused products to market.

The format blends thoughtful interviews with case study-style storytelling, so every episode feels like a peek inside someone's post-mortem notes, including what worked, what bombed, and what they'd change. Guests have included teams from GitHub, Postman, and Major League Hacking, each bringing hard-earned perspective. If you want to go deeper, the hosts also share DevRel-specific content on YouTube, including talks from their DevRelCon conference.

Everything Outside Code

Everything Outside Code is hosted by Hackmamba founder William Imoh. Across 70+ guest episodes, William brings on founders, marketers, and operators to have unfiltered conversations about the challenges technical people rarely discuss in public. You'll hear discussions on developer relations strategy, SaaS growth, cross-functional hiring, PLG vs. sales-led tension, and the reality of sustaining momentum post-launch.

With a 4.8-star rating, this one covers the messy middle that most podcasts avoid: the marketing that doesn't feel natural, sales conversations that stall, and operations that keep you up at night. It's as much about perspective as it is about tactics.

Markepear

Markepear, hosted by developer marketer Jakub Czakon, offers a mix of solo teardowns, interviews, and examples that go beneath the surface of campaigns, landing pages, and positioning strategies. Episodes run around 50 minutes, long enough to unpack a campaign with precision. From dissecting LinkedIn ads to breaking down homepage effectiveness, every show delivers something actionable.

If you're in DevRel, growth, or marketing for developer tools, this is the only teardown-based audio content worth bookmarking.

Scaling DevTools

Building a developer tool is one thing. Turning it into something people can't live without is another. Scaling DevTools, hosted by Jack Bridger, focuses on that second part. Each biweekly episode brings in a founder or early team member from a devtool company to unpack how they've grown, from features they've shipped to the storytelling, community building, and market positioning that made them stick.

Episodes run 40 to 70 minutes, long enough to dig into the details, short enough to listen on a commute. The guests are transparent, sharing both the wins and the times they shipped something that fell flat. If you're working on a tool for developers, this is like shadowing a dozen different growth teams without leaving your desk.

SaaS Club Podcast

The SaaS Podcast, hosted by former Microsoft product leader Omer Khan, has been delivering sharp conversations with SaaS founders since 2014. With over 500 episodes, each interview dives into the founder playbook, covering topics like retention-first growth, building AI tools, and scrappy MVP pivots that landed real traction.

Omer is well-prepped, gets to the hard questions, and leaves guests no choice but to share the strategies and missteps they rarely put on stage. With a 4.8 rating from founder listeners, the podcast earns its place in any SaaS playlist.

Plugin.fm

Built by Freemius, Plugin.fm is designed for indie devs, solo makers, and software product creators trying to do it all. Hosted by Freemius CMO Goran Mirkovic, the show covers practical tactics for growing a digital product: influencer marketing, user-generated content, building niche authority, and developer marketing execution.

Episodes arrive weekly and cover ideas you can test immediately. If your roadmap has always been code first and growth second, Plugin.fm will help you change that.

Open Source Startup Podcast

Some founders chase venture capital, others chase GitHub stars. Open Source Startup Podcast, hosted by Robby and Tim, is where the latter go to tell their stories. It's a weekly sit-down with the people behind open-source companies that became real businesses, from Vercel and MongoDB to DBT, MetalBear, and mobile.dev.

With over 175 episodes, the show has built an archive that doubles as a playbook for anyone navigating the unique mix of community building, product growth, and monetization in open source. The conversations are candid and detail-heavy, often revealing the pivots, experiments, and lucky breaks that don't make it into conference talks.

Even if you're not running an open-source project, the thinking here on growth and developer trust is worth borrowing.

Dev Interrupted

Dev Interrupted, hosted by Andrew Zigler, Ben Lloyd Pearson, and Dan Lines, has since 2020 become a go-to for software engineering leadership. Each week, they sit down with seasoned leaders to unpack team dynamics, productivity, AI-driven workflows, and managing impact under pressure.

With over 230 episodes averaging around 39 minutes each, you'll hear topics like redefining developer experience metrics, leading with foresight over firefighting, and architecting agent-driven workflows. These conversations are tactical, strategic, and rooted in engineering reality.

Tech news and software industry podcasts

This category covers industry news, emerging trends, and the stories behind the tools and decisions shaping software today.

Techmeme Ride Home

Techmeme Ride Home is a daily tech briefing hosted by Brian McCullough and powered by Techmeme's news engine. Each episode runs 15 to 22 minutes and delivers the day's tech headlines with enough context to understand why they matter. It publishes every evening like clockwork, making it one of the most consistent news shows in tech.

One analysis found that Techmeme Ride Home averages more episodes consumed per subscriber than many larger shows, which points to real listener loyalty rather than passive follows. If you want to stay current on AI breakthroughs, industry shifts, and what Silicon Valley is actually focused on, this podcast delivers it reliably.

The Changelog

Some podcasts chase trends. The Changelog has been documenting them for over a decade. Hosted by Adam Stacoviak and Jerod Santo, it's a long-running weekly show that explores what's fresh and what's next in software development, with an eye on the open-source projects and people driving it forward.

With more than 600 episodes, the format is relaxed but focused, often running over an hour to give guests room to dig in. Conversations range from technical deep dives to broader discussions about culture, community, and the future of software. The archive alone is a time capsule of how engineering has evolved over the past decade.

CoRecursive

Most engineering podcasts tell you what someone built. CoRecursive tells you why and what it cost them to get there. Hosted by Adam Bell, the show dives into the human side of software through long-form, story-driven interviews. Guests walk through a single project or turning point in their career, unpacking the challenges, breakthroughs, and personal stakes behind the code.

Episodes often feel more like documentaries than interviews. You'll hear from engineers who've debugged billion-row datasets, designed critical infrastructure, or wrestled with systems that refused to behave. It's the kind of podcast you queue up when you want to understand not just the solution, but the journey.

Hanselminutes

Few podcasts have stayed relevant across as many shifts in technology as Hanselminutes. Hosted by Scott Hanselman since 2006, it treats software development as part of a bigger conversation, one that includes culture, diversity, accessibility, and the human side of tech alongside deep technical topics.

The guest list is always eclectic: veteran engineers, startup founders, open-source maintainers, educators, and innovators from outside the traditional tech bubble. Episodes run under 30 minutes but carry the feel of an ongoing, thoughtful dialogue. Hanselminutes has a way of making complex ideas approachable without dumbing them down.

Command Line Heroes (Completed, Season 1–8)

Command Line Heroes, produced by Red Hat and hosted by Saron Yitbarek, ran for eight seasons from 2017 to 2022. Each season took on a central theme, from the rise of open source and the history of programming languages to the origins of DevOps and the people who built the internet's foundational tools.

The show blends narrative storytelling with sound design to create something closer to an audio documentary than a typical tech chat. The complete archive is free and well worth working through, particularly for developers who want context for the tools and movements they work with every day.

Start with one, build from there

Whether you're looking to sharpen your engineering skills, grow a developer community, market a developer tool, or stay current with the industry, there is a podcast on this list that serves that goal. Pick one or two that match where you are right now and make them part of your routine.

If you're working on developer acquisition, adoption, content strategy, DevRel, SEO, community building, or go-to-market execution, we cover all of these in depth at Hackmamba. And if you want to talk about how a developer marketing agency can help your devtool company grow, we're available.

FAQs

1, What are the best software engineering podcasts for developers in 2026?

Software Engineering Radio and Software Engineering Daily are the two strongest options for engineers who want consistent technical depth. SE-Radio covers architecture, DevOps, and security in long-form interviews hosted by IEEE. Software Engineering Daily publishes daily episodes across cloud, AI, tooling, and engineering culture and has over 1,500 episodes in its archive.

2, What are the best podcasts for devtool founders and developer marketers?

Everything Outside Code, Developer Marketing Stories, Markepear, and Scaling DevTools are the four shows built specifically for this audience. Everything Outside Code covers the full operational picture of running a devtool company. Developer Marketing Stories focuses on go-to-market execution. Markepear runs teardowns of developer marketing campaigns. Scaling DevTools interviews early-stage devtool founders on how they found product-market fit.

3, What podcasts should DevRel professionals follow?

Developer Marketing Stories and Markepear both cover DevRel strategy directly. Everything Outside Code frequently features developer advocates and DevRel leads as guests. The broader developer community discussions in Dev Interrupted are also relevant for DevRel professionals managing team dynamics and developer experience programs.

4, Are there any podcasts specifically about open source business models?

Open Source Startup Podcast is the most focused on this. It covers how teams at companies like Vercel, MongoDB, and DBT built real businesses on top of open-source projects, including their community-building approaches, monetization decisions, and go-to-market strategies.

5, What is the best short-form software engineering podcast?

Developer Tea publishes episodes under 15 minutes focused on mindset, habits, and career development for engineers. Techmeme Ride Home runs 15 to 22 minutes and covers daily tech news. Both are designed for listening between tasks or during short commutes.

6, Which software engineering podcasts cover AI and emerging technology?

Software Engineering Daily, The InfoQ Podcast, and Techmeme Ride Home all cover AI consistently. Software Engineering Daily has dedicated episodes on AI infrastructure, LLMs, and AI tooling. The InfoQ Podcast covers AI in the context of production engineering and architecture. Techmeme Ride Home surfaces the AI business and industry news that matters day to day.