The Thoughtworks podcast plunges deep into the latest tech topics that have captured our imagination. Join our panel of senior technologists to explore the most important trends in tech today, get frontline insights into our work developing cutting-edge tech and hear more about how today's tech…
The way we think about and build with data is changing. Data lakehouses have become an industry standard, and conversation is turning to semantic and governance layers as organizations seek to optimize and leverage data for the AI era. However, the concept of 'data products' — treating data as something that needs to be deliberately managed and packaged in a way that's easily usable and consumable for the people that need it — remains crucial. On this episode of the Technology Podcast, host Nate Schutta is joined by Thoughtworks colleague and Data and AI Lead Lorisa Perdoci and Lauren…
The agentic era of software engineering began almost a year ago. And while much has changed in 2026, there's still a lot that hasn't been settled. One of the most important issues is how teams should collaborate. The idea of working with a spec may have considerable allure, but many questions remain: How should it be defined? Who owns it? How do we iterate with it? The fear of retreating back into waterfall is very real and requires vigilance. On this episode of the Technology Podcast, hosts Ken Mugrage and Caer Sanders are joined by former Thoughtworkers Cassie Shum (formerly VP of…
We've seen a huge amount of increase in interest around open-weight models in 2026. The reasons for this are multifaceted, ranging from the switch to per token billing, the evolving privacy landscape and improvements in open-weight model capabilities. To unpack open-weight models and explore why and when we might want to use them, host Ken Mugrage is joined by Thoughtworkers Caer Sanders and Andre Almar. They discuss everything from the precise definition of the term and how they compare to other kinds of models, to governance and hardware challenges.
We've been thinking a lot recently about the status of code in a world where it's increasingly written and read by AI. Could the spec, for instance, become the primary way we interface with software systems? And if it does, will that mean humans no longer need to look at code at all? At present, the idea of not looking at our code seems fanciful, possibly dangerous, but even within Thoughtworks there are conflicting perspectives about whether this might change. To some, code will always remain the primary artifact; to others, its role in how we build software is about to undergo a…
Harness engineering is still a new concept, but already we've noticed a challenge being consistently faced by technology leaders: how can a harness be used at scale across an organization to ensure consistency and controllability without undermining autonomy? To some extent it's a discussion that's reminiscent of platform engineering and, before that, DevOps, but, given the nature of AI agents, it's also unique to this particular moment. On this episode of the Technology Podcast, host Ken Mugrage is joined by guests Thomas Squeo (Chief Technology Officer and Head of Advisory for the…
Cloud was one of the main drivers of the early waves of AI adoption. However, as AI has become more and more embedded in systems and devices — in both consumer and enterprise contexts — it's becoming a bottleneck. This isn't just about costs (although yes, that issue is certainly surging up the agenda), it's also about how we optimize our architectures and improve device performance. This is why conversation is turning to hybrid AI: embracing a hybrid approach that combines proprietary cloud services with local or on-device AI can help organizations deliver better experiences for users,…
At the end of June, Thoughtworks and Martin Fowler convened an unconference-style event in Switzerland with a range of industry leaders. The aim was to reflect on the current challenges and learning around AI assisted and agentic software engineering and discuss the implications for the future — and, most importantly, what actions need to be taken today. To review the event and dive into some of the topics that surfaced, host Ken Mugrage is joined by Thoughtworks colleagues Kief Morris (author of Infrastructure as Code ) and Andrew Harmel-Law (author of Facilitating Software Architecture ).…
What is code? It might sound obvious, but if you scratch the surface it becomes more difficult to articulate precisely what we mean. AI is complicating the picture further and changing the relationship developers have with code: when large amounts of executable code can be generated from high-level descriptions, what does it even mean to write code? On this episode of the Technology Podcast, host Alexey Boas is joined by Thoughworks Distinguished Engineer Unmesh Joshi to discuss what code actually is and what it means to write, test, review and maintain code today. Building on Unmesh's…
Database branching has, for a long time, been a troublesome piece in the modern developer workflow puzzle: a good idea in principle but in practice a slow and often expensive challenge. Get it right and you can accelerate productivity and remove bottlenecks; get it wrong and you're potentially creating all sorts of trouble for yourself, from privacy risks to additional complexity. However, things are changing. Thanks to the emergence of new platforms such as Neon, Supabase and Databricks Lakebase, branching a database can become as familiar to developers as managing code branches and…
Semantic diffusion, combined with the pace of technology change, makes talking about AI-adjacent practices and techniques incredibly diffficult. There are few better examples of this issue than the term 'spec-driven development'. Although it's not new — its coinage precedes our current AI moment — it has become ubiquitous over the last six months or so as software professionals attempt to develop a vocabulary for talking about how they're developing methods for working successfully with coding agents. On this episode of the Technology Podcast, Birgitta Böckeler is joined by Laura Tacho —…
'Harness engineering' is one of the most significant terms to emerge in software engineering in 2026. Broadly referring to the work done to control unpredictable AI agents and coding assistants, its use signals growing attention on what needs to be done to make agents reliable and consistent enough for production software in the real-world. On this episode of the Technology Podcast, Birgitta Böckeler joins hosts Prem Chandrasekaran and Nate Schutta to explore what harness engineering actually is, how it should be done and why it should matter to software engineers working today. Having…
Anthropic Mythos garnered significant attention when it was launched in mid-April 2026. Yet despite it apparently presenting an unprecedented threat to global software, you don't have to look to closely to see that this was an effective product launch as much as a story about the grave security risks of today's AI models. But this isn't to say there aren't important implications for software developers, security professionals and other technologists. In this episode of the Technology Podcast, one of our new hosts Nate Schutta is joined by Chris Kramer to discuss Anthropic Mythos and Project…
In April 2026 we published a new edition of the Thoughtworks Technology Radar — volume 34. Like many recent volumes, this one was dominated by AI. However, while editions over the last couple of years have illustrated the dizzying proliferation of AI-related technologies, vol.34 indicates a degree of evolution in the field, demonstrated by a focus on consistency, reliability and mitigating the collaborative and individual challenges of working with AI. This is reflected in the four themes identified for this Radar: the challenge of evaluating technology in an agentic world; retaining…
There's been a lot of discussion and debate in recent months about exactly how software engineering will be reshaped by AI. While it remains to be seen what the discipline will look like once things quieten down (if they ever do), one thing has been somewhat neglected: what does software engineering actually feel like in this AI-intensive environment? If we're no longer writing code, or even interfacing with it in the way we're used to, what does that mean for our professional experience? On this episode of the Technology Podcast, host Ken Mugrage is joined by Nate Schutta to discuss the…
The Thoughtworks 2026 Looking Glass report was published in January. Designed to provide business and technology leaders with the tools to better understand and navigate future trends, this edition paid particularly close attention to what organizations need to do to reach a level of AI maturity that will effectively unlock an operational and commercial edge. Taking in everything from AI-assisted software delivery to AI-ready data, it bridges the gaps between what the world is doing today, what will be possible in the months to come and what may be coming on the horizon in the long-term. To…
Managing distributed systems and complex workflows can be challenging. What happens when something fails? If a task isn't executed to completion, that can lead to serious problems. From transaction and billing failures to deploying software, even small issues can have significant consequences. This is one of the reasons for durable computing. Designed to isolate code from crashes, it preserves state so a task is completed even when something fails. To discuss durable computing, explore why it matters today and how we've been using it at Thoughtworks, Brandon Cook and John Coleman join host…
In January 2026, Thoughtworks launched AI/works™, an agentic development platform. It promises to make the capabilities of AI agents a reality for the enterprise, helping in areas including understanding complex legacy code, forward engineering new software solutions and agent governance. How, though, does it actually work in practice? And what does it mean for the organizations and teams Thoughtworks works with? In this episode of the Technology Podcast, new host Rickey Zachary is joined by Bharani Subramaniam (CTO for Thoughtworks India and the Middle East) and Shodhan Sheth (Head of…
In a world that's being transformed by AI agents and agentic systems, how do software developers unlearn what they know while also maintaining engineering rigor? In an in-person conversation with Nathen Harvey, Developer Relations Engineer at Google Cloud, and Patrick Debois, Developer Relations at Tessl, host Ken Mugrage dives into the ways individuals, teams and organizations are walking the line between experimentation and well-established engineering practices as they seek to innovate while ensuring resilience, reliability and security. Thoughtworks is a platinum sponsor of the 2025 DORA…
If AI agents really are the future of how work will be done — in software engineering and beyond — the platforms on which they are built, run and maintained will be crucial. This is a topic two Thoughtworkers, Ben O'Mahony and Fabian Nonnenmacher, are currently writing about. Although not due to be published until early 2027, the first two chapters of Building AI Agent Platforms are now available as part of O'Reilly's Early Release scheme. Its goal is to provide readers with a complete roadmap for developing AI agent platforms, from agent development to architectural principles to…
You can grasp the basics of software architecture by learning design patterns, but you probably won't master it — to do that you have to get to grips with antipatterns too. Often these lessons are hard-won through experience, derived from seeing what happens when architectural decisions (or the lack of them) collide with the messy reality of the real world. While there's obviously no replacement for practical experience, Neal Ford, Mark Richards and Raju Gandhi want to share theirs to give architects the opportunity to avoid common antipatterns and pitfalls and make smarter decisions. That's…
The 'age of intent' is a phrase that's been around for a number of years. However, with the rise of AI agents in 2025 it has the potential to become a key trend for 2026. It describes a new way of thinking about digital interaction in which the gap between human intention and output are reduced even further through AI assistance. Thoughtworks' APAC CTO Sarah Taraporewalla has been exploring the age of intent in recent months; she's written a series of blog posts that tackle what this new phase of digital interaction means for businesses and how they can prepare themselves. On the latest…
This year's DORA report focuses on AI-assisted software development. While one of the key themes is just how ubiquitous AI is today in software engineering, that's only part of the picture. In fact, the report outlines many of the challenges the adoption of these technologies are posing and explores the barriers and obstacles that need to be addressed to ensure AI-assistance leads to long-term success. In this episode of the Technology Podcast, host Ken Mugrage is joined by Chris Westerhold — Global Practice Director for Engineering Excellence at Thoughtworks — to discuss this year's DORA…
Vibe coding was, remarkably, named word of the year by the Collins English Dictionary at the start of November 2025 — pretty good going for a term that was only coined in February. We first discussed it on the Technology Podcast back in April, and, given its prominence in the collective lexicon this year, thought we should revisit and reflect on the topic as 2025 draws to a close. Lots has happened in the intervening months: MCP adoption, the evolution of agentic coding tools and practices like context engineering have had a significant impact on the way the world is thinking about and using…
One of the biggest stories in software engineering in 2025 is the impact of generative AI on the software development lifecycle. From advances in coding assistance to the emergence of so-called agentic coding, there's undoubtedly a lot for software developers to process, learn and experiment with — not to mention rapid change to contend with. On this episode of the Technology Podcast, host Ken Mugrage is joined by Brandon Cook to discuss not only how AI has been shaping the way software developers work but how developers can play an active role in ensuring the technology is leveraged safely…
In every Thoughtworks Technology Radar we feature three to five themes that represent the core issues and topics that emerged from the conversations we had when putting the publication together. This time (Fall 2025) they're all united by AI. They are: infrastructure automation arriving for AI, the rise of agents elevated by MCP, AI coding workflows and emerging AI antipatterns. On this episode of the Technology Podcast, Bryan Oliver joins Neal Ford and Ken Mugrage to discuss all four of volume 33's themes. They dive into what they mean, how the team arrived at them and what they tell us…
Everyone knows an AI strategy is important — but how do you build one with humans at the center? That's a question Tiankai Feng, Thoughtworks Global Director for Data and AI Strategy, has been pondering ever since the publication of his 2024 book Humanizing Data Strategy . Now, just over a year later, he's outlined his thinking in a follow-up, Humanizing AI Strategy. With the subtitle "leading AI with sense and soul," it's a practical and thoughtful guide aimed at helping the industry rethink the way AI is embedded and leveraged across organizations. In this episode of the Technology…
Everyone seems to be talking about context engineering. That was certainly the case in our recent discussions for the upcoming edition of the Technology Radar (volume 33, due early November 2025). And although we ran into the term on the Technology Podcast just a few weeks ago , we thought it would be useful to try and tackle exactly what people are talking about when they talk about context engineering. We know context is important when it comes to AI, but what does it mean to engineer it? On this episode of the Technology Podcast, host and Thoughtworks CTO Rachel Laycock is joined by…
Although the concept of the 'citizen developer' isn't new, with the rise of AI the relationship between those building software without much technical experience and seasoned software developers is becoming more significant. That's not to say there's conflict exactly, but there are often competing interests and demands — which can lead to tension, organizational friction and governance challenges. On this episode of the Technology Podcast, host Ken Mugrage facilitates a debate (of sorts) between Christopher Hastings, Global Tech Product Lead at Thoughtworks (and citizen developer) and Scott…
Managing technological change in an organization — particularly a large and complex one — has always been challenging. But thanks to the rapid adoption of AI in all kinds of spheres, from knowledge management to software development to content creation, it's becoming more difficult than ever. How do you strike a balance between governance and safety and autonomy and empowerment? How should teams be structured and how should they work together? In this episode of the Technology Podcast, Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais — authors of the influential Team Topologies book — join hosts Birgitta…
Generative AI can be incredibly powerful when it comes to legacy modernization. Not only can it help us better understand a large, aging codebase, it can even help us reverse engineer a legacy system when we don't have access to the complete source code. Doing it, though, requires a specific approach that's being described as 'context engineering'. This is something we've been exploring a lot in recent months at Thoughtworks. On this episode of the Technology Podcast, Thoughtworks' lead for AI-enabled software engineering, Birgitta Böckeler, and tech principal Chandirasekar Thiagarajan join…
About Thoughtworks Technology Podcast
The Thoughtworks podcast plunges deep into the latest tech topics that have captured our imagination. Join our panel of senior technologists to explore the most important trends in tech today, get frontline insights into our work developing cutting-edge tech and hear more about how today's tech megatrends will impact you.
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