The 15 Best Software Engineers Podcasts (2026)

Software Engineering Radio has been running since 2006 and is backed by the IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine, which gives it a kind of institutional credibility that most tech podcasts can only dream about. With over 700 episodes in the archive, it covers the full spectrum of software engineering — from system design and architecture to programming languages, testing strategies, and team practices.

Every episode is either a focused tutorial on a specific technical topic or an in-depth interview with a recognized expert. Recent guests have included researchers discussing continuous architecture, engineers working on low-latency AI systems, and language designers talking about the evolution of C. The rotating roster of hosts keeps perspectives fresh, and each one brings real industry experience to the conversation. Episodes run about 45 to 60 minutes and arrive weekly.

What makes SE Radio valuable for working engineers is its commitment to being a lasting educational resource rather than chasing trends. You can go back and listen to an episode from 2015 on microservices or 2018 on distributed systems and still get meaningful takeaways. The production is straightforward — no flashy sound effects, just substantive technical conversation. It holds a 4.4 star rating from 271 reviews on Apple Podcasts, and many listeners describe it as the podcast they wish they had discovered earlier in their careers.

Software Engineering Daily launched in 2015 and has since published over 1,500 episodes covering just about every corner of software development. The show is hosted by Jeff Meyerson and features technical interviews that go deep on specific tools, architectures, and engineering practices. If a new framework, protocol, or infrastructure approach is gaining traction, there is a good chance SED will have an episode about it within weeks.

Recent coverage has included Python 3.14 features with CPython Developer in Residence Lukasz Langa, Airbnb's GraphQL framework with Adam Miskiewicz, and WebAssembly 3.0 with its co-creator Andreas Rossberg. The show also tackles broader themes like agentic AI development, reproducible builds, and developer experience tooling. Episodes typically run 45 to 60 minutes and drop on weekdays.

The breadth of the catalog is genuinely impressive. You can use it almost like a technical encyclopedia — need to understand event sourcing, Kubernetes networking, or how a specific database handles replication? There is probably an episode for that. The 4.4 star rating from over 600 reviews reflects strong content, though listeners do note that mid-roll ad placement can be aggressive. If you can look past that, you get one of the most comprehensive technical interview archives available in podcast form.

Adam Stacoviak and Jerod Santo have been hosting The Changelog since 2009, and with over 1,000 episodes under their belt, they have built one of the most trusted voices in open-source and software development media. The show combines a weekly news roundup with deep-dive interviews and a rotating "Friends" segment that brings recurring guests into looser, more conversational episodes.

The guest list reads like a who's who of open-source software. Recent episodes have featured Steve Ruiz (creator of tldraw), Paul Dix (InfluxDB co-founder), Nicholas Zakas (ESLint creator), and Brett Cannon from the Python team. Stacoviak and Santo have a relaxed but focused interview style — they let guests tell their stories without rushing them, but they also know when to push for specifics on architecture decisions, business models, or community governance.

What stands out about The Changelog is how it covers the human side of building software alongside the technical details. Episodes about Docker security sit next to conversations about open-source sustainability and the trust models that hold the ecosystem together. The production quality is consistently high, episodes run about an hour, and the 4.7 star rating from nearly 300 reviews speaks for itself. If you care about the tools and communities that power modern software development, this show belongs in your rotation.

Gergely Orosz spent years as an engineering manager at Uber and before that held senior roles at Microsoft and Skype. His newsletter, The Pragmatic Engineer, became one of the most widely read publications in tech, and the podcast extends that same no-nonsense approach into long-form audio conversations. Launched in 2024, the show already has about 50 episodes and a devoted following.

The format is simple: Orosz sits down with experienced engineers and engineering leaders for conversations that regularly stretch past an hour — sometimes close to three. Recent episodes have covered Kotlin's design philosophy, how AWS built S3 at scale, engineering culture at Google and Netflix, and the real impact of AI tools on day-to-day coding work. Orosz brings genuine curiosity and enough technical depth to ask follow-up questions that surface details you will not hear elsewhere.

What makes this podcast particularly valuable is Orosz's perspective as someone who has actually done the work he asks about. When a guest talks about scaling a team from 10 to 100 engineers, Orosz can speak from experience. When someone describes a gnarly production incident, he knows the right questions to ask. The show carries a 4.9 star rating from 76 reviews, and listeners consistently praise the caliber of guests and the depth of discussion. It is newer than some shows on this list, but it has already earned its spot among the best.

CoRecursive is not your typical software engineering podcast. Adam Gordon Bell takes a narrative storytelling approach, spending weeks researching each episode to tell one complete story about the people and decisions behind significant pieces of software. The show has been running since 2017 with about 114 episodes, released monthly, and each one feels like a short documentary rather than a standard interview.

Recent episodes have covered the early days of Google AdWords through the eyes of engineer Ron Garret, a developer's 15-year battle with an elusive bug, the story behind the Compiler Explorer (Godbolt), and a software failure that actually sent innocent people to prison. Bell's production quality is high — there is real narrative structure, not just a host reading questions off a list. He weaves together original interviews, historical context, and technical explanation into something that keeps you listening on a commute or a walk.

The 4.9 star rating from nearly 200 reviews makes it one of the highest-rated software podcasts on Apple Podcasts, and that reputation is earned. The show also has an active Slack community where listeners discuss episodes. If you have ever wanted to understand how a particular technology came to be, or what it was actually like to work on a pivotal project, CoRecursive delivers that experience consistently. Monthly releases mean each episode gets the attention it deserves.

Dev Interrupted sits at the intersection of software engineering and engineering leadership, and it has carved out a unique space there since launching in 2020. Produced by LinearB, the show runs about 270 episodes deep with a two-part weekly schedule: Tuesday episodes feature interviews with tech founders, CTOs, and engineering directors, while Friday roundups cover the week's biggest news in AI and software development.

The guest roster is strong. Recent episodes have included the CEO of Warp discussing how AI agents are straining GitHub infrastructure, a member of OpenAI's Codex team talking about agentic autonomy, Spotify's Head of Technology on developer portals, and engineering leaders from Slack and Netflix. Hosts Andrew and Ben keep conversations grounded in practical reality rather than abstract theory — you will hear about actual team structures, real metrics, and specific decisions these leaders made.

The show has leaned heavily into the AI-native development conversation recently, exploring topics like vibe coding, autonomous agents, and how code review workflows need to adapt when AI generates a growing share of pull requests. With a 4.8 star rating from 146 reviews, it has become a go-to for engineering managers and senior ICs who want to stay current on how the role of software engineering leadership is evolving. Episodes run 30 to 60 minutes.

Jonathan Cutrell started Developer Tea in 2015 with a simple premise: give software engineers short, actionable episodes they could listen to during a tea break. Over 1,300 episodes and 17 million downloads later, the formula clearly works. Episodes release twice a week and typically run 13 to 40 minutes, making this one of the most digestible engineering podcasts available.

Cutrell is an engineering leader with more than 15 years of industry experience, and his focus goes well beyond code. Recent episodes tackle how software engineers can remain relevant alongside AI, the psychology behind career stagnation at the mid-to-senior level, how the overjustification effect kills intrinsic motivation, and practical strategies for de-risking career moves through financial planning. The Career Growth Accelerator series has been particularly popular, addressing specific blockers that keep engineers from reaching staff or principal levels.

What sets Developer Tea apart from other career-focused tech podcasts is Cutrell's willingness to draw from psychology, behavioral economics, and management science rather than just recycling standard career advice. The show does not assume every listener wants to become a manager — it speaks to individual contributors who want to do meaningful work and grow on their own terms. The 4.8 star rating from over 400 reviews and the massive download numbers make it one of the most popular engineering podcasts, period.

Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski are both full-stack JavaScript developers who have been teaching web development through online courses for years, and their podcast Syntax brings that same energy to audio form. Since 2017 they have released nearly 1,000 episodes — dropping twice a week — covering everything from React and TypeScript to CSS architecture, tooling, and the business of being a developer.

The chemistry between the two hosts is a big part of why the show works. They trade off between deep-dive "Hasty Treat" episodes (shorter, focused on one topic) and longer episodes where they break down a technology, compare tools, or share lessons from their own projects. Recent coverage has included AI coding agents and editors, WebMCP standards, advanced TypeScript patterns, mobile web optimization, and browser engine developments. They are not afraid to have opinions, and they regularly update listeners when those opinions change.

With a 4.9 star rating from nearly 1,000 reviews, Syntax is one of the highest-rated and most popular web development podcasts. It skews toward front-end and full-stack JavaScript, so backend-only engineers may find some episodes less relevant, but the show regularly covers general software engineering topics like debugging workflows, testing strategies, and developer productivity. If you build things for the web, Syntax probably covers the tools you use every day.

Saron Yitbarek created CodeNewbie in 2014 as a community for people learning to code, and the podcast quickly became its flagship product. Over 365 episodes, Yitbarek has interviewed developers from wildly different backgrounds — career changers who left medicine or sound engineering, bootcamp graduates finding their first jobs, self-taught programmers who built companies, and experienced engineers reflecting on what they wish they had known starting out.

The interview style is warm and curious without being soft. Yitbarek asks the questions that people early in their careers actually want answered: how did you get your first job, what did the learning process actually feel like, how do you deal with imposter syndrome, what does a typical day look like. Recent episodes have covered AI's impact on the job market for new developers, networking strategies that actually work, and practical approaches to work-life balance in tech.

CodeNewbie holds a 4.7 star rating from over 570 reviews, and listeners consistently point to the show's welcoming tone as its defining quality. But it is not just for beginners — experienced engineers often say they get value from hearing fresh perspectives and remembering why they got into this field. The show has grown into a broader organization with conferences and community events, but the podcast remains the heart of it. Episodes run 35 to 55 minutes and drop weekly.

Henry Suryawirawan started Tech Lead Journal in 2020 with a straightforward thesis: being a great tech lead requires a lot more than writing great code. Over 260 weekly episodes, he has interviewed experienced technical leaders about the skills that do not show up in coding interviews — team building, stakeholder communication, architectural decision-making, managing technical debt, and navigating organizational politics.

The guest list spans senior engineers, engineering managers, CTOs, and authors who have written books on technical leadership. Recent episodes have covered platform engineering and internal developer experience, how to manage AI adoption within engineering organizations, software reliability and durable execution patterns, and how cybersecurity fits into the tech lead's responsibilities. Suryawirawan's interview style is thorough — he clearly prepares extensively and knows how to pull practical, actionable advice from his guests.

What makes Tech Lead Journal particularly useful is that it fills a gap most other software podcasts ignore. Plenty of shows cover new frameworks and tools, but few focus specifically on the transition from senior engineer to technical leader. The show addresses questions like how to run effective architecture reviews, how to balance hands-on coding with leadership responsibilities, and how to build a team culture that actually ships quality software. It carries a 4.7 star rating from 14 reviews on Apple Podcasts.

Robby Russell — who also created Oh My Zsh, the wildly popular terminal framework used by millions of developers — hosts Maintainable with a focus on a question that every engineer eventually faces: how do you keep software healthy over time? Since 2019, the show has published 223 episodes featuring senior engineers, architects, and CTOs sharing how they deal with technical debt, legacy codebases, and the organizational challenges that make software hard to maintain.

The format is conversational interviews that run about 30 to 45 minutes, released every two weeks. Recent topics have included using AI for incremental maintenance rather than full rewrites, fast feedback loops and observability, database architecture decisions that pay off years later, dependency management strategies, and why code consistency is ultimately a cultural problem rather than a tooling problem. Russell's guests bring real war stories from long-running production systems, not theoretical best practices.

What makes Maintainable stand out is its narrow but deeply relevant focus. Most software podcasts celebrate the excitement of building new things, but this show tackles the less glamorous reality that most engineers spend their time working on existing systems. The show has a perfect 5.0 star rating from 32 reviews on Apple Podcasts, with listeners noting that nearly every episode maps directly to challenges they have faced in their own work. If you have ever inherited a codebase and wondered how to make it better without burning it down, this podcast is for you.

Coder Radio has been a weekly fixture in the software development podcast world since 2012, making it one of the longest-running shows in the space with nearly 590 episodes. Currently hosted by Mike, the show takes a pragmatic look at both the art and business of software development — covering not just what tools and languages engineers are using, but the industry dynamics, career realities, and business decisions that shape the profession.

The format is a weekly talk show rather than a strict interview podcast, which gives it a different energy from most engineering shows. Mike brings his own development experience to the table and riffs on current tech news, emerging tools, and industry trends. Recent episodes have featured conversations with professionals from companies like Red Hat, MongoDB, Tabnine, and Cisco, covering topics ranging from Docker and AI-powered development tools to vector databases and open-source business models.

What Coder Radio does well is treat software development as a profession with business, cultural, and economic dimensions — not just a set of technical skills. The show appeals to engineers who want to understand the bigger picture of the industry they work in. With a 4.7 star rating from 152 reviews, it has maintained a loyal audience over more than a decade. Episodes drop weekly and run about 45 to 60 minutes.

Andrew Lisowski and Justin Bennett started devtools.fm in 2021 with a clear mission: interview the creators of the developer tools that engineers use every day. Over 164 weekly episodes, they have built an impressive catalog of conversations with the people behind frameworks like React, Solid, Svelte, and Vue, runtimes like Node, Deno, and Bun, languages like Rust and Zig, database platforms like Supabase and Turso, and deployment services like Vercel and Netlify.

The show goes beyond surface-level product demos. Lisowski and Bennett dig into the design decisions, tradeoffs, and technical challenges that shaped each tool. They ask the kinds of questions that working engineers actually care about — why was this architectural choice made, what broke along the way, how does this tool fit into the broader ecosystem. Recent episodes have explored AI integration in developer workflows, browser automation tools, schema validation libraries, and the emerging concept of "Agent Experience" as a complement to traditional developer experience.

Episodes run about 45 to 60 minutes and drop weekly. The 4.7 star rating from 25 reviews may seem modest in scale, but the feedback is consistently enthusiastic — listeners call out the high-quality guests and genuinely useful insights into developer experience. If you care about the tools in your stack and want to understand the thinking behind them from the people who actually built them, devtools.fm delivers exactly that.

CaSE has been quietly producing thoughtful software engineering content since 2017, with 61 episodes that prioritize depth over frequency. The show is run by a small team of experienced practitioners — including Heinrich Hartmann, Sven Johann, and Alexander Heusingfeld — who alternate between discussing recent industry developments among themselves and interviewing external guests from the software engineering world.

The topics lean toward software architecture, reliability engineering, data engineering, and the organizational practices that make engineering teams effective. Recent episodes have covered architecture governance approaches (golden paths and architecture advice processes), observability costs, cloud-native testing strategies, AI-assisted development workflows, and team topology. The conversations are grounded in real experience — these are working engineers talking about problems they have actually solved, not consultants promoting frameworks.

Episodes release roughly monthly or bimonthly, which gives each one a considered, unhurried quality. The production is clean, the discussion is substantive, and the perspectives are distinctly European, which provides a welcome counterpoint to the Silicon Valley-centric view that dominates most tech podcasts. CaSE holds a perfect 5.0 star rating on Apple Podcasts, and while the review count is small, the listeners who find it tend to become devoted fans. This is a podcast for engineers who value architectural thinking and want to hear from peers who take their craft seriously.

Overcommitted comes from a crew of self-described overcommitted software engineers who juggle full-time jobs, side projects, open-source contributions, and the constant pull to learn something new. The podcast captures that experience honestly, covering the realities of software engineering careers and the tech industry from the perspective of people who are actively living it rather than looking back from executive positions.

The show tackles software engineering career insights and tech industry trends with a conversational, unpolished energy that feels like listening in on a group of experienced friends talking shop. Topics range from practical career advice and job market analysis to technical discussions about tools, frameworks, and engineering practices. The hosts share their own experiences with side projects, burnout, time management, and the tradeoffs that come with being deeply invested in multiple technical pursuits simultaneously.

Overcommitted is a newer show that launched in 2024, but it has found an audience quickly among engineers who relate to the specific challenge of having too many interests and not enough hours. The format is casual and approachable, with episodes that feel like the conversations that happen after conference talks or during late-night hackathons. If you are the kind of engineer who always has three tabs open for unrelated projects and a list of technologies you want to try, this podcast speaks your language.