John Amaral (CTO and co-founder @ Root.io) joins us to discuss the evolving role of engineering leaders and why vision-first leadership & building your “vision” muscle is more critical than ever. We dive into why “shift left” is dead and why SaaS is being replaced by “do-it” as a service. John also unpacks how to think in outcomes, apply the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework to eliminate toil, and reimagine product experiences. Plus, we look inside Root.io’s approach to building AI-native security products that ship daily. Whether you’re rethinking your org design or exploring the frontier of AI-powered engineering, this episode will reshape how you think about building, leading, and scaling teams.

ABOUT JOHN AMARAL

John Amaral, CTO and co-founder of Root.io, is a veteran cybersecurity leader with a proven track record of scaling and exiting successful companies. At Cisco, he led Product for Cloud Security—its fastest-growing Security and SaaS business. Before that, he ran product and engineering at CloudLock through its acquisition by Cisco in 2016. Earlier, as SVP of Product at Trustwave, John led its industry-leading security portfolio, culminating in a strategic acquisition by Singtel. Today, he’s building Root.io—a next-gen cybersecurity platform pioneering Agentic Vulnerability Remediation (AVR) to automate and eliminate software vulnerabilities at scale.

This episode is brought to you by Side – delivering award-winning QA, localization, player support, and tech services for the world’s leading games and technology brands.

For over 30 years, Side has helped create unforgettable user experiences—from indies to AAA blockbusters like Silent Hill 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3.

Learn more about Side’s global solutions at side.inc.

SHOW NOTES:

• The evolving role of engineering leaders (2:13)
• “Shift Left is Dead” - Why it’s time to “Shift Out” (5:59)
• Applying Jobs-To-Be-Done & offloading toil with AI (11:00)
• Root.io’s AI-driven approach to security (15:03)
• Vision First Leadership (22:36)
• Empowering developers & shipping daily (27:38)
• Rethinking product & engineering orgs and building your vision muscle (30:47)
• Unlocking creativity through hobbies (36:37)
• Rapid fire questions (41:14)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• The All-In Podcast - When the pandemic prevented four friends from convening their weekly poker game, they took to the airwaves to socialize and discuss the news of the day. What started on a whim has quickly become one of the top-ranked podcasts in the world.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/