The Best Software Engineering Podcasts in 2026

Engineering podcasts have a specific problem: code is visual and audio is not. The shows that survive contact with a real commute are the ones that figured out what audio is good for in this field: stories, systems thinking, career judgment, and the reasoning behind technical decisions rather than the syntax of them.

I’ve filtered the space down to the nine that engineers I trust actually keep in their rotations, sorted by what each is for. (This joins the audience guides for PMs, designers, investors, and AI.)

The storytelling tier

1. CoRecursive

The best-kept secret in tech podcasting. Adam Gordon Bell finds the human story inside software: how SQLite got its reliability religion, what it’s like to cause a major outage, the person behind the library you use daily. Every episode is edited like radio, not like a recorded call. Start with the SQLite episode; it converts people.

2. The Changelog

The long-running heart of open source. Adam Stacoviak and Jerod Santo have spent well over a decade interviewing the people who build the infrastructure everyone else monetizes. It’s the show that treats maintainers as the protagonists they are. For: anyone who has ever read a changelog and wondered about the human behind it.

The craft tier

3. Software Engineering Radio

Run under the IEEE banner and it shows: structured, rigorous, hour-long interviews on architecture, distributed systems, security, and process. The least entertaining show on this list and the one most likely to change how you design something on Monday. For: mid-level engineers becoming senior ones.

4. The Pragmatic Engineer Podcast

Gergely Orosz brings his newsletter’s superpower to audio: real detail about how engineering actually works inside the big companies, from levels and compensation to how teams ship. Guests talk to him the way engineers talk to each other, because he was one. For: understanding the industry you work in, not just the code.

5. Syntax

Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski on web development, several times a week, with actual energy. The rare technical show that’s genuinely fun while staying concrete enough to be useful. For: frontend and full-stack developers who want to stay current without reading forty newsletters.

The career tier

6. Soft Skills Engineering

Two engineering leaders answer listener questions about everything except code: bad managers, promotions, awkward teammates, quitting well. Consistently funny, consistently wise, and the advice show engineers actually forward to each other. Start with: any episode; the format is the product.

The context tier

7. Latent Space

The AI engineering podcast, covered fully in my AI guide. In 2026, every software engineer is at least part-time an AI engineer; this is the show for that part of your job.

8. Acquired

Not an engineering show, and the one I most want engineers to hear anyway: the business history of the companies whose stacks you maintain. Knowing why the company works changes what you build. Episode guide here.

9. Oxide and Friends (wildcard)

Bryan Cantrill and the Oxide crew, live and unfiltered, on hardware, systems software, and industry history, with the strongest opinions per minute in tech audio. Occasionally inside baseball; reliably the most memorable thing in your feed that week. For: systems people, and anyone who enjoys watching expertise argue.

The note-taking angle (because of course)

Engineering podcasts produce a specific kind of note: the pointer. A tool name, a paper, a phrase like “jepsen-test your assumptions,” a war story you’ll want during some future incident. Pointers are tiny and evaporate instantly, which makes them perfect for timestamped capture: press and hold in Margin, say “CoRecursive: how SQLite tests, look up their billion-test harness,” and it’s pinned for the day you actually need it. The pointer you can find six months later is the only pointer that counts.

Selinay