In this episode, Sri Shivananda (EVP, CTO @ Paypal) and Joel Beasley (host of Modern CTO! podcast and CTO @ Leaderbits) discuss some of the principles and frameworks that have made the greatest impacts on Sri’s career as an engineering leader. They cover Sri’s approach to organizational transformation, a framework for choosing new technologies, areas to look for when you’re building a pipeline of leadership, and recognition and disruption of patterns through self-reflection.
Sri Shivananda (@srishivananda) serves as PayPal’s Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer. In this role, Sri oversees Technology Platforms & Experiences, leading teams responsible for the company’s secure, reliable and scalable global infrastructure and strategic core platform, the foundation that enables PayPal to deliver innovative services to global consumers and merchants.
Sri has played a critical role in helping PayPal remain at the forefront of innovation since joining the company in 2015. Prior to his appointment as EVP and CTO, Sri was Vice President of Global Platform and Infrastructure, directing his team of technologists to drive massive growth at scale across a disruptive payments platform. Sri was responsible for all core technologies covering PayPal’s data centers, internal private cloud, online and offline data infrastructure, internal developer frameworks and tools, and various platform services.
Before PayPal, Sri was with eBay for 12 years, working his way up from a software engineer to Vice President of Global Platform and Infrastructure. As VP, he was responsible for the company’s technology infrastructure that powered the eBay Inc. businesses, including eBay’s hundreds of millions of listings and PayPal’s millions of daily payments. Sri found his way to eBay via the acquisition of Deja.com.
Sri has served on the board of F5 Networks since 2020.
He received his Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Ohio University and holds a Bachelor of Technology, Mechanical Engineering from Jawaharal Nehru Technological University.
"The most important thing here is that the human fabric in any organization, any team, any ecosystem is the most important one. When you align people to an outcome or a purpose, they'll figure out all the techniques that are necessary to do it. Sometimes they'll pull off magic when they are called the action.
- Sri Shivananda
Joel Beasley (@moderncto_io) is the host of the #1 leadership and technology podcast in the world, Modern CTO. Modern CTO is focused on interviewing high-profile executives in the leadership and technology space with over 150k active listeners. Joel is an MIT-educated CTO of Leaderbits with clients from Startups up to Billion dollar companies. He is also the founder of The Beasley Foundation, a charity that designs STEM-related children’s books that are then donated to orphanages, homeless pregnant women, and children in need.
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SHOW NOTES:
- Changing mindsets, skill sets, and toolsets in times of transformation (2:16)
- Creating clarity and alignment in eng orgs (5:24)
- Getting skeptical team members to buy into mindset shifts (7:53)
- Sri's framework for choosing new technologies (10:33)
- Why engineering leaders need substance, depth, and hunger (14:40)
- How PayPal is democratizing financial services (19:43)
- The curiosity quotient (21:44)
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