Spotify Launches NerdOut@Spotify, an R&D Podcast for Developers

Spotify has announced a new podcast called NerdOut@Spotify, offering an inside look at the company’s engineering and research work. The show is hosted by a Spotify engineer and features conversations with developers across the company about the technical problems they tackle daily.

The podcast arrives as Spotify has grown from a music-only service into a global audio streaming platform. The host describes the show as a way to share the company's engineering journey and introduce listeners to the people building its technology.

Why a Developer Podcast?

Software development changes quickly, and every organization approaches it differently. Spotify’s team sees constant evolution in how software is written and how high-scale systems are operated. That brings new challenges, technologies, and languages, along with fresh opportunities for impact.

For developers who want to follow along with Spotify’s process of experimenting, building, testing, and debugging, the podcast is designed to dig into the details of what the company’s engineers are working on.

Inside Spotify’s Engineering Challenges

Each episode takes listeners behind the scenes of Spotify’s innovation process. The conversations cover current topics such as cloud services, open source software like Backstage, Kubernetes trends, machine learning applications, and the complexities of operating at increasing scale.

Spotify believes many of these issues are shared across the industry, so the podcast aims to bring those hallway conversations from conferences into listeners’ feeds. The show also highlights how Spotify's aligned and autonomous squad culture shapes its approach to these problems, along with some of the lighter, nerdier aspects of company life.

Meet the Engineers Behind the Tech

Listeners will hear from a range of Spotify R&D roles — developers, engineering managers, data scientists, designers, and product managers — from all experience levels and locations. Guests share their career paths, passions, and lessons from both successes and failures.

The topics are broad but can go niche, covering DevOps, language debates, and hobbies like Lego and gymnastics, and even Kubernetes clusters controlling home lighting.

Listen Now

The first episodes are available now, exploring open source, developer experience, and Backstage, the open platform for developer portals originally created at Spotify and later donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

The show is available on Spotify and other podcast platforms:

Listeners can follow the show to be notified of new episodes. NerdOut@Spotify is produced by Spotify’s Ted Vergakis and Seaplane Armada.