VP Eng at Gong | Hiring A Players in the Age of AI

When you join a 10-person startup and stay long enough to see it grow into hundreds of engineers, you don’t just watch the change — you help shape it.

In this episode, Gilad Matot, VP of R&D Sales Applications at Gong, shares how he’s helped grow the org from a single office to three hubs (Israel, Dublin, New York), how he thinks about hiring A-players in the AI era, and why he still believes the real job of an engineer is to create customer value, not just write code.

You’ll hear how Gong structures its R&D teams, how they keep engineers close to customers, what’s actually changed with AI, and why leadership is still 70% about people.

What you’ll learn
• How Gong’s R&D evolved from 10 people to ~400+ (on the way to 600)
• How Gilad structures his ~80-person division across Israel, Dublin, and New York
• Why every pod has a dedicated PM and is pushed to challenge product decisions
• How AI is changing 0→1 prototyping, but not (yet) the 95% that comes after
• Why “best engineers = best coders” is no longer true
• How he hires: A-players hiring A-players, and the one question he always asks
• How COVID forced him to let go of “corridor management” and trust his leaders
• Why he thinks AI is overhyped and still transformative
• His contrarian view on unit tests and early “customers-as-QA” days
• Honest advice for ICs considering leadership (and when not to do it)

About our guest
Gilad Matot is VP of R&D Sales Applications at Gong, where he leads multiple product groups and an Enterprise Solutions team spanning Israel, Dublin, and New York.

About the show