CTO at Revenue.io | Hiring, Fraud, Remote Teams & Developer Velocity

What happens when AI changes not only how engineers work — but how they’re hired, evaluated, and led?

In this episode, Derek Knudsen, Chief Delivery Officer and Head of Engineering at Revenue.io, shares a clear, grounded view on the future of engineering teams: how to keep velocity high with smaller, surgical teams, how to navigate the explosion of hiring fraud, how to measure real ROI from AI tools, and why he believes AI represents an intellectual extinction event for companies that don’t adapt.

If you lead engineers, this conversation will hit close to home.

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What you’ll learn

– Team Design: Why Revenue.io runs “small and mighty” pods
Less headcount, more impact: the counterintuitive math behind smaller, deeply aligned teams.

– Remote Work: Why they stayed remote even as others push RTO
And how they collaborate across fully distributed teams with intentional in-person strategy sessions.

– Hiring in 2025: How they screen for behavior, not buzzwords
Why they shifted from skill-first hiring to attribute-first hiring — and how that improved outcomes.

– Fraud in hiring: 7,000 applicants for one job & a near-miss fraud case
Deepfakes, fake paystubs, stolen identities — and what Derek learned the hard way.

– AI ROI: How they measure productivity per engineer
Velocity, opportunity cost, and what “2 FTE per FTE” looks like with agentic workflows.

– The learning curve: Why leaders must create space to experiment
AI doesn’t magically increase output; it requires dedicated time to climb the curve.

– Leadership today: Empathy + modeling behavior during uncertainty
Why leaders must “show their work” with AI to reduce fear and increase adoption.

– Contrarian take:
AI isn’t another wave — it’s an extinction event for individuals and organizations that don’t adapt quickly.

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About our guest

Derek Knudsen is Chief Delivery Officer and Head of Engineering at Revenue.io, where he leads distributed engineering teams focused on platform modernization, AI adoption, hiring excellence, and strategic delivery.

About the show