#165 How to Lead Engineering Teams in the AI Era: JJ Friedman on Embedded, Cross-Border Talent

JJ Friedman is the Director of Product Engineering at PLACE (formerly Remine), and this conversation is a clinic on engineering leadership in the AI era. In this PreVetted Podcast episode, JJ and Federico Ramallo dig into what actually moves a team forward: judgment over syntax, trust over control, and treating embedded engineers as long-tenure teammates rather than disposable project labor.JJ took an unusual route into engineering leadership. He studied philosophy and economics at Occidental College, played college basketball, then sold luxury real estate in Beverly Hills before open-source work pulled him into software. After a bootcamp he joined Remine, climbing from senior engineer to tech lead to director over nearly five years, through the company's acquisition by PLACE. Along the way he co-built Shipm8, a Kubernetes health-monitoring developer tool.He gets specific about what each transition required. As tech lead he took over a struggling two-year single sign-on and MLS dashboard project and shipped it live in four months by keeping the IDP foundation and restarting the product layer. He frames the real job of an engineering manager as translating between business and technical stakeholders, humbling your own ideas, and removing friction so the team can deliver.On AI, JJ and Federico land in the same place: craftsmanship is never replaced, and AI augments a strong team rather than replacing one. They talk through why the best engineers think through problems before writing code, why you should hand AI the tests, docs, and merge requests instead of the core build, and Federico's "AI arbitrage vs labor arbitrage" thesis, where a long-tenure team that holds business context is what makes agents productive.The back half is about people. JJ shares his third philosophy of contracting, hiring embedded talent you treat as full-time, which is how Density Labs engineers became tech leads and go-to front-end and mobile developers on his team. They cover mentoring junior engineers, building trust ("trust but verify," and a "do not assume" agent prompt), and what more leaders should understand about running cross-border engineering teams.About JJ Friedman:- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jj-friedman/- https://remine.comAbout Federico RamalloFounder of Density Labs, the AI Engineering Partner for the mid-market, helping US companies ship AI to production, backed by a decade of shipping software with distributed engineering teams. Author of The Invisible Distance, the operating system for engineering leaders running teams across borders. Host of The PreVetted Podcast: 150+ conversations with VPs of Engineering, CTOs, and operators on what actually works.- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/- Website: https://densitylabs.io- PreVetted: https://prevetted.aiPreVetted Podcast- Podcast: https://prevetted.ai/podcast- X: https://x.com/PrevettedPod- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcastTIMESTAMPS:00:00 Introduction to JJ Friedman and Remine02:35 Journey from Sports to Engineering05:11 The Open Source Experience07:46 Understanding the Engineering Mindset10:27 Craftsmanship vs. AI in Engineering12:59 Career Progression at Remine14:04 The Role of Management in Engineering16:01 Building Trust and Communication18:51 Navigating Business and Technical Needs21:34 The Importance of Asking Questions27:36 The Evolution of Collaboration with Density Labs28:21 Philosophies Behind Contracting and Talent Acquisition33:24 Building a Symbiotic Relationship with Contractors34:24 Contributions of Density Labs Engineers39:09 The Importance of Mentorship and Growth in Engineering43:25 Understanding Cross-Border Engineering Teams47:18 AI and Labor: A New Paradigm54:03 Final Thoughts and Advice for Engineering Leaders#EngineeringLeadership #AIAugmentation #EmbeddedTeams #TechLeadership #CrossBorderTeams