Leading Software Teams in a Zero Downtime Organization
From The Leadership Exchange by This Dot Labs
November 3, 2025 · 34 min
About this episode
Priya Narayan discusses leading engineering in a zero downtime environment at Southwest Airlines.
Southwest Airlines Managing Director of Technology Priya Narayan joins Tracy Lee to unpack what it takes to lead engineering in a highly regulated, zero downtime environment. Priya traces her path from engineer to leader, balancing safety, union timelines, and customer experience while shipping change at scale. She breaks down mobile first product strategy for pilots and flight attendants, how Southwest runs Scaled Agile with innovation sprints, and the tactics for building high performing, cross functional teams that mix deep domain experts with fresh technical talent. If you lead engineers or aspire to, this is a pragmatic playbook for quality under pressure, communication growth for introverts, and making innovation a priority when deadlines will not move.What You’ll Learn:• Moving from individual contributor to leader through mentoring and business context• Leading in regulated and union environments without hurting customer or employee experience• Structuring Scaled Agile with an innovation sprint that actually ships• Building high performing teams by mixing domain experts and strong technologists• Using crew alpha and beta testing to harden quality before wide rollout•…
People in this episode
Host: Tracy Lee
Guest: Priya Narayan
Topics covered
- leading software teams
- zero downtime
- engineering leadership
- Scaled Agile
- high performing teams
- innovation in regulated environments
Keywords
- engineering leadership
- zero downtime
- Scaled Agile
- high performing teams
- innovation
- mobile first strategy
- crew testing
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Southwest Airlines
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