SEEK Bytes

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Jun 2026

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About the show

Few careers shape daily life like software engineering. From the way people search for jobs and learn new skills to how businesses run behind the scenes, software quietly powers billions of micro-moments every single day. So how do you stay ahead in a world that’s increasingly run on code, data and distributed systems — and where the tools seem to change every week? Welcome to SEEK Bytes, the podcast for software engineers and IT professionals, hosted by SEEK software engineers Elliott Millar, Seamus Kearney and William Lark. SEEK is an Australian-founded market leader in online employment marketplaces, helping people thrive in their careers across eight countries in the Asia Pacific. Each episode, Elliott, Seamus, Will and a series of recurring and special guests, dive into real engineering stories from SEEK and across the industry. They explore big, globally relevant topics — from AI, architecture and platform engineering to security, developer experience and tech careers — and break them down into practical ideas, tools and insights you can take straight back to your team. Join us as we deep dive into your career, your code and the systems you build — and celebrate the influence technologists have in an online world. SEEK is a market leader in online employment marketplaces spanning eight countries across the Asia Pacific. Visit SEEK at seek.com

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51 recent

June 16, 202645 min

AI Gateway: The Platform Behind Smarter, Safer AI (with Thet Ko)

AI might look simple on the surface — just send a prompt, get a response — but behind the scenes, there’s a whole platform challenge to solve. In this episode of SEEK Bytes – we’re joined by Thet Ko, Senior Staff Engineer in SEEK’s AI Platform Services team, to unpack how SEEK is building an AI Gateway to centralise AI calls, improve governance and make it easier for teams to build with AI without reinventing the foundations every time. From cost visibility and PII protection to guardrails, resilience and shared memory across agents, this episode lifts the lid on the platform work that makes enterprise AI actually usable at scale. This episode's special guest: Thet Ko (Senior Staff Engineer) In this episode you’ll learn: • Why an AI Gateway matters – how centralising AI usage helps teams get better governance, clearer cost visibility and shared protection against risks like PII leakage and prompt injection. • What platform teams need to solve for AI at scale – from giving agents the right tools and memory to helping teams focus on the use case while the platform handles the foundations. • Why reliability and economics matter more than the hype – including model outages, fallback across regions, evaluation with golden datasets and LangFuse, and the reality that AI only scales if the value outweighs the cost. 🔔 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode

June 9, 202631 min

Responsible AI: Bias, Blind Spots & Big Risks (with Sreyna Rath)

AI is moving fast — but are we building it responsibly? In this episode of SEEK Bytes – we sit down with Sreyna Rath, CEO and co-founder of jaimee.ai, who arrived in Australia as a refugee and is now running her own AI company with the aim to create something truly transformative for women. Elliott sits down with Reyna to unpack her journey and the real-world risks of AI bias, why safety can’t be bolted on at the end, and what developers can do to build tools that are fairer, safer and more human from day one. From biased hiring systems to sexualised image outputs and AI companions designed for vulnerable users, this conversation is a powerful reminder that AI doesn’t just reflect technology — it reflects us. This episode's special guest: Sreyna Rath (CEO and co-founder of Jamie.ai) In this episode you’ll learn: • Why responsible AI starts long before launch – and why fairness, safety and your most vulnerable users need to be considered right at the start, not patched in after the damage is done. • How bias shows up in the real world – from hiring algorithms that penalised women to image tools that sexualised women, showing how bad data and blind spots can turn into harmful outcomes at scale. • What everyday tech teams can do about it – including compassionate design, testing for bad outcomes, using AI to review AI, and treating AI as a sceptical collaborator instead of an unquestioned decision-maker. 🔔 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode

June 2, 202630 min

PERL: The Smart AI Workflow

Still throwing one prompt at an AI agent and hoping for the best? In this episode of SEEK Bytes – we unpack PERL: Plan, Execute, Review and Learn — a smarter way to work with AI that helps teams get better outputs, catch mistakes earlier and turn trial-and-error into a repeatable workflow. This is the episode for anyone curious about how AI tools are really being used inside modern tech teams — not just to generate answers, but to plan better, work faster and learn as a team. In this episode you’ll learn: • Why one-shot prompting is holding people back – and how separating planning from execution can lead to better results, fewer misses and more confidence in what your AI tools are doing. • How “review and learn” takes AI from personal hack to team advantage – by spotting what went wrong, improving the next run and feeding those lessons back into shared skills, rules and documentation. • The hidden traps of advanced AI workflows – from runaway token usage and looping behaviour to context compaction and hallucinations, plus why mastering these tools is becoming a real skill in tech. 🔔 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode

May 26, 202652 min

Vibe Coding with AI: Non-Developers building apps (with Helen Giapitzakis)

What happens when a designer with almost no coding experience picks up an AI tool and starts building a working product prototype – and then a staff engineer has to make sense of it all? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Elliott Millar, Seamus, Arnav and Staff Engineer Helen Giapitzakis dive into “vibe coding”: using AI agents, context and prompts to build software by feel instead of by hand. This episode's special guest: Helen Giapitzakis (SEEK Staff Engineer) In this episode, we explore: • How a SEEK designer used AI to go from idea to clickable prototype, put it in front of real users, and only pulled in engineers when things started to wobble • Why “vibe coding” changes who can build software – and what that means for engineers, from assisted coding and context engineering to owning standards, readability and long-lived code • The surprising ways LLMs misunderstand intent and rules (especially negatives like “never use any”), and how teams can use positive, shared guidelines and repo-level “AI rulebooks” to steer them Whether you’re in software engineering, UX, product, data, mobile, platform or IT leadership, this episode will get you thinking differently about who codes, how AI fits into real teams, and what “good” code even means in an AI-first world. 👍 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode

May 19, 202641 min

New AI Tools, Same Old Bugs? The crew react to the Next Wave

Drowning in new AI tools and wondering which ones actually help you ship better software? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Elliott, Seamus and Will react to the latest wave of AI‑powered dev tools, from coding assistants and test generators to agents that promise to refactor your whole codebase while you sleep. They dig into what these tools are really good at (speeding up boilerplate, exploring APIs, generating tests), where they fall over (context, architecture, edge‑cases), and how they’re already changing code review, onboarding and day‑to‑day developer experience at SEEK. In this episode, we explore: • Which new AI tools are genuinely useful for everyday coding – and which ones are more hype than help • How AI is reshaping pairing, code review, debugging and tests, and where human judgment still absolutely has to stay in the loop • Practical ways to experiment with AI tools on your team without burning trust, wrecking your codebase or slowing everyone down If you’re a software engineer, tech lead or engineering manager trying to make sense of the exploding AI tool ecosystem, this episode is for you. 🔔 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode

May 12, 202635 min

OpenClaw: Build your own AI Agent workforce (without getting burnt)

What if you could spin up a whole AI workforce on your own machine – planners, “engineers”, researchers and content creators – and run it all from a simple chat window? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, we explore OpenClaw, the agent platform that lets you act like the CEO while AI agents do the grunt work in the background. In this episode you’ll learn: • How OpenClaw turns AI into a digital team – using one “front-of-house” bot as your main interface, then spinning up specialised agents behind the scenes to research, draft content, update tickets and even prepare changes for real systems. • What it really costs to run this at home – from beefy GPUs and Mac minis to cloud API bills that can quietly blow past a few hundred dollars a month, plus why some “cheap and easy” YouTube setups gloss over the real price tag. • The security & scam risks you need to know about – including AI “app” stores where around 1 in 5 skills are malicious, how the wrong plugin can leak your data or crypto, and why doing your homework before you plug AI into your systems is non-negotiable. Drop a comment if you’ve tried building your own AI stack (or are tempted to), and hit Subscribe for more real-world AI, security and engineering stories from the SEEK Bytes team. 🔔 Follow SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode

May 5, 202637 min

NX Supply Chain Attack Explained (with Trevor Kilvington)

Imagine updating a trusted monorepo tool… and the next time you open your terminal it asks for your password, then tries to shut your machine down. In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Will, Seamus and SEEK Staff Engineer Trevor Kilvington unpack the NX supply chain attacks – how they unfolded, why they were so scary, and what every IT team can learn from them. This episode's special guest: Trevor Kilvington (SEEK Staff Engineer) In this episode, we explore: • How a popular open-source tool ended up shipping malicious code to developers’ laptops and CI pipelines – and how SEEK engineers helped spot it first • Why attackers leaned on AI prompts and worm-like behaviour to hunt for secrets and quietly spread through NPM packages • The uncomfortable question of whether keeping everything “always up to date” is still the safest choice – and what this means for CI/CD ownership and developer responsibilities Whether you’re in software engineering, DevOps, SRE, security, platform or IT leadership, this episode will change how you think about package updates, build pipelines and the tools you trust every day. 👍 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode

April 28, 202634 min

Inside SEEK's Hackathons (with Glenn Wilson, Kat Vassallo & Andy Maxey)

This episode of SEEK Bytes steps away from code to celebrate one of SEEK’s most loved traditions: Hackathon. Will is joined by Kat, Andy and Glenn to lift the lid on how a twice-yearly, three-day event brings together people from every corner of SEEK to dream up bold ideas – many of which end up on real roadmaps and in front of real customers. In this episode you’ll learn: This episode of SEEK Bytes – a podcast for engineers by engineers – steps away from code to celebrate one of SEEK’s most loved traditions: Hackathon. Will is joined by Kat, Andy and Glenn to lift the lid on how a twice-yearly, three-day event brings together people from every corner of SEEK to dream up bold ideas – many of which end up on real roadmaps and in front of real customers. This episode's special guests: Glenn Wilson (Snr Business Analyst / former Community Engagement Lead), Kat Vassallo (Tecnology Community Engagement & Innovation Manager), Andy Maxey (EVP & Community Impact Lead) In this episode you’ll learn: • How SEEK hackathons actually work – three days off BAU, 40+ teams hacking across APAC, big themes (from space operas to dinosaurs), t-shirts as badges of honour and a Shark Tank-style final where the ELT judges every idea. • Why hack is core to SEEK’s culture and EVP – how grassroots volunteers, wild costumes, candy bars and chaos create a safe space for experimentation, help people work with teams they’d never normally meet, and generate ideas that influence products, processes and even board-level conversations. • How any company can start their own hackathon – practical tips on beginning with a half-day or single-department event, proving value before going company-wide, getting leadership buy-in, and using hackathons to build skills, networks and long-term innovation habits. 🔔 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode

April 21, 202640 min

Human vs AI: The Sleep-Deprived Dev Who Beat OpenAI’s Code Bot

An OpenAI-backed coding agent. 12 elite competitive programmers flown to Tokyo. A 10-hour marathon solving an NP-hard puzzle in front of a live stream. And a very sleep-deprived human still manages to beat the AI at its own game. In this episode of SEEK Bytes, Elliott Millar, Will, Seamus and Arnav break down the World Tour Finals heuristic contest where a human edged out a custom AI built just for competitive coding. In this episode, we explore: • How the competition was set up so both humans and a custom OpenAI agent had to race the same brutally hard optimisation problem under tight time limits • The surprisingly simple strategy a sleep-deprived engineer used to out-score a specialised AI model • What we can learn from how the AI iterated, refactored and “thought” about code during the contest • Why the story might change when you put the human’s winning code back into the AI – and what that says about humans + AI working together Whether you’re in software engineering, data, SRE, platforms, security or any IT role wondering how far AI coding tools can really go – and where humans still have the edge – this episode is a fast-paced, deeply nerdy look at the future of competitive problem solving and day-to-day development with AI in the loop. 👍 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode

April 9, 202631 min

Axios Hack - A SEEK Bytes Special Episode (with Eldar Marcussen)

This is a special SEEK Bytes drop – outside the regular Season 3 line-up – because the recent Axios NPM hack is too important to ignore. In this episode of SEEK Bytes the crew sit down with Eldar Marcussen from SEEK’s offensive security team to unpack what actually happened, why supply-chain attacks are so scary, and what you should do today to reduce your risk. In this episode you’ll learn: • What a supply-chain attack really is – how a single malicious dependency in a trusted package like Axios can silently run on thousands of machines, and why closed-source software isn’t magically safer. • What to do if you think you’ve been hit – practical first moves for companies and individuals: rotating keys, rebuilding or containerising machines, reviewing logs, and knowing when to call in your security team. • How to raise the bar for attackers – simple habits like pinning and ageing dependencies, using tools like Docker and alternative package managers, relying on built-in protection like Windows Defender, and staying alert to sketchy extensions and “too good to be true” downloads. 🔔 Follow so you don’t miss future special drops like this – plus our regular Season 3 episodes every week.