How I got started leading database teams with Shireesh Thota
From dreaming of driving a bus to leading database engineering at Microsoft. In Episode 29 of Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano, Shireesh Thota traces his path to becoming CVP of Azure databases—rooted in a love of math, early BASIC programming, and a certainty that he’d become an engineer. We dig into the shift from engineer to manager (if only people came with documentation); why it’s so important for Microsoft to contribute to the PostgreSQL open source project—not just consume it; and whether Shireesh has a favorite database (hint: it better be Postgres.)
Links mentioned in this episode:
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Blog post excerpt: Why we have a Postgres open source contributor team at Microsoft
- Podcast episode: Leading engineering for Postgres on Azure with Affan Dar
- VS Code Marketplace: New VS Code extension for PostgreSQL
- POSETTE 2025 talk: Introducing Microsoft’s VS Code extension for Postgres by Matt McFarland
- LinkedIn post: PGConf.dev 2025 talk on “The trouble with extensions” by Marco Slot
- Podcast episode: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with David Rowley
- Book: Who Moved My Cheese
- Cal invite: LIVE recording of Ep30 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Aug 6, 2025
Creators and Guests
Host
Claire Giordano
Claire Giordano is head of the Postgres open source community initiatives at Microsoft. Claire has served in leadership roles in engineering, product management, and product marketing at Sun Microsystems, Amazon/A9, and Citus Data. At Sun, Claire managed the engineering team that created Solaris Zones, and led the effort to open source Solaris.
Producer
Aaron Wislang
Open Source Engineering + Developer Relations at Microsoft + Azure ☁️ | Go (golang), Cloud Native, Linux 🐧 🐍 🦀 ☕ 🍷📷 🎹 | Toronto 🇨🇦🌎 | 💨😷💉 | https://aaronw.dev/hello/
