
CIO Classified · 2026-02-26 · 23 min
Two words that make most engineers shudder: code refactoring. Now raise the stakes - refactoring decades of legacy systems inside a large enterprise. A tech debt-heavy project of this scale needs a leader who has driven complex digital transformations, like Gayatri Narayan (formerly PepsiCo, Microsoft, Amazon). Now, as President of Technology at Builders FirstSource, Gayatri Narayan is achieving a 3 - 4x increase in engineering velocity since joining less than a year ago. Gayatri joins host Yousuf Khan to unpack the strategy behind those results, including how to deploy AI across the SDLC, how to rigorously evaluate ROI on AI investments, and how to lead change across complex enterprise tech stacks.