How engineering leaders can better leverage AI in 2026

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

We know that the vast majority of technology professionals believe that AI has increased their productivity. But what about their managers? 

Each of the 14 engineering leaders we interviewed see artificial intelligence as an augmenter of their day-to-day work, taking care of some of the less interesting tasks.

And while most leaders are still working out how to be strategic about AI, generative chatbots have become a valuable brainstorming partner.

Reducing the boredom

For engineering leaders, the promise of AI is that it can open up more time for your team and get closer to other cross-organizational leaders.

Leaders also speak about how AI enables them to get closer to the tech again. That doesn’t mean contributing to the codebase necessarily, but sharpening their technical skills, building empathy and better understanding the developers they serve.

“It’s accelerating some of the more rote jobs that I do, particularly around framing out PRDs [product requirements document] and writing a first pass for documentation.” – Chris Bellingham, product director at Etiq AI

“[AI is] useful for anything that is somewhat standard and can be started productively with generic ideas; general interview questions for roles I’m not sure about hiring for, draft job descriptions, summarizing calls, internal search.” – Camille Fournier, author of engineering leadership books including “The Manager’s Path” and “Platform Engineering” 

“It has optimized my time – AI for repeatable admin tasks – and the ability to drive change by shipping prototypes and creation of new tools.” – Dana Lawson, CTO of Netlify

“I use it all the time and mostly for non-development tasks. It’s been incredibly useful in helping me get past the blank page problem when writing proposals or documentation. I also use it to rubber duck ideas before presenting them to my team or stakeholders to ensure my arguments are solid.” – Dave Bresci, senior manager of site reliability engineering at PagerDuty

Brainstorming buddy

Chatbots like ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and Google Gemini are enthusiastic listeners. That  makes them excellent partners to bounce first ideas off

“I can explore what might be needed to develop a new solution and analyze the feasibility without lots of meetings and time being taken up.” – Paul Johnston, fractional CxO

“I use AI as a thinking buddy. I’ll use it to get feedback about ideas or upcoming work, and get it to ask me more questions about what I’ve written. If I had presented this to a client or a stakeholder, what questions would they have for me? What information is missing? What parts could I expand on or tighten? It’s made me more prepared and allows me to do quicker deep dives than if I was working completely on my own.” – Melinda Seckington, leadership coach and trainer at Learn Build Share and host of the London LeadDev Meetup 

“As a CEO, AI has shifted how I work with my engineering leaders. Instead of getting buried in grunt work or slow exploration, we can spin up quick prototypes to test ideas and pressure-check long-term technical bets in hours instead of weeks. That has freed us to think more strategically about where we want Appknox to be in the next few years, rather than getting stuck in day-to-day execution.” – Subho Halder, CEO at Appknox

“AI has become an extension of my peripheral vision. It surfaces patterns I’d otherwise catch late – talent utilization, velocity imbalances, tooling gaps. It doesn’t replace judgment, but it gives me cleaner input. It also forced me to interrogate my own habits. When AI drafts something for me, I have to ask: Is this my voice? Is this what I mean? It’s made me more intentional.” – Helen Greul, VP of engineering at Multiverse.io

“I am trying to embrace AI as much as I can to assist in the general prioritization and overload problems every engineering leader is facing. I find ChatGPT to be a really useful tool to discuss situations and provide me with insights and reasoning about decisions I need to make. It often suggests things that I would not have time to consider myself given a short burst of focus and I think there is an opportunity for everyone to be better informed about what they are working on, what the implications are and generally feel less in the dark when they first encounter previously unknown topics or domains.” – Paul Payne, CTO of SaaScada

London • June 2 & 3, 2026

Rands, Nicole Forsgren & Matej Pfajfar confirmed

Find out more

What about you? Do you feel like AI is making you a better manager? We focus so much on developer productivity, but we should never negate the importance of middle management and the C-suite being more efficient – that’s where return on investment via working hours really is clear. 

Add your thoughts and experience in the #leadership channel in the LeadDev Slack community.