LeadDev home
Day 1 – November 3, 2025
Day 2 – November 4, 2025

FILTER SESSIONS

Filter sessions

By Topic

By Level

Apply filters
TALK SCHEDULE
08:00–09:00

Arrival & Coffee

09:00

Talk

Welcome to LeadDev Berlin 2025

A welcome from the host, Pat Kua.

+ More

Talk

Welcome to LeadDev Berlin 2025

09:00 – 09:29

A welcome to LeadDev Berlin 2024 from the host, Pat Kua.
09:30

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager

What does innovation really mean? And how did Games Engineering navigate through it as a “startup” within Netflix

Learn how embracing paradoxes, discovery-driven learning, and integrative decisions enabled collaboration and unlocked innovation at Netflix.

+ More

Talk

What does innovation really mean? And how did Games Engineering navigate through it as a “startup” within Netflix

09:30 – 09:59

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager

What does “innovation” really mean, and what are the conditions that enable it? The book “Collective Genius” highlights that Leaders of innovation need to make sure they collaborate, engage in discovery-driven learning, and make integrative decisions. Additionally, embracing “paradoxes” in every situation will help you approach problems with a “both/and” mentality. Learn from our struggle in Games Engineering to create this environment and how we embraced these tensions to unlock innovation for Netflix Games.

  • FEATURING
    Bruce Wang
    Engineering DirectorNetflix

    Bruce has been in the software industry for 25+ years, and currently Engineering Director at Netflix, leading Games Platform.  This team owns the central technology that enable game developers to build great games and members to enjoy them, spanning end to end integration, SDK, Game Services, Game Developer Lifecycle and Reliability teams.  Prior to that, he led Product Platform Systems spanning APIs, Telemetry Info and Technology lifecycle.  Before Netflix, he was Sr Director of Eng at Shippo, VPE at Packet (now Equinix Metal) and CTO, Co-founder or Eng Leader at various startups and enterprises.  He is also a serious foodie and resides in San Francisco with his spouse and two daughters.

     

    View Bruce’s profile
10:00

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Staff+•Tech Lead

Hold on, let me prompt that

Explore how to lead with clarity and conviction in the GenAI era, balancing powerful tools with authentic, independent thinking.

+ More

Talk

Hold on, let me prompt that

10:00 – 10:09

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager Staff+ Tech Lead

In the GenAI era, we’re outsourcing more than tasks – we’re outsourcing trust. This talk explores how to lead creatively and confidently when everything starts with a prompt.

This abstract has been created without relying on any GenAI tool. This was hard for me, I’m not a story teller, not a writer, I barely had conviction in what I had to say before GenAI came along. It’s been an incredible tool for me and countless others, It feels like my productivity shot through the roof, I had access to this wealth of knowledge, I felt like I had a voice – a seat on the table.

Over the last year, I’ve felt this voice get quieter.

In chasing speed, polish, accuracy, I’ve started to default to the tool – sometimes even before I’ve formed my own thought. “Hold on, let me prompt that”. For many of us, it’s become a way to delay decision-making, outsource confidence, and avoid the discomfort of trusting our own thinking. This talk is about exploring that tension: between the incredible power GenAI gives us, and the quiet erosion of the narrative conviction it can cause. For Engineering Leaders, this isn’t theoretical. We lead people. We make bets. We communicate vision. And when our sense of authority is blurred—by too many prompts, too much polish, or too much second-guessing – we risk leading from pre-defined templates instead of truth.

This talk invites us to take a pause, to sit with that moment where the answers aren’t clear yet, that thought isn’t fully refined yet. In a world where everyone has this tool, our advantage as engineering leaders is still the experience and perspectives we bring as individuals.

Key takeaways

  • Recognize early signs of Gen-AI induced confidence erosion
  • Rebuild your narrative and inner-clarity to enable high-stakes decisions as an Engineering Leader
  • Discern when to prompt, and when to lead from conviction
  • Apply simple techniques to model original thought and independent judgment
  • FEATURING
    Nikita Rathi
    Senior Engineering ManagerTaxfix

    Nikita Rathi is a dog-mum, a wife, a foodie amongst other things, and an engineering manager by day. She has spent her career in the tech industry between Illinois, New York, Dublin and Berlin solving problems, writing code, and managing engineering teams and now is a Senior Engineering Manager at Taxfix, a tax startup in Berlin that reduces the complexity of tax filing and helps save it’s users time and money. She has found herself ever-curious about human relationships and brings that curiosity to her work. Her thoughts and research have led her to think about different perceptions that folks might have based on past experiences and years of socialization and how that impacts the careers of those that are marginalized.

    View Nikita’s profile
10:10

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Staff+

LLMs: An operator’s view

Explore a pragmatic approach to using LLMs to boost team productivity, enhance products, and evolve your leadership strategy.

+ More

Talk

LLMs: An operator’s view

10:10 – 10:39

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager Staff+

As leaders we have been tasked to go all-out with AI: both in terms of our products and also our productivity. This talk outlines what you should be thinking of doing for your team, your product, and, importantly, yourself with AI.

The hype surrounding Large Language Models (LLMs) has reached a fever pitch, making it challenging for technology leaders to discern actionable strategies from speculative promises. This talk cuts through the noise, offering a pragmatic operator’s perspective on how to genuinely leverage LLMs within your organisation.

We’ll cover specific, real-world applications for boosting your engineering team’s output, from automating mundane tasks to enhancing code quality and fostering rapid prototyping. You’ll learn how to identify high-impact product features powered by LLMs that deliver quick wins, along with practical considerations for data privacy, model selection, and deployment.

Crucially, we’ll discuss how you, as a leader, can personally leverage AI for better decision-making, thinking and strategic planning, ensuring you leave with concrete steps to implement and see immediate value from AI across your team, product, and leadership approach.

Key takeaways

  • Develop a clear, actionable AI strategy for your team: Learn how to assess the readiness of your engineering function for LLM adoption and identify practical tools and workflows to boost productivity and innovation without overwhelming your team.
  • Identify impactful LLM applications for your product: Understand methodologies for pinpointing genuine problems LLMs can solve within your product roadmap, moving beyond surface-level integrations to create meaningful user value.
  • Navigate the personal leadership shift with AI: Gain insights into how your role as a technology leader evolves with the rise of AI, including strategies for continuous learning, ethical considerations, and fostering a culture of responsible AI experimentation.
  • FEATURING
    James Stanier
    CTONordhealth

    James Stanier is CTO at Nordhealth. He is also the author of Become an Effective Software Manager, Effective Remote Work, and Become a Great Engineering Leader . He holds a Ph.D. in computer science and runs theengineeringmanager.com.

    View James’s profile
10:40–11:25

Morning Break

11:25

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Painless compliance, and a thousand audits a day

Turn compliance into code: automate audits, integrate with CI/CD, and achieve painless, continuous, zero-drama compliance.

+ More

Talk

Painless compliance, and a thousand audits a day

11:25 – 11:54

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager Tech Lead

What if audits weren’t painful, but automatic? Discover how to turn compliance into code, eliminate fire drills, and run a thousand audits a day, without breaking a sweat.

We deploy code a thousand times a day, yet when it comes to compliance we still use spreadsheets like it is 1985. Endless paperwork. Manual reviews. Last-minute fire drills. We’ve all been there.

It does not have to be this way.

This talk challenges that status quo. It introduces a practical, forward-thinking approach where compliance is automated, seamlessly integrated into CI/CD pipelines, and capable of detecting risks in real time. Where engineers get instant feedback without switching context. Where compliance is just part of the dev flow, not a blocker at the end of it.

So, what does painless compliance actually look like?

First, we need to treat compliance the same way we treat customer requirements: as features. Not as 400-page PDFs filled with legalese, but as clear, structured requirements defined in our own language, tailored to our systems. When we do this, we unlock real conversations, reduce ambiguity, and make compliance understandable and actionable.

Next comes the magic: automated validation. It’s not enough to say we’ve implemented a control, we need to prove it, continuously. If storage encryption is required, we don’t just enable it. We generate dashboards that prove it’s working. We build reports that our compliance teams can take straight into the audit, with no disruption to engineering.

And we monitor it. If something goes out of compliance, be it unencrypted storage or misconfigured access, we get alerted immediately. No surprises, no scrambling before an audit.

And here’s the best part: if you’re in the cloud, you already have everything you need to do this today.

A thousand audits a day. One click. Zero drama. Not only is it possible, it’s the future. Let’s build it.

Key takeaways

  • Compliance can be automated
  • Treat compliance as a product requirement
  • Prove, don’t just implement
  • Empower engineers with instant feedback
  • You already have the tools”
  • FEATURING
    Germán Fuentes Capella
    Founder, CISOtrigosec

    Germán Fuentes Capella is a CISO focused on automation, with 15 years of experience working in FinTech companies across Europe. Throughout his career, he has tackled the challenge of automating security and compliance workflows that traditionally required manual intervention and disrupted development cycles. He has built DevSecOps practices that treat security controls as code, integrating them directly into CI/CD pipelines. Germán now leads trigosec, where he continues to explore how to make governance processes as automated and developer-friendly as any other engineering system. He is passionate about eliminating toil and making compliance invisible to product teams.

    View Germán’s profile
11:55

Talk

Director+•Experienced Manager•New Manager

What if I don’t want to climb?

Rethink career growth by exploring how non-linear paths, flexible frameworks, and exploration-first mindsets create stronger, more inclusive teams.

+ More

Talk

What if I don’t want to climb?

11:55 – 12:04

This session is suitable for:

Director+ Experienced Manager New Manager

Growth isn’t always vertical, and forcing people up the ladder often pushes them out. This talk challenges the frameworks we use to define success and shows how to build teams that grow without leaving.

We’ve convinced ourselves that growth = promotion. That career success means moving “up.” That to retain people, we must level them – whether they want to or not.

But what if someone doesn’t want to climb? What if their best work, their most fulfilled self, exists in a role without a title change?
In this lightning talk, I’ll expose the growth frameworks we use (and often weaponize):

  • The Career Ladder = deeply hierarchical → Promotions-as-growth, limited mobility → can’t be redeemed Burn it
  • The Dual Track Framework = rigid → Hard to switch, unequal prestige → good if we Redesign it
  • Competency Matrix = oversimplifies → Used as gatekeeping, checklisted → Reclaim it with care

These systems were built for order, not for humans. And they often punish the curious, the multi-passionate, and the quiet high performers.
I’ll share real stories of team members who thrived only after we ditched the “climb” mindset, and started treating careers like something to explore, not just escalate.

You’ll walk away with permission to rethink what growth really looks like, and how to build systems that support it without forcing everyone up.

Key takeaways

  • Not all growth is vertical, and that’s okay.
  • Promotion isn’t always retention.
  • Competency frameworks often punish real potential.
  • You can support growth without offering a new title.
  • Great teams make space for exploration, not just elevation.
  • FEATURING
    Saman Jafari
    CTO and Seasoned Leader

    Saman Jafari is a seasoned leader and strategist with nearly two decades of experience guiding teams, systems, and businesses through meaningful transformation. He began his career in Iran, where he built and ran a digital agency blending software, media, and storytelling. Now based in Germany, he serves as a CTO, helping organizations modernize architecture, grow people, and rethink how they work.

    Across roles and borders, Saman has led more than just code changes. He’s helped people lead better, reshaped team cultures, and guided businesses toward more thoughtful, human-centered ways of working. His leadership spans startups and mature companies alike, always focused on building systems that scale and teams that thrive.

    What drives him most is seeing people grow and watching businesses become more human, more resilient, and more aligned with their purpose.

    View Saman’s profile
12:05

Talk

From evals to experiments: How to ship successful AI initiatives by failing cheaply

Discover practical ways to blend qualitative evals with quantitative experiments to reduce risk, improve learning speed, and deliver impactful AI projects.

+ More

Talk

From evals to experiments: How to ship successful AI initiatives by failing cheaply

12:05 – 12:29

Sponsored by

Eppo by Datadog LeadDev

How to use both evals and experiments in your AI development lifecycle to avoid costly mistakes and ship more successful projects.

AI initiatives are anything but a slam dunk: projects can be expensive, hard to measure, and face many failures along the way. The key to success lies in building the capability to learn quickly and fail cheaply. By going beyond upstream, qualitative evals and incorporating downstream, quantitative experiments, teams can shorten feedback loops and allow for rapid course correction. In this talk, Datadog Senior Technical Advocate Ryan Lucht will show teams how to leverage both approaches and join model performance with business metrics to ship more successful AI initiatives.

Key takeaways

  • How to handle the low success rate of AI initiatives by failing cheaply
  • The different purposes of evals and experiments – and why you need both
  • Using error analysis to define and measure evaluators
  • Running experiments at scale with basic and advanced A/B testing approaches for AI development
  • FEATURING
    Ryan Lucht
    Senior Technical AdvocateEppo by Datadog

    Ryan Lucht is a Senior Technical Advocate at Eppo by Datadog.

    View Ryan’s profile
12:30

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Staff+

Target architecture – Align. Execute. Deliver.

Explore how defining a clear target architecture boosts alignment, speeds up execution, and scales teams through better decision-making.

+ More

Talk

Target architecture – Align. Execute. Deliver.

12:30 – 12:44

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager Staff+

Developing a clear target architecture will take your technical leadership to the next level by improving collaboration, increasing efficiency, speeding up execution and allowing you to make data-driven decisions while building to scale.

Can you imagine if construction workers built a skyscraper using notes scribbled on random bits of paper? Imagine how they would coordinate the plumbing, electricity, floor plans…Yikes! Yet, this is sadly what most tech systems look like – patched up to “make things work”, always fixing “the previous person’s code” and constantly bumping into chunks of code which make absolutely no sense but you’re too scared to remove because you’re pretty sure it does something important somehow.

As the founding engineer of the Cash Flow domain in Pleo, I was privileged enough to play a key role in architecting a whole subsection of the company’s backend ecosystem while building up a team that would take it to new heights. In this talk, we’ll walk through this case study which covers the wins and fails of our journey and ultimately highlights the importance of having a target architecture and how it has helped inform decision-making (technical and non-technical), increase efficiency, improve collaboration and speed up execution while building to scale.

Key takeaways

  • What is a target architecture diagram and how to create it for different stakeholders
  • How target architecture informs decision-making (technical and non-technical), increases efficiency and speeds up execution
  • How to grow domains and teams based on target architecture
  • FEATURING
    Diane-Lee Pretorius
    Senior Engineering ManagerPleo

    Diane Lee Pretorius is an engineering leader who thrives at the intersection of people, systems, and delivery. With over a decade of experience across startups and global organisations, she specialises in building empowered, high-performing teams that ship complex technical products in distributed environments. D-Lee is known for her human-first approach to leadership, pairing strong technical judgement with inclusive collaboration and asynchronous ways of working. Passionate about mentoring and growing future leaders, she shares practical lessons from real-world delivery to help engineering teams work better together.

    View Diane-Lee’s profile
12:45–14:15

Lunch

14:15

Talk

Director+•Experienced Manager•New Manager•Staff+•Tech Lead

High-performance tech talent: Build, don’t buy!

Learn how CodeYourFuture develops diverse, high-potential individuals into advanced engineering roles while helping companies build exceptional, sustainable tech talent.

+ More

Talk

High-performance tech talent: Build, don't buy!

14:15 – 14:29

This session is suitable for:

Director+ Experienced Manager New Manager Staff+ Tech Lead

Tech NGO partner

CodeYourFuture LeadDev

CodeYourFuture helps people change their lives by training exceptional early-career engineers without prior tech experience straight into advanced roles such as Platform SRE at Slack. Come learn how, be wowed by our graduates’ achievements, and talk about how you can hire amazing top talent more sustainably.

CodeYourFuture trains exceptional talent for advanced roles from under-served communities. We help high-potential people in need to change their lives by getting good jobs in tech.

We’ve trained people with no software background straight into high-achieving roles such as platform SREs at Slack, typically positions reserved for high-tenure, highly competitive, highly expensive candidates. We’ll share how we achieve this with world-class high-touch training, and how we can help you hire excellent talent more sustainably.

We’ll cover:

  • The kinds of communities we work with who you may not currently see represented in your staff.
  • How our course prepares people to join your teams better than bootcamps or universities would.
  • How we can help build sustainable and predictable hiring pipelines.
  • How we can help your teams up-skill their mentoring

But most of all, we’ll brag about some of the truly impressive things our graduates have done.

  • FEATURING
    Daniel Wagner-Hall
    Director of Technical EducationCodeYourFuture

    Daniel Wagner-Hall is the Director of Technical Education at CodeYourFuture.

    View Daniel’s profile
14:30

Talk

Director+•Experienced Manager

Leading leaders: Why your greatest strengths are your next blind spots

Managing managers isn’t just scaling up your IC playbook—it’s a whole new game. This talk challenges common assumptions and shares what it really takes to move from doing the work to enabling others to do it even better.

+ More

Talk

Leading leaders: Why your greatest strengths are your next blind spots

14:30 – 14:54

This session is suitable for:

Director+ Experienced Manager

If you think managing managers is just a bigger version of managing individual contributors, think again.

The strategies that launched your engineering career and got you into leadership won’t carry you to the next level. This talk challenges your assumptions and reveals what it truly takes to shift from doing it yourself to enabling others to do it better.

  • FEATURING
    Humera Noor
    CTODigital Munich Tech GmbH

    Dr. Humera Noor is an academician, an entrepreneur and a senior leader with over 25 years of experience. With a PhD in Machine Learning, she has led successful ML-based projects, including pioneering commercial-scale ad filtering. As the CTO of Digital Munich, she drives innovation in AI, AR/VR and IoT. She is the founder of Lumen, a bootcamp aimed at helping individuals break into data and AI.

    Dr. Humera is passionate about empowering others in tech, helping individuals reach their full potential. Dr. Humera finds peace in nature, starting her day at sunrise with a book on a bench by the fields — of course with coffee.

    View Humera’s profile
14:55

Talk

Detect malicious attacks at 84M RPS with ML under 500us

A deep dive into the high-performance, distributed architecture and machine learning optimizations Cloudflare uses to detect malicious attacks at a global scale with sub-millisecond latencies.

+ More

Talk

Detect malicious attacks at 84M RPS with ML under 500us

14:55 – 15:09

Sponsored by

Cloudflare LeadDev

A deep dive into the high-performance, distributed architecture and machine learning optimizations Cloudflare uses to detect malicious attacks at a global scale with sub-millisecond latencies.

In a world where the scale of internet traffic is constantly growing, how do you protect against malicious attacks when you’re handling over 84 million requests per second? This talk will pull back the curtain on Cloudflare’s approach to high-throughput, low-latency threat detection. We’ll explore our distributed architecture that spans data centers worldwide, and how we leverage Rust for extreme efficiency and resource optimization, where every CPU cycle and byte of memory counts. We will delve into the smart processing techniques that are critical to our success, including advanced caching strategies and hardware tuning. A significant portion of the talk will focus on the machine learning models at the core of our Web Application Firewall (WAF), and the extensive optimizations we’ve implemented, from SIMD and TensorFlow Lite upgrades to LRU caching, to make them incredibly fast. We will also touch on our innovative data generation and sampling strategies that are key to training accurate and resilient AI models.

Key takeaways

  • Architecting for Scale: Learn how to design and build distributed systems capable of handling massive volumes of traffic with low latency.
  • Performance Optimization: Discover practical techniques for optimizing software and hardware, including the benefits of using Rust and advanced caching.
  • ML in Production: Understand the challenges and solutions for deploying and optimizing machine learning models in a high-stakes, real-time environment.
  • Actionable Scaling Strategies: Gain insights into how to leverage serverless and distributed architectures to scale your own applications and ML algorithms.”

  • FEATURING
    Denzil Correa
    Senior Manager of AICloudflare

    Denzil Correa is a Senior Manager of AI at Cloudflare, where he leads teams developing large-scale machine learning solutions. With over 19 years in the field, Denzil’s work is underpinned by a deep academic background in machine learning, natural language processing, text mining, and graph theory. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science, a qualification he occasionally uses to justify why he’s “still talking about ML algorithms.” His research has been cited, but he insists that these days, he just “pretends to know something about Machine Learning.” Fortunately, his professional focus on detecting and mitigating web attacks is serious business, combining his extensive experience with his passions for machine learning and cybersecurity to keep the internet slightly less chaotic.

    View Denzil’s profile
15:10

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager

Onboarding as a manager: How AI changed my first months

Learn how AI can support new engineering managers by accelerating context gathering, easing overwhelm, and enhancing team understanding.

+ More

Talk

Onboarding as a manager: How AI changed my first months

15:10 – 15:19

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager

How I used AI tools to accelerate onboarding, understand team dynamics faster, and show up more confidently as a new engineering manager without drowning in docs or meetings.

Starting a new role as an engineering manager can be overwhelming. You’re expected to absorb technical context, understand team dynamics, and start delivering impact all within the first few months. In my most recent onboarding experience, I decided to do something different: I let AI help.

In this talk, I’ll share how I used AI tools to streamline my onboarding as a new manager. These tools didn’t just save time they helped me surface insights I might have missed, get clarity faster, and reduce the pressure of “figuring everything out” on my own.

I’ll walk through real examples of how I used AI to synthesize org charts and product documentation, explain complex systems, interpret unfamiliar code reviews and engineering standards, and improve team workflows. I’ll share how I mapped out my new engineers’ roadmap, identified gaps in our processes, and even prototyped onboarding plans all with AI’s support. I’ll also talk about what didn’t work, where human judgment was essential, and how I balanced automation with building authentic, trust-based relationships.

This isn’t about hype it’s about how AI can be a practical partner in the messy, high-context reality of engineering leadership. Whether you’re a new manager, hiring one, or just curious how AI is changing the way we work, you’ll walk away with practical ideas and honest reflections from the front lines.

Key takeaways

  • How to use AI tools to accelerate understanding of org context and culture
  • Pitfalls to avoid when over-relying on automation
  • How AI can reduce early-stage overwhelm for new managers
15:20

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager

Engineering leadership in 2025: Thriving when budgets shrink

Find practical strategies for leading engineering teams through budget pressure by aligning decisions with impact, focus, and value.

+ More

Talk

Engineering leadership in 2025: Thriving when budgets shrink

15:20 – 15:49

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager

A practical playbook for leading engineering teams through 2025’s budget pressures; aligning technical decisions with business goals, empowering teams, and driving impact despite constrained resources.

In 2025, engineering leaders are under pressure from all directions. Customers expect faster feature delivery and tools that deliver even greater value. Product owners and the C-suite push for innovation and speed. Meanwhile the CFO demands all this, but without increasing spend. Budgets are tighter, hiring is slower, and AI is reshaping how teams operate. And yet, expectations keep rising. This talk is a practical playbook for navigating that tension.

At StatusCake, a bootstrapped SaaS company, we’ve never had the luxury of excess. We’ve operated for over a decade with lean teams, constrained budgets, and no external funding. That’s taught us how to align teams around impact, prioritise ruthlessly, and make technical decisions that directly support the business; all without burning people out or compromising on quality.

I’m not an engineer myself, but I’ve led engineering teams for 15 years. That perspective has forced me to build trust through clarity, not code. And to translate between product, engineering, and commercial strategy with precision. In this session, I’ll share the practical lessons that emerged from leading through constant constraint, and how they apply to the challenges engineering leaders now face at scale.

This is not a just a story of surviving 2025, but it should help you create a framework for a thriving engineering team within your organisation. Helping you and your team stay focused, motivated, and strategic when resources are scarce but expectations are high.

Key takeaways

By the end of the session I hope you’ll have learned 5 things to take back to your businesses:

  1. Why budget constraints are a leadership challenge, not just a financial one: Because leading through scarcity is about alignment, not spreadsheets.
  2. How to empower engineers to think commercially and make smarter technical trade-offs: When engineers understand the “why,” they make better calls on the “how.”
  3. Ways to align tech decisions with company-wide goals during moments of pressure: Strategy fails when tech and business drift out of sync; especially under stress.
  4. How constraints can sharpen focus and increase team autonomy: Limits don’t have to reduce creativity, they can accelerate it.
  5. How to reshape the role of engineering from a cost centre to a strategic driver of value: Engineering isn’t just delivery; it’s a key lever for business performance.
15:50–16:35

Afternoon Break

16:35

Talk

New Manager•Staff+•Tech Lead

Your career isn’t stuck – you’re playing by the wrong rules

Learn how to break free from outdated career rules by building visibility, influence, and leadership on your own terms.

+ More

Talk

Your career isn’t stuck – you’re playing by the wrong rules

16:35 – 17:04

This session is suitable for:

New Manager Staff+ Tech Lead

Think you’re stuck in your career?

You’re not.

You’re just following the wrong rules.

This talk will show you how to get noticed, grow your influence, and finally get the recognition you deserve.

Are you working hard, hitting your goals, and still not getting the recognition or growth you deserve?
You’re not alone – and you’re not broken.
You’re just playing by rules that were never designed for you.

In this talk, I’ll share the unspoken truths about career growth in tech, especially for women, introverts, and hidden leaders who feel like they’re doing everything “right” but still getting overlooked.

From my experience as a Director of Engineering and now an executive coach for women in tech, I’ll walk you through what actually moves the needle – how to build visibility, influence decisions, and shape your path without selling your soul or burning out.

You’ll get a practical and honest framework for driving your career forward on your terms – and stop waiting for permission to lead.

This isn’t another “just be confident” pep talk.
It’s a real conversation about what works, what doesn’t, and how you can start leading now – even if no one handed you the title yet.
17:05

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Staff+•Tech Lead

Debugging self-doubt: A framework for building confidence

Explore a practical framework for tackling self-doubt with a debugging mindset to build lasting confidence and stronger teams.

+ More

Talk

Debugging self-doubt: A framework for building confidence

17:05 – 17:14

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager Staff+ Tech Lead

A light, practical talk for engineering leaders on tackling self-doubt using a debugging mindset. Learn how to build real confidence with a simple framework that improves not only you, but also your team.

As engineering leaders, we’re expected to have answers, make decisions, and support our teams – even when we’re quietly questioning ourselves. Speaking up in high-stakes meetings, giving feedback, or navigating ambiguity can trigger self-doubt and quietly erode confidence over time.

In this talk, Natalia shares how imposter syndrome shows up in leadership – and how to handle it using a mindset we already know well: debugging. With humor, personal stories, and practical tools, she introduces the Confidence Debugging Framework (CDF) – a 5-step approach to identifying confidence “crashes” isolating their causes, applying targeted fixes, and building habits that stick.

You’ll learn:

  • How to recognize your own confidence blockers and triggers
  • Simple, proven strategies to build confidence intentionally
  • Why your confidence directly impacts your team’s trust, performance, and growth

Expect a refreshing, actionable take on a topic that’s often overlooked in tech leadership – but deeply impactful. From private self-doubt to public team dynamics, this talk will leave you with tools to lead with more clarity, confidence, and self-awareness.

Because just like code, confidence isn’t perfect – but with the right mindset, you can always refactor it.

Key takeaways

  • Recognize how self-doubt shows up in everyday leadership.
  • Use a simple debugging mindset to approach confidence challenges.
  • Discover practical habits for building confidence over time.
  • Reflect on how your confidence affects your team’s trust and dynamics.
  • FEATURING
    Natalia Nazaruk
    Engineering Squad LeadKingfisher

    Natalia is an Engineering Squad Lead and mobile engineering leader with experience leading distributed, cross-country teams in large organisations. She focuses on building strong team culture, trust, and effective collaboration in remote-first environments. In her day-to-day work, she combines practical leadership patterns with a human-centred approach to engineering management. Natalia is active in engineering communities and regularly speaks at internal and external events, sharing real-world leadership lessons grounded in hands-on experience.

    View Natalia’s profile
17:15

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Staff+

The twin mandate: What leaders still don’t get about observability

Learn why many teams miss observability’s full potential and how leaders can unlock exceptional engineering performance through it.

+ More

Talk

The twin mandate: What leaders still don't get about observability

17:15 – 17:39

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager Staff+

Charity’s new talk will address the incredible variance in performance among engineering teams in 2025. While the ceiling for engineering performance has increased dramatically over the past decade, only a tiny fraction of teams are actually taking advantage of this shift. Hear how your observability team can help unlock the next level in performance.

  • FEATURING
    Charity Majors
    Co-Founder & CTOHoneycomb

    Charity Majors is the co-founder and CTO of honeycomb.io. She pioneered the concept of modern Observability, drawing on her years of experience building and managing massive distributed systems at Parse (acquired by Facebook), Facebook, and Linden Lab building Second Life. She is the co-author of Observability Engineering and Database Reliability Engineering (O’Reilly). She loves free speech, free software and single malt scotch.

    View Charity’s profile
17:40

Talk

End of day wrap-up

Closing thoughts from the host, Pat Kua.

+ More

Talk

End of day wrap-up

17:40 – 17:44

Closing thoughts from the host, Pat Kua.
17:45–19:30

Networking Mixer

Hallway activities
10:40

Office Hours

Meet the speakers

Chat with the speakers face-to-face in a relaxed, conversational environment.

+ More

Office Hours

Meet the speakers – Day 1, 10:50

10:40 – 10:44

If you’re inspired by a talk, want to learn more, or just want to chat about it with other folks, head to our Office Hours area where our speakers will be waiting for you.

  • FEATURING
    Nikita Rathi
    Senior Engineering ManagerTaxfix

    Nikita Rathi is a dog-mum, a wife, a foodie amongst other things, and an engineering manager by day. She has spent her career in the tech industry between Illinois, New York, Dublin and Berlin solving problems, writing code, and managing engineering teams and now is a Senior Engineering Manager at Taxfix, a tax startup in Berlin that reduces the complexity of tax filing and helps save it’s users time and money. She has found herself ever-curious about human relationships and brings that curiosity to her work. Her thoughts and research have led her to think about different perceptions that folks might have based on past experiences and years of socialization and how that impacts the careers of those that are marginalized.

    View Nikita’s profile
  • Bruce Wang
    Engineering DirectorNetflix

    Bruce has been in the software industry for 25+ years, and currently Engineering Director at Netflix, leading Games Platform.  This team owns the central technology that enable game developers to build great games and members to enjoy them, spanning end to end integration, SDK, Game Services, Game Developer Lifecycle and Reliability teams.  Prior to that, he led Product Platform Systems spanning APIs, Telemetry Info and Technology lifecycle.  Before Netflix, he was Sr Director of Eng at Shippo, VPE at Packet (now Equinix Metal) and CTO, Co-founder or Eng Leader at various startups and enterprises.  He is also a serious foodie and resides in San Francisco with his spouse and two daughters.

     

    View Bruce’s profile
  • James Stanier
    CTONordhealth

    James Stanier is CTO at Nordhealth. He is also the author of Become an Effective Software Manager, Effective Remote Work, and Become a Great Engineering Leader . He holds a Ph.D. in computer science and runs theengineeringmanager.com.

    View James’s profile
10:45
12:00

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Women leaders

Connect with other leaders who have similar backgrounds and experiences to yours, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

+ More

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Women leaders

12:00 – 12:00

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but some have a unique set of challenges that they need to navigate through. At times it can lead to leaders feeling isolated in their experiences.

We welcome you to the community representation groups, where you’ll be able to connect with folks who might have similar experiences to yours, where you’ll be able to build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

  • FEATURING
    Silvia Schreier
    Principal EngineerIntersport

    As Principal Engineer and Architect at INTERSPORT, Silvia Schreier is committed to bridging the gap between technology and business. With over a decade of experience in web development, architecture, and wholesale and retail product management, she combines deep technical expertise with a strong business perspective. Driven by her passion for collaboration and connecting people, Silvia helps teams find solutions that are not only technically sound and sustainable but also deliver real business value.

    View Silvia’s profile
  • Gisela Rossi
    Engineering DirectorTrustpilot

    Gisela is an Engineering Director leading the B2B engine at Trustpilot. She enjoys leading and improving complex organisations and systems. Her colleagues have described her as a “force for change”, and she treasures that. She is devoted to helping people in the tech community grow and reach their full potential. Outside work, she enjoys oil painting, exercising, and quiet weekends at home with her husband and her cat.

    View Gisela’s profile
  • Emily Thomas
    Principal Software Engineer & TLM (Tech Lead Manager) Invisible Technologies Inc.

    Emily is not just an engineer or a manager, but a problem solver, focused on creating creative efficiency both in and out of code. She rapidly grew her career at hustling startups, experienced management at a massively scaling pre-IPO unicorn, and is now dedicated to solving the next big problem – the balance of humans and technology.

     

    View Emily’s profile
12:00

Industry Interest Groups

Connecting engineering leaders in Banking and Financial Services

Join our relaxed sessions where you can meet peers working in similar domains to share ideas, collaborate on challenges and exchange solutions.

+ More

Industry Interest Groups

Connecting engineering leaders in Banking and Financial Services

12:00 – 12:00

Join our relaxed sessions where you can meet peers working in similar domains to share ideas, collaborate on challenges and exchange solutions.

  • FEATURING
    Daniel Schniepp
    Senior Staff EngineerMercedes-Benz Mobility AG

    Daniel is as a Senior Staff Engineer working on various platform and software engineering topics as well as engineering culture initiatives at Mercedes-Benz Mobility AG.
    Before joining the corporate world, he co-founded two startups and worked as a freelance software engineer.

    View Daniel’s profile
  • Candost Dağdeviren
    Engineering ManagerSumUp

    Candost works towards creating great, high-performing systems and organizations whose members work in sync, communicate well, share common principles, and are aligned on the same mission.

    View Candost’s profile
  • Dmytro Basan
    Engineering ManagerKlarna

    Driving the future of engineering leadership, Dmytro combines extensive experience in
    uniting business and technology to drive impactful results. At Klarna, he managed multiple teams across cross-functional areas, delivering scalable business solutions, optimizing high-load applications, and integrating cutting-edge AI innovations. He is a strong advocate for empathy and growth in tech careers, with a passion for building high-performing teams and fostering innovation.
    Beyond Klarna, Dmytro contributes to industry dialogue through speaking engagements and podcasts, shaping trends in engineering and leadership excellence.

    View Dmytro’s profile
  • Laís Oliveira
    Principal EngineerNubank

    Born and raised in Brazil, based in Berlin, Laís Oliveira is a marathonist, outdoor sports enthusiast and a Principal Engineer at Nubank. She holds a bachelor in Computer Science and a MBA in Software Engineering both graduated in São Paulo. Over the years she has built large scale systems for retail and financial industries, including building Nubank since early days from 12 thousand to 70 million customers. As a technical leader her areas of interest are functional programming, software architecture and cloud Infrastructure.

    View Laís’s profile
12:00

Voltron Quest

Voltron Quest

Inspired by Lara Hogan’s Manager Voltron, build your personal network at LeadDev Berlin.

+ More

Voltron Quest

Voltron Quest

12:00 – 12:00

Inspired by Lara Hogan’s Manager Voltron, meet other leaders to build your peer network at LeadDev Berlin.

  • FEATURING
    Natalia Gorchakova
    Staff Software EngineerGoogle

    Natalia is a Staff Engineer at Google Cloud, driven by her passion for data. She specializes in collecting data and turning it into useful insights for both customers and internal product development. In her role on the Dataplex team, she sets the technical direction for Data Lineage.
    Natalia brings over 18 years of software engineering experience, including more than a decade in technical leadership, guiding teams and managing the full software lifecycle from architecture to production.

    View Natalia’s profile
  • Christian Dewein
    Chief Technology Officerioki GmbH

    Christian Dewein is a software engineer and CTO based in Frankfurt am Main. He leads the development of innovative mobility solutions for public transport at ioki GmbH, a Deutsche Bahn subsidiary. Passionate about technology, community building, and elegant software design, he actively contributes to open-source projects and local developer meetups. Christian values simplicity, craftsmanship, and the intersection of code and real-world impact. Besides that, he organizes Europe’s biggest conference for mechanical computer keyboards, a free community-event for fans of the hobby.

    View Christian’s profile
  • Irene Anggreeni
    Mental Fitness CoachWhole Person Leaders

    Irene Anggreeni is a mental fitness coach and leadership speaker bridging the technical mind and the thriving heart.
    A former engineer with over 12 years in software development and research across Indonesia, Sweden, and the Netherlands, she is passionate about helping tech leaders build strong, resilient teams. You can talk to her about any aspects of it, including sustainable performance, psychological safety, and bouncing back after burnout.
    Outside of work, Irene is also an active mentor and trainer in the Toastmasters community.
    Based in Rotterdam with her husband and their cat, she enjoys dancing Argentinian tango, swimming, and doing nothing.

    View Irene’s profile
  • Laura Ureche
    Principal EngineerSeven.One Entertainment Group

    Laura Ureche is a Principal Engineer with over 13 years of experience across startups and large organizations. She has a background in testing, software development, and SRE, and is known for driving scalable solutions, improving system reliability, and mentoring engineering teams. Passionate about problem-solving and observability, she helps teams deliver high-quality, impactful software.

    View Laura’s profile
  • Matej Strašek
    Senior Engineering ManagerExoticca

    Matej Strašek drives AI transformation within his teams at Exoticca, where he currently leads engineers building intelligent customer experiences and empowers operations with AI—from voicebots and chatbots to automated travel processes. He helps people evolve into problem solvers, creating outcome-driven groups that use AI to multiply their impact. His teams align around company moonshots, combining a technical mindset with the real world to deliver real impact. His way of resetting? Singing and flying over the landscapes of Slovenia.

    View Matej ‘s profile
  • Elif Schaefer
    Data Engineering Manager

    Elif Schaefer is a distinguished Data Engineering Manager with over a decade of managerial experience in the tech industry. With a passionate focus on people leadership, her strength lies in mentoring, coaching and cultivating high-performing (data) engineering teams. Shifting from hands-on technical work early in her career, Elif has flourished in roles that allow her to guide, inspire and influence those around her.

    View Elif ‘s profile
  • Emily Thomas
    Principal Software Engineer & TLM (Tech Lead Manager) Invisible Technologies Inc.

    Emily is not just an engineer or a manager, but a problem solver, focused on creating creative efficiency both in and out of code. She rapidly grew her career at hustling startups, experienced management at a massively scaling pre-IPO unicorn, and is now dedicated to solving the next big problem – the balance of humans and technology.

     

    View Emily’s profile
12:00

Meet the Author

Meet the author: Sam Newman

Bring a book and get it signed – or just have a chat.

  • Sam Newman Sam Newman & Associates
    Independent Tech Consultant & Author
+ More

Meet the Author

Meet the author: Sam Newman

12:00 – 12:00

Sam will be signing copies of his book ‘Building Microservices‘.

Bring a book and get it signed – or just have a chat.

  • FEATURING
    Sam Newman
    Independent Tech Consultant & AuthorSam Newman & Associates
    Sam Newman is an independent consultant who loves solving problems with technology. Focusing primarily in the areas of cloud, microservice architecture and continuous delivery, Sam works with companies big and small all over the world. He is also an experienced conference speaker, and author of the O’Reilly books Monolith To Microservices, Building Microservices, and the forthcoming Building Resilient Distributed Systems.
    View Sam’s profile
12:00

DirectorPlus Networking Coffee

Director+

DirectorPlus Networking Coffee

A warm, casual coffee break where senior engineering leaders connect, share experiences, and spark meaningful conversations.

+ More

DirectorPlus Networking Coffee

DirectorPlus Networking Coffee

12:00 – 12:00

This session is suitable for:

Director+

A warm, casual coffee break where senior engineering leaders connect, share experiences, and spark meaningful conversations.

  • FEATURING
    Adelina Persa
    VP EngineeringResourcify

    Adelina Persa has spent the past decade supporting engineers and engineering leaders while building high-performing, co-located, and distributed teams. Throughout her career, she has partnered with a wide range of companies at different growth stages, hiring, developing, and mentoring engineers, technical leads, and both new and experienced engineering managers.

    View Adelina’s profile
  • Limor Bergman Gross
    Leadership CoachLBG Consulting
    View Limor’s profile
  • Dilip Saha
    Senior Director of EngineeringHelloFresh

    Dilip Saha is a seasoned technology executive with over 25 years of experience shaping AI, IoT, and cloud-native software development. As Senior Director of Engineering at HelloFresh, he leads 90 engineers developing AI-driven personalization and scalable platforms serving millions, achieving 99.9% platform availability and delivering €400M+ revenue growth.

     

    Previously at Bosch and Honeywell, Dilip spearheaded global engineering teams of 200+ engineers leading AI and IOT solutions. A visionary tech leader and passionate AI advocate, he regularly speaks at international forums including AI and Data Summit, CTO Craft Con, and Generative AI Summit, sharing insights on building high-performing teams, making organizations AI-ready, and driving digital transformation with purpose.

    View Dilip ‘s profile
  • Gisela Rossi
    Engineering DirectorTrustpilot

    Gisela is an Engineering Director leading the B2B engine at Trustpilot. She enjoys leading and improving complex organisations and systems. Her colleagues have described her as a “force for change”, and she treasures that. She is devoted to helping people in the tech community grow and reach their full potential. Outside work, she enjoys oil painting, exercising, and quiet weekends at home with her husband and her cat.

    View Gisela’s profile
11:30
12:00

Table Talks

How do you keep learning even when you’re short on time?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How do you keep learning even when you're short on time?

12:00 – 12:00

Sponsored by

O'Reilly x LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Daniela Matheis
    Chief of Staff to the CTOioki GmbH

    In her role as Chief of Staff to the CTO, she drives practical transformations in engineering culture, ensuring continuous learning is integrated into workflows. Using systemic coaching, she supports leaders in designing initiatives, improving team practices, and creating measurable impact across the organization.

    View Daniela’s profile
  • Ciro Anunciação
    Senior Engineering ManagerOn

    Ciro is a senior engineering manager with over 20 years in software, from hands-on coding to scaling teams and organizations. He built teams from the ground up, like growing a startup from 1 to 30 engineers. And he led product-driven engagement at Babbel, where his team boosted retention year over year. At PandaDoc, he shaped growth-focused engineering teams and sustainable processes. Today, he’s part of On, continuing his journey of building high-performing teams, strong product partnerships, and preparing the next generation of leaders.

    View Ciro’s profile
  • Niall Johnson
    Strategic Account ManagerO'Reilly Media Inc.

    Niall Johnson sits within the international team at O’Reilly and is responsible for leading partnerships with key enterprise accounts across EMEA. In this role, he provides support and strategic vision to to ensure his customers maximise value throughout their learning journeys across O’Reilly. Niall has a passion for lifelong learning. He has spent the last 6 years in the technology sector and brings extensive knowledge of working with large organisations to implement transformational projects to deliver successful business outcomes.

    View Niall ‘s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How to go from code reviewer to AI leader and confidently deploy AI generated code?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How to go from code reviewer to AI leader and confidently deploy AI generated code?

12:00 – 12:00

Sponsored by

CircleCI Logo LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Dušan Warzok
    Head of EngineeringParto Group GmbH

    Dušan Warzok is Head of Engineering at Parto. He spent five years at Trade Republic, joining early and staying through the company’s growth to unicorn status and 20x customer expansion. He led engineering teams in the Growth area through hypergrowth phases across multiple platforms. Dušan takes a direct approach to leadership, prioritizing honest feedback and product quality. His philosophy centers on transparency, persistence, and learning through difficult problems rather than avoiding them.

    View Dušan’s profile
  • Olaf Molenveld
    Technology AdvisorCircleCI

    Olaf is a seasoned technology leader with over 25 years of experience in the software industry, excelling in both technical and leadership roles. He has a strong foundation in software development, architecture, and consulting, with a focus on aligning business challenges with cutting-edge technology solutions. As the founder and former CTO of Vamp.io, he played a key role in developing DevOps tools for containers, Kubernetes, and microservices. Following Vamp’s acquisition by CircleCI, Olaf now serves as a Technology Advisor, working closely with CTO Rob Zuber to advance CircleCI’s offerings. His expertise continues to drive technical innovation and excellence for the company and its customers.

    View Olaf’s profile
  • Anna Kurylo
    Senior Manager, Software EngineeringSentinelOne

    Anna Kurylo is Senior Manager of Software Engineering, Platform at SentinelOne. She leverages deep technical expertise and leadership to manage complex cybersecurity engineering projects, champion accessibility, and build resilient, user-friendly platforms. Her leadership follows a “people first” motto, grounded in the belief that kindness is fundamental to fostering strong technical teams. Outside of work, she enjoys running and walking outdoors with her husband, making matcha for friends, and spending time with her cat, Cory.

    View Anna’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How to mentor effectively?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How to mentor effectively?

12:00 – 12:00

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Sayak Saha
    Director of EngineeringAuto1 Group

    Sayak Saha leads engineering for Auto1 Group, Europe’s top digital car platform with over €6B in annual revenue and 600,000+ cars sold each year. His 100+ member team across the EU powers technology for B2B business, logistics, and refurbishments. Sayak previously built products at Amazon, Dell Digital, and Astro Malaysia, reaching customers in India, Southeast Asia, and Europe. Passionate about turning data insights, AI, and automation into value for e-commerce and fintech—both B2B and D2C—he thrives on delivering impact. When not working, you’ll find him exploring Berlin or playing chess with his 10-year-old.

    View Sayak’s profile
  • Irene Anggreeni
    Mental Fitness CoachWhole Person Leaders

    Irene Anggreeni is a mental fitness coach and leadership speaker bridging the technical mind and the thriving heart.
    A former engineer with over 12 years in software development and research across Indonesia, Sweden, and the Netherlands, she is passionate about helping tech leaders build strong, resilient teams. You can talk to her about any aspects of it, including sustainable performance, psychological safety, and bouncing back after burnout.
    Outside of work, Irene is also an active mentor and trainer in the Toastmasters community.
    Based in Rotterdam with her husband and their cat, she enjoys dancing Argentinian tango, swimming, and doing nothing.

    View Irene’s profile
  • Matej Strašek
    Senior Engineering ManagerExoticca

    Matej Strašek drives AI transformation within his teams at Exoticca, where he currently leads engineers building intelligent customer experiences and empowers operations with AI—from voicebots and chatbots to automated travel processes. He helps people evolve into problem solvers, creating outcome-driven groups that use AI to multiply their impact. His teams align around company moonshots, combining a technical mindset with the real world to deliver real impact. His way of resetting? Singing and flying over the landscapes of Slovenia.

    View Matej ‘s profile
  • Anna Kurylo
    Senior Manager, Software EngineeringSentinelOne

    Anna Kurylo is Senior Manager of Software Engineering, Platform at SentinelOne. She leverages deep technical expertise and leadership to manage complex cybersecurity engineering projects, champion accessibility, and build resilient, user-friendly platforms. Her leadership follows a “people first” motto, grounded in the belief that kindness is fundamental to fostering strong technical teams. Outside of work, she enjoys running and walking outdoors with her husband, making matcha for friends, and spending time with her cat, Cory.

    View Anna’s profile
12:00

Solution Swap

I’m burning out and it feels like there’s never enough time. What can I do?

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges.

+ More

Solution Swap

I’m burning out and it feels like there’s never enough time. What can I do?

12:00 – 12:00

You’re constantly balancing competing demands – supporting your team, meeting delivery expectations, advocating for engineering health, responding to leadership and general admin. The result can be a relentless cycle of context switching, long hours, and the sense that you’re never quite doing enough.

You may suffer from irritability, concentration difficulties, or even resentment toward the role you once enjoyed. At the same time, the constant stream of meetings, messages, and tickets in your work management systems can leave you feeling like you’re drowning in tasks, with no clear way to prioritize. How can you step back when the demands never stop? What happens when the guilt of letting others down keeps you pushing past your limits?

Many of us will recognize this scenario from our own careers. In this session we’ll explore the dynamics that make burnout so common in leadership roles, share experiences of how it shows up in day-to-day work, and surface ideas about what can be done to create a healthier balance.

  • FEATURING
    Clare Sudbery
    Independent Technical CoachSudbery Software Engineering Ltd

    Clare Sudbery is an independent technical coach with 25+ years of software engineering experience. She specialises in TDD, refactoring, pair programming, continuous integration and other eXtreme Programming (XP) practices.

    Clare taught the Coding Black Females’ Return to Tech programme and co-ran Made Tech’s academy – coaching inexperienced engineers to learn on the job. She has a passion for helping under-represented groups to flourish in tech.

    Clare hosted Season One of the acclaimed Making Tech Better podcast and publishes content on Medium (“A Woman in Technology”) and her own site (“In Simple Terms”). She is the author of the Stupidity Manifesto, has written about trunk-based development and refactoring for O’Reilly and for Martin Fowler’s site, and regularly presents workshops and keynotes at events all over the world.

    Subscribe to Clare’s newsletter: https://queen-of-questions.kit.com/

    View Clare’s profile
12:00

Speed Coaching

Speed Coaching

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Mathias Meyer.

+ More

Speed Coaching

Speed Coaching

12:00 – 12:00

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Mathias Meyer.

  • FEATURING
    Mathias Meyer
    Founding Partner & Executive CoachThe Intentional Organization

    Mathias is Founding Parter and Executive Coach at The Intentional Organization and executive coach to founders, CTOs, and senior engineering leaders. He supports his clients and their leadership teams in their personal and professional growth as they’re scaling out their business and their departments. Together with his business partner Sara, he’s co-authoring the forthcoming book “The Intentional Organization.” Starting his career as an engineer, Mathias has later worked in founder, CEO, and CTO roles across different companies, including Travis CI and Reaction Commerce.

    View Mathias’s profile
12:15
12:00

Table Talks

How do you foster structured support and connection for managers in distributed work environments?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How do you foster structured support and connection for managers in distributed work environments?

12:00 – 12:00

Sponsored by

Cloudflare LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Michelle Torres
    Engineering ManagerCloudflare

    Michelle is a queer Latina engineering leader with over two decades of experience in web technologies, open source, and infrastructure. She’s worn many hats — software engineer, tech lead, manager, director, and spent a decade teaching Computer Science at both Bachelor’s and Master’s levels. Along the way, she worked on CI systems at GitLab and, more recently, on transport layer protocols at Cloudflare — contributing to making the internet better while building and scaling thriving teams.

    View Michelle’s profile
  • Sam Khawasé
    Engineering ManagerCloudflare

    Sam Khawasé is an Engineering Leader with over two decades of experience dedicated to creating rock-solid software. Classically trained in Computer Science and Engineering, his expertise is centred on designing and securing complex, high-performance mission-critical systems. He is a technical leader known for driving engineering excellence and leading cross-functional teams across complex domains. Sam brings a unique global perspective, having lived and worked across 3½ continents. Fluent in six languages, he is an expert in cross-cultural communication, leveraging this skill to effectively lead diverse, high-performing distributed engineering teams. Passionate about making a difference in society, Sam has also founded CoderDojo DSM and continues to mentor underrepresented people through initiatives like Django Girls and NavGurukul. Based in Berlin, Sam channels the same tenacity he applies to engineering into his personal life. He is an avid runner and trekker, constantly seeking out challenging trails and mountain routes. When he’s not on the trail, you’ll find him reading a book, donning the chef’s hat for his daughter, or shaking a leg to Bollywood tunes.

    View Sam ‘s profile
  • George Kihara
    Head of Software EngineeringCellulant

    George Chege is the Head of Software Engineering at a leading fintech organization, where he drives the design and delivery of scalable, secure, and innovative software solutions across Africa’s digital payments landscape. With over a decade of experience spanning software engineering and senior technical leadership, George has successfully led high-performing teams in building systems that power trusted financial services and value-added platforms across the continent.

    Known for his commitment to technical excellence, operational resilience, and collaborative leadership, George is passionate about advancing Africa’s fintech ecosystem through technology that enables inclusion, reliability, and sustainable growth.

    View George’s profile
  • Tatsiana Mihai
    Staff Engineer Tractable

    Tatsiana Mihai, a skilled Staff Engineer at Tractable, brings over 12 years of expertise in crafting sophisticated software solutions across diverse industries—Automotive, AdTech, Education, Travel, E-commerce, and Gaming. As a leader with diverse capabilities, she excels not only in developing customer-facing products and nuanced software design but also in transforming challenges into successes. Tatsiana’s visionary approach, coupled with her adept problem-solving, is complemented by a unique ability to integrate engineering practices seamlessly with team management strategies. From startups to industry giants, her strategic decisions reflect a commitment to excellence and innovation in every venture.

    View Tatsiana ‘s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How can you strategically balance resilience and innovation velocity?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How can you strategically balance resilience and innovation velocity?

12:00 – 12:00

Sponsored by

LaunchDarkly LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Kevin Holler
    Enterprise Solutions EngineerLaunchDarkly

    Kevin Holler is an Enterprise Solutions Engineer at LaunchDarkly, working with the companies biggest customers in the DACH region to de-risk their software and AI-driven product releases.

    View Kevin’s profile
  • Irene Anggreeni
    Mental Fitness CoachWhole Person Leaders

    Irene Anggreeni is a mental fitness coach and leadership speaker bridging the technical mind and the thriving heart.
    A former engineer with over 12 years in software development and research across Indonesia, Sweden, and the Netherlands, she is passionate about helping tech leaders build strong, resilient teams. You can talk to her about any aspects of it, including sustainable performance, psychological safety, and bouncing back after burnout.
    Outside of work, Irene is also an active mentor and trainer in the Toastmasters community.
    Based in Rotterdam with her husband and their cat, she enjoys dancing Argentinian tango, swimming, and doing nothing.

    View Irene’s profile
  • Andrew Garkavyi
    Engineering ManagerGrammarly

    Andrew is an Engineering Leader with over 15 years of experience building software products and leading teams. At Grammarly, he helped scale engineering teams in user platforms to support tens of millions of daily users and improved the operations of the engineering team as the company tripled in size. His past work includes launching award-winning mobile apps, as well as building IoT solutions for hospitality. Andrew is interested in how AI/ML can impact real-world products and enjoys supporting teams in continuous improvement.

    View Andrew’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How can AI practically deliver value to engineering teams?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How can AI practically deliver value to engineering teams?

12:00 – 12:00

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Dušan Warzok
    Head of EngineeringParto Group GmbH

    Dušan Warzok is Head of Engineering at Parto. He spent five years at Trade Republic, joining early and staying through the company’s growth to unicorn status and 20x customer expansion. He led engineering teams in the Growth area through hypergrowth phases across multiple platforms. Dušan takes a direct approach to leadership, prioritizing honest feedback and product quality. His philosophy centers on transparency, persistence, and learning through difficult problems rather than avoiding them.

    View Dušan’s profile
  • Viktor Stojanov
    Engineering ManagerBabbel

    Viktor Stojanov is an Engineering Manager at Babbel and Flutter app founder in his free time. He’s an avid learner with a passion for building beautiful, functional apps that tackle real-world problems while being a net positive in users’ lives.

    View Viktor’s profile
  • Shadi Sharaf
    Senior Software EngineerClave

    Senior software engineer, with background in Enterprise publishing platforms, leading high performing teams, open source contributions, and building AI-assisted platforms.

    View Shadi ‘s profile
12:00

Solution Swap

Talented engineers on my team want to advance their careers but there are not as many opportunities available, how do I keep them motivated?

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges.

+ More

Solution Swap

Talented engineers on my team want to advance their careers but there are not as many opportunities available, how do I keep them motivated?

12:00 – 12:00

You are fortunate to lead a team of bright and ambitious engineers who are eager to grow. They want new responsibilities, visible projects, and a clear path to advancement. But maybe promotion opportunities are limited, or senior roles are scarce, or career ladders are not always well-defined. The gap between your team’s aspirations and what the company can offer is becoming harder to bridge.

You want to support their ambitions, but you don’t want to make promises you can’t keep. How do you keep them motivated when opportunities are unevenly distributed? What can you do to prevent frustration, stagnation, or even attrition when your most capable engineers are eager for more?

Many of us have wrestled with this challenge. In this session we’ll share stories, explore different approaches, and consider how to foster growth and engagement even when advancement paths are not immediately available.

  • FEATURING
    Clare Sudbery
    Independent Technical CoachSudbery Software Engineering Ltd

    Clare Sudbery is an independent technical coach with 25+ years of software engineering experience. She specialises in TDD, refactoring, pair programming, continuous integration and other eXtreme Programming (XP) practices.

    Clare taught the Coding Black Females’ Return to Tech programme and co-ran Made Tech’s academy – coaching inexperienced engineers to learn on the job. She has a passion for helping under-represented groups to flourish in tech.

    Clare hosted Season One of the acclaimed Making Tech Better podcast and publishes content on Medium (“A Woman in Technology”) and her own site (“In Simple Terms”). She is the author of the Stupidity Manifesto, has written about trunk-based development and refactoring for O’Reilly and for Martin Fowler’s site, and regularly presents workshops and keynotes at events all over the world.

    Subscribe to Clare’s newsletter: https://queen-of-questions.kit.com/

    View Clare’s profile
12:00

Speed Coaching

Speed Coaching

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Mathias Meyer.

+ More

Speed Coaching

Speed Coaching

12:00 – 12:00

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Mathias Meyer.

  • FEATURING
    Mathias Meyer
    Founding Partner & Executive CoachThe Intentional Organization

    Mathias is Founding Parter and Executive Coach at The Intentional Organization and executive coach to founders, CTOs, and senior engineering leaders. He supports his clients and their leadership teams in their personal and professional growth as they’re scaling out their business and their departments. Together with his business partner Sara, he’s co-authoring the forthcoming book “The Intentional Organization.” Starting his career as an engineer, Mathias has later worked in founder, CEO, and CTO roles across different companies, including Travis CI and Reaction Commerce.

    View Mathias’s profile
12:45
12:00

Office Hours

Meet the speakers

Chat with speakers face-to-face in a relaxed, conversational environment.

+ More

Office Hours

Meet the speakers – Day 1, 12:45

12:00 – 12:00

If you’re inspired by a talk, want to learn more, or just want to chat about it with other folks, head to our Office Hours area, where our speakers will be waiting for you.

  • FEATURING
    Germán Fuentes Capella
    Founder, CISOtrigosec

    Germán Fuentes Capella is a CISO focused on automation, with 15 years of experience working in FinTech companies across Europe. Throughout his career, he has tackled the challenge of automating security and compliance workflows that traditionally required manual intervention and disrupted development cycles. He has built DevSecOps practices that treat security controls as code, integrating them directly into CI/CD pipelines. Germán now leads trigosec, where he continues to explore how to make governance processes as automated and developer-friendly as any other engineering system. He is passionate about eliminating toil and making compliance invisible to product teams.

    View Germán’s profile
  • Ryan Lucht
    Senior Technical AdvocateEppo by Datadog

    Ryan Lucht is a Senior Technical Advocate at Eppo by Datadog.

    View Ryan’s profile
  • Diane-Lee Pretorius
    Senior Engineering ManagerPleo

    Diane Lee Pretorius is an engineering leader who thrives at the intersection of people, systems, and delivery. With over a decade of experience across startups and global organisations, she specialises in building empowered, high-performing teams that ship complex technical products in distributed environments. D-Lee is known for her human-first approach to leadership, pairing strong technical judgement with inclusive collaboration and asynchronous ways of working. Passionate about mentoring and growing future leaders, she shares practical lessons from real-world delivery to help engineering teams work better together.

    View Diane-Lee’s profile
  • Saman Jafari
    CTO and Seasoned Leader

    Saman Jafari is a seasoned leader and strategist with nearly two decades of experience guiding teams, systems, and businesses through meaningful transformation. He began his career in Iran, where he built and ran a digital agency blending software, media, and storytelling. Now based in Germany, he serves as a CTO, helping organizations modernize architecture, grow people, and rethink how they work.

    Across roles and borders, Saman has led more than just code changes. He’s helped people lead better, reshaped team cultures, and guided businesses toward more thoughtful, human-centered ways of working. His leadership spans startups and mature companies alike, always focused on building systems that scale and teams that thrive.

    What drives him most is seeing people grow and watching businesses become more human, more resilient, and more aligned with their purpose.

    View Saman’s profile
12:00

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Asian leaders

Connect with other leaders who have similar backgrounds and experiences to yours, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

+ More

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Asian leaders

12:00 – 12:00

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but some have a unique set of challenges that they need to navigate through. At times it can lead to leaders feeling isolated in their experiences.

We welcome you to the community representation groups, where you’ll be able to connect with folks who might have similar experiences to yours, where you’ll be able to build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

  • FEATURING
    Ricardo Yasuda
    Engineering ManagerGotPhoto

    Ricardo is an engineering leader with 25+ years in the software development industry. Currently an Engineering Manager at GotPhoto, he leads cross-functional teams building technology that empowers photographers to focus on their craft. Ricardo previously led teams at SumUp handling millions of transactions at scale. He is passionate about people-first and culture-aware leadership, creating environments where engineers thrive while delivering products that truly serves people and makes a difference.

    View Ricardo’s profile
  • Dilip Saha
    Senior Director of EngineeringHelloFresh

    Dilip Saha is a seasoned technology executive with over 25 years of experience shaping AI, IoT, and cloud-native software development. As Senior Director of Engineering at HelloFresh, he leads 90 engineers developing AI-driven personalization and scalable platforms serving millions, achieving 99.9% platform availability and delivering €400M+ revenue growth.

     

    Previously at Bosch and Honeywell, Dilip spearheaded global engineering teams of 200+ engineers leading AI and IOT solutions. A visionary tech leader and passionate AI advocate, he regularly speaks at international forums including AI and Data Summit, CTO Craft Con, and Generative AI Summit, sharing insights on building high-performing teams, making organizations AI-ready, and driving digital transformation with purpose.

    View Dilip ‘s profile
  • Priyanka Syal
    Senior EngineerBCG Digital Ventures

    Priyanka Syal currently works at Senior Engineer at BCG Digital Ventures, Berlin. She has previously worked as a Software Engineer at multiple places including Microsoft and Dell EMC across different domains like CRM, cloud storage and AdTech. She is passionate about diversity and inclusion in tech and has worked as a part of various initiatives to support women in technology.

    View Priyanka’s profile
13:00
12:00

Next Steps AMA

Tackling the role of Tech Lead

Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for tackling the role of a Tech Lead.

+ More

Next Steps AMA

Tackling the role of Tech Lead

12:00 – 12:00

Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for tackling the role of a Tech Lead.

Moderated by Phil Bennett, Experienced Engineering Leader & Former Director of Engineering at Kilo Health.

  • FEATURING
    Gergő Halmi
    Technical LeadPleo

    Gergő Halmi is a Technical Lead at Pleo.

    View Gergő’s profile
  • Lean Vilas
    Software Engineering Team Lead

    Lean Vilas is a Senior Software Engineer, Team Lead, and mentor with over a decade of experience helping developers grow into confident, high-impact contributors.
    Known for blending technical expertise with a deep focus on people, he teaches software engineers how to navigate career transitions, especially the leap from individual contributor to engineering manager.
    Through his newsletter “From IC to EM” and conference talks, he shares practical, human-centered leadership insights that resonate with devs who want to lead without losing themselves.

    View Lean’s profile
  • Mahdi Pourziaei
    Tech LeadFashion Cloud

    Tech Lead (Staff) at Fashion Cloud, driving platform engineering and leading post-startup architecture.

    View Mahdi ‘s profile
  • Phil Bennett
    Director of EngineeringKilo Health
    View Phil’s profile
  • Theresa Robinson
    Technical Lead, Digital Innovation Cell at Rolls-RoyceRolls Royce

    Theresa Robinson has a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her academic research was in numerical optimization applied to computational fluid dynamic problems, and robust and surrogate-based optimization algorithms. She was an assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at Queen’s University Belfast from 2008 to 2012.

    In 2012 she joined Rolls-Royce Deutschland, where she has worked on robust optimization of aircraft engine exhaust systems, safety and reliability analysis and simulation, and python development of internal tools. Currently she is the technical lead for Engine Network, a tool to help Rolls-Royce analyse, visualize, forecast the behaviour of in-service aircraft engines.

    View Theresa’s profile
12:00

Industry Interest Groups

Connecting engineering leaders in Ecommerce

Join our relaxed sessions where you can meet peers working in similar domains to share ideas, collaborate on challenges and exchange solutions.

+ More

Industry Interest Groups

Connecting engineering leaders in Ecommerce

12:00 – 12:00

Join our relaxed sessions where you can meet peers working in similar domains to share ideas, collaborate on challenges and exchange solutions.

  • FEATURING
    Ziλa Sarikaya
    Executive Staff EngineerTrendyol Group

    Ziλa Sarikaya is an Executive Staff Engineer at Trendyol Group.

    View Ziλa’s profile
  • Wojciech Poniatowski
    Senior Manager, Product & EngineeringAllegro
    View Wojciech’s profile
  • Sayak Saha
    Director of EngineeringAuto1 Group

    Sayak Saha leads engineering for Auto1 Group, Europe’s top digital car platform with over €6B in annual revenue and 600,000+ cars sold each year. His 100+ member team across the EU powers technology for B2B business, logistics, and refurbishments. Sayak previously built products at Amazon, Dell Digital, and Astro Malaysia, reaching customers in India, Southeast Asia, and Europe. Passionate about turning data insights, AI, and automation into value for e-commerce and fintech—both B2B and D2C—he thrives on delivering impact. When not working, you’ll find him exploring Berlin or playing chess with his 10-year-old.

    View Sayak’s profile
  • Ashwin Aggarwal
    Engineering ManagerZalando

    Ashwin is an Engineering Manager at Zalando where he leads a team of talented web and app engineers building GenAI powered experiences for Zalando’s 50M active customers. He is passionate about building healthy & resilient teams with open feedback culture and efficient practices.

    With over a decade of experience in software engineering and leadership, his expertise spans various industries, including Fashion eCommerce, Aviation, Enterprise Project & Portfolio Management, and eLearning Solutions.

    Having grown up in a small Himalayan town he enjoys hiking and listening to non-fiction audiobooks during his evening walks.

    View Ashwin’s profile
13:45

Next Steps AMA

Stepping into the role of Staff Engineer

Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for stepping into the role of a Staff Engineer.

+ More

Next Steps AMA

Stepping into the role of Staff Engineer

13:45 – 13:49

Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for stepping into the role of a Staff Engineer.

Moderated by Phil Bennett, Experienced Engineering Leader & Former Director of Engineering at Kilo Health.

  • FEATURING
    Merlin Bögershausen
    Staff Software EngineerModerne Inc.

    Merlin is a migration engineer and software architect. He helps teams to adopt modern Java and frameworks with ease using tools. For his contributions to communites and confeerneces, he was acknowledged as an Oracle Ace.

    View Merlin’s profile
  • Natalia Gorchakova
    Staff Software EngineerGoogle

    Natalia is a Staff Engineer at Google Cloud, driven by her passion for data. She specializes in collecting data and turning it into useful insights for both customers and internal product development. In her role on the Dataplex team, she sets the technical direction for Data Lineage.
    Natalia brings over 18 years of software engineering experience, including more than a decade in technical leadership, guiding teams and managing the full software lifecycle from architecture to production.

    View Natalia’s profile
  • Serhii Vasylenko
    Staff Platform EngineerGrammarly

    Serhii Vasylenko is a staff engineer for the Infrastructure FA at Grammarly. With over a decade of platform engineering experience, he designs cloud-native infrastructure foundations, CI/CD stacks, and developer experience tooling that enable hundreds of engineers to ship faster and more securely. Active in the BLN DevOps and AWS Community Builders communities, Serhii is passionate about pragmatic solutions that scale. When away from the keyboard, he can be found hiking mountain trails.

    View Serhii’s profile
  • Daniel Schniepp
    Senior Staff EngineerMercedes-Benz Mobility AG

    Daniel is as a Senior Staff Engineer working on various platform and software engineering topics as well as engineering culture initiatives at Mercedes-Benz Mobility AG.
    Before joining the corporate world, he co-founded two startups and worked as a freelance software engineer.

    View Daniel’s profile
  • Phil Bennett
    Director of EngineeringKilo Health
    View Phil’s profile
14:15
12:00

Table Talks

How can you foster a culture of experimentation within your teams?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How can you foster a culture of experimentation within your teams?

12:00 – 12:00

Sponsored by

Eppo by Datadog LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Ryan Lucht
    Senior Technical AdvocateEppo by Datadog

    Ryan Lucht is a Senior Technical Advocate at Eppo by Datadog.

    View Ryan’s profile
  • Ivelina Dimova
    Senior Web EngineerAwesome Motive

    Ivelina is a Senior Web Developer at Awesome Motive, bringing over a decade of experience to crafting powerful back-end solutions. Proficient in PHP and WordPress, she excels at API integration and developing scalable products, with a portfolio including complex systems for international banks and booking platforms.

    Within the Research and Development team, Ivelina develops internal products leveraging Google Cloud for infrastructure solutions and is at the forefront of exploring AI agents using Python and Laravel. Her commitment to quality is evident in her dedication to automated testing and DevOps.

    When she’s not immersed in code, Ivelina enjoys yoga, exploring new destinations through travel, and photography. She’s also passionate about contributing to the tech community through speaking engagements and organizing WordPress events.

    View Ivelina’s profile
  • Candost Dağdeviren
    Engineering ManagerSumUp

    Candost works towards creating great, high-performing systems and organizations whose members work in sync, communicate well, share common principles, and are aligned on the same mission.

    View Candost’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How can you solve the problem of technical debt when you’re scaling up?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How can you solve the problem of technical debt when you’re scaling up?

12:00 – 12:00

Sponsored by

Harness LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Florian Mierzejewski
    Staff EngineerQonto

    Software engineer with 10+ YoE and a strong mobile background. I’ve worked in agencies and startups for widely different clients from various countries, on an even wider range of projects. From greenfield to enormous untested legacy codebases, I’ve seen horror and glory while repeatedly managing to have a positive impact. I aim to always write simple and readable code, apply best practices, share knowledge, pair program, and mentor with a good dose of empathy and compromises.

    View Florian’s profile
  • Hardeep Bath
    Field CTOHarness

    With 25 years in the technology industry, Hardeep brings a wealth of experience in driving transformative change. For the past 15 years, he held senior leadership roles at Barclays Bank in London, most recently as Group Head of DevSecOps. In this role, he led key initiatives across the bank, including DevOps transformation, security in the SDLC, cloud security posture management, vulnerability management, and secrets management, shaping the future of secure, scalable SDLC platform. A proven leader, Hardeep is passionate about bridging the gap between technology and security to drive innovation.

    View Hardeep’s profile
  • Emily Thomas
    Principal Software Engineer & TLM (Tech Lead Manager) Invisible Technologies Inc.

    Emily is not just an engineer or a manager, but a problem solver, focused on creating creative efficiency both in and out of code. She rapidly grew her career at hustling startups, experienced management at a massively scaling pre-IPO unicorn, and is now dedicated to solving the next big problem – the balance of humans and technology.

     

    View Emily’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How do you embed observability into your engineering culture?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How do you embed observability into your engineering culture?

12:00 – 12:00

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Tomasz Dacewicz
    Senior Engineering ManagerKlarna

    Tomasz Dacewicz is a seasoned engineering leader with deep expertise in building scalable, high-impact software systems. With experience spanning startups and global organizations, he combines technical excellence with a people-first leadership style, fostering collaboration and continuous improvement within his teams. Passionate about clean architecture, mentoring, and delivering customer-focused solutions, Tom drives engineering cultures that balance innovation with reliability — helping teams ship better software, faster.

    View Tomasz’s profile
  • Swati Bansal
    Engineering ManagerZendesk

    Swati bansal is an Engineering Manager with extensive experience building and scaling SaaS products and engineering teams. She currently leads teams at Zendesk, where she focuses on developing AI-powered agents and automation solutions that transform customer experience at scale.

    With a background spanning product engineering and leadership, Swati thrives on creating systems — both technical and human — that enable teams to deliver with clarity, speed, and impact. She’s passionate about the intersection of technology, collaboration, and continuous learning.

    View Swati’s profile
  • Ricardo Yasuda
    Engineering ManagerGotPhoto

    Ricardo is an engineering leader with 25+ years in the software development industry. Currently an Engineering Manager at GotPhoto, he leads cross-functional teams building technology that empowers photographers to focus on their craft. Ricardo previously led teams at SumUp handling millions of transactions at scale. He is passionate about people-first and culture-aware leadership, creating environments where engineers thrive while delivering products that truly serves people and makes a difference.

    View Ricardo’s profile
  • Arjit Srivastava
    Senior Engineering ManagerDelivery Hero

    Arjit is the Engineering Lead for Quick Commerce domain at Delivery Hero. A software engineer at heart, he thrives at the intersection of leadership and technology, bringing a wealth of experience from various industries. Arjit is passionate about building intentional team culture and operational excellence. He excels in chaotic situations, finding clarity and direction. Outside of work, Arjit enjoys reading, playing video games, and writing.

    View Arjit’s profile
12:00

Solution Swap

There are many things that only I know how to do and I feel like I am becoming a bottleneck for my team – what can I do?

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges.

+ More

Solution Swap

There are many things that only I know how to do and I feel like I am becoming a bottleneck for my team – what can I do?

12:00 – 12:00

You often find yourself stepping in to solve the toughest problems or handle the parts of the system that no one else fully understands. Over time, this can leave you as the single point of knowledge for critical areas, while the rest of the team depends on you to unblock their work. The result is long hours, constant interruptions, and the feeling that progress slows down whenever you’re not available.

You want to enable your team to be more independent, but deadlines and delivery pressure make it difficult to slow down and share knowledge. How do you stop being the bottleneck when it feels faster to just do it yourself? What happens when your own workload becomes unsustainable and your team’s growth stalls?

Many of us have been in this position. In this session, we’ll discuss how others have faced these challenges, what patterns emerge, and how teams can grow beyond a single point of dependency.

  • FEATURING
    Clare Sudbery
    Independent Technical CoachSudbery Software Engineering Ltd

    Clare Sudbery is an independent technical coach with 25+ years of software engineering experience. She specialises in TDD, refactoring, pair programming, continuous integration and other eXtreme Programming (XP) practices.

    Clare taught the Coding Black Females’ Return to Tech programme and co-ran Made Tech’s academy – coaching inexperienced engineers to learn on the job. She has a passion for helping under-represented groups to flourish in tech.

    Clare hosted Season One of the acclaimed Making Tech Better podcast and publishes content on Medium (“A Woman in Technology”) and her own site (“In Simple Terms”). She is the author of the Stupidity Manifesto, has written about trunk-based development and refactoring for O’Reilly and for Martin Fowler’s site, and regularly presents workshops and keynotes at events all over the world.

    Subscribe to Clare’s newsletter: https://queen-of-questions.kit.com/

    View Clare’s profile
15:00

Speed Coaching

Speed Coaching

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Lena Reinhard.

  • Lena Reinhard
    Engineering Leader, Organizational Developer, Coach, Facilitator
+ More

Speed Coaching

Speed Coaching

15:00 – 15:04

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Lena Reinhard.

  • FEATURING
    Lena Reinhard
    Engineering Leader, Organizational Developer, Coach, Facilitator

    Lena Reinhard is a seasoned technology leader, currently helping leaders and their teams succeed through her work as a leadership coach, organizational developer, and facilitator. Having served the majority of her 20-year career in leadership roles, such as VP Engineering with CircleCI, Travis CI, and a SaaS startup co-founder & CEO, she has partnered with a variety of remote, hybrid, and co-located companies at all stages, from startups, to scale-ups, corporations, and NGOs. Lena loves to paint, read, and ride her bike around the forests and lakes of her home, Berlin, in Germany. She hosts O’Reilly’s Tech Leadership Tuesday podcast.

    View Lena’s profile
15:50

Office Hours

Meet the speakers

Chat with speakers face-to-face in a relaxed, conversational environment.

+ More

Office Hours

Meet the speakers – Day 1, 15:50

15:50 – 15:55

If you’re inspired by a talk, want to learn more, or just want to chat about it with other folks, head to our Office Hours area, where our speakers will be waiting for you.

  • FEATURING
    Denzil Correa
    Senior Manager of AICloudflare

    Denzil Correa is a Senior Manager of AI at Cloudflare, where he leads teams developing large-scale machine learning solutions. With over 19 years in the field, Denzil’s work is underpinned by a deep academic background in machine learning, natural language processing, text mining, and graph theory. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science, a qualification he occasionally uses to justify why he’s “still talking about ML algorithms.” His research has been cited, but he insists that these days, he just “pretends to know something about Machine Learning.” Fortunately, his professional focus on detecting and mitigating web attacks is serious business, combining his extensive experience with his passions for machine learning and cybersecurity to keep the internet slightly less chaotic.

    View Denzil’s profile
  • Daniel Wagner-Hall
    Director of Technical EducationCodeYourFuture

    Daniel Wagner-Hall is the Director of Technical Education at CodeYourFuture.

    View Daniel’s profile
  • Roei Berkovich
    Software Team LeadRiverside
    View Roei’s profile
  • James Barnes
    CEO & Co-FounderStatusCake
    View James’s profile
  • Humera Noor
    CTODigital Munich Tech GmbH

    Dr. Humera Noor is an academician, an entrepreneur and a senior leader with over 25 years of experience. With a PhD in Machine Learning, she has led successful ML-based projects, including pioneering commercial-scale ad filtering. As the CTO of Digital Munich, she drives innovation in AI, AR/VR and IoT. She is the founder of Lumen, a bootcamp aimed at helping individuals break into data and AI.

    Dr. Humera is passionate about empowering others in tech, helping individuals reach their full potential. Dr. Humera finds peace in nature, starting her day at sunrise with a book on a bench by the fields — of course with coffee.

    View Humera’s profile
16:00
12:00

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Neurodivergent leaders

Connect with other leaders who have similar backgrounds and experiences to yours, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

+ More

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Neurodivergent leaders

12:00 – 12:00

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but some have a unique set of challenges that they need to navigate through. At times it can lead to leaders feeling isolated in their experiences.

We welcome you to the community representation groups, where you’ll be able to connect with folks who might have similar experiences to yours, where you’ll be able to build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

  • FEATURING
    Margarita Litkevych
    Engineering ManagerSumUp

    Margarita Litkevych is an Engineering Manager at SumUp, where she is building innovative solutions that empower small businesses around the world. With extensive experience in software engineering and team leadership, she has a track record of delivering scalable, high-quality products while fostering collaboration and growth within her teams. Margarita is passionate about creating inclusive engineering cultures, mentoring talent, and supporting initiatives that encourage more women to pursue careers in technology.

    View Margarita’s profile
  • Sam Boswell
    CTOterralayr

    Sam leads technology teams at terralayr, an energy tech company providing flexibility-as-a-service through virtual storage capacity to address the massive deficit in global energy storage. He has worked and consulted on technical projects in energy, high-risk cybersecurity, industrial and commercial sectors. He’s currently focusing on building high-performing tech teams, and backing companies in the climate space.

    View Sam’s profile
  • Mahdi Pourziaei
    Tech LeadFashion Cloud

    Tech Lead (Staff) at Fashion Cloud, driving platform engineering and leading post-startup architecture.

    View Mahdi ‘s profile
  • Jonathan Fielding
    Principal EngineerLegend

    Jonathan is a Principal Engineer at Legend, focusing on building systems that scale with the company’s growth. Previously, he’s held individual contributor and management roles, including acting principal engineer at both Spendesk and RVU and engineering manager at Beamly, allowing him to have a broad understanding of the technical and business sides of working in tech.

    What drives Jonathan is creating inclusive, empowered teams. He loves working with teams to simplify complex technical problems in ways that bring everyone along for the journey. When he’s not coding or coaching, he’s a huge advocate for diversity and inclusion, launching successful Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) across multiple companies to support underrepresented voices and build more connected workplaces. He’s a frequent speaker in the tech community, whether sharing insights on modern system design or advocating for equity in tech spaces

    View Jonathan’s profile
12:00

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Black leaders

Connect with other leaders who have similar backgrounds and experiences to yours, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

+ More

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Black leaders

12:00 – 12:00

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but some have a unique set of challenges that they need to navigate through. At times it can lead to leaders feeling isolated in their experiences.

We welcome you to the community representation groups, where you’ll be able to connect with folks who might have similar experiences to yours, where you’ll be able to build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

  • FEATURING
    Olalekan Fuad Elesin
    VP of EngineeringHRS Group

    Olalekan Fuad Elesin is the VP of Engineering at HRS Group.

    View Olalekan’s profile
  • James Samuel
    Engineering ManagerReddit

    James Samuel is an Engineering manager at Reddit specializing in scaling software teams and software architectures. Prior to joining the mobility sector, he had worked in Fintech, EdTech, and PropTech. He’s also a co-organiser of the @AWS UserGroup Berlin Meetup. James is passionate about empowering engineers through his blog, presentations, and monthly newsletter.

    View James’s profile
15:55

Next Steps AMA

Preparing for the role of Principal Engineer

Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for preparing for the role of a Principal Engineer.

+ More

Next Steps AMA

Preparing for the role of Principal Engineer

15:55 – 15:59

Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for preparing for the role of a Principal Engineer

Moderated by Phil Bennett, Experienced Engineering Leader & Former Director of Engineering at Kilo Health.

  • FEATURING
    Bartosz Ocytko
    Executive Principal EngineerZalando

    Bartosz is an Executive Principal Engineer at Zalando’s eCommerce Platform, where he is responsible for group-wide B2C business and Developer Platforms that serve over 50m customers. Bartosz leads and contributes to strategic and group-wide engineering initiatives for platform capabilities, customer-facing products, and more recently focused on engineering productivity, GenAI, and Machine Learning. In the past 8+ years, he has role modeled the senior individual contributor track at Zalando, mentored engineers throughout their senior IC growth journeys, and helped set up Zalando’s Principal Engineering Community.

    View Bartosz’s profile
  • Laura Ureche
    Principal EngineerSeven.One Entertainment Group

    Laura Ureche is a Principal Engineer with over 13 years of experience across startups and large organizations. She has a background in testing, software development, and SRE, and is known for driving scalable solutions, improving system reliability, and mentoring engineering teams. Passionate about problem-solving and observability, she helps teams deliver high-quality, impactful software.

    View Laura’s profile
  • Shadi Sharaf
    Senior Software EngineerClave

    Senior software engineer, with background in Enterprise publishing platforms, leading high performing teams, open source contributions, and building AI-assisted platforms.

    View Shadi ‘s profile
  • Phil Bennett
    Director of EngineeringKilo Health
    View Phil’s profile
  • Laís Oliveira
    Principal EngineerNubank

    Born and raised in Brazil, based in Berlin, Laís Oliveira is a marathonist, outdoor sports enthusiast and a Principal Engineer at Nubank. She holds a bachelor in Computer Science and a MBA in Software Engineering both graduated in São Paulo. Over the years she has built large scale systems for retail and financial industries, including building Nubank since early days from 12 thousand to 70 million customers. As a technical leader her areas of interest are functional programming, software architecture and cloud Infrastructure.

    View Laís’s profile
17:45

Office Hours

Meet the speakers – Day 1, 17:45

Chat with speakers face-to-face in a relaxed, conversational environment.

+ More

Office Hours

Meet the speakers – Day 1, 17:45

17:45 – 17:49

If you’re inspired by a talk, want to learn more, or just want to chat about it with other folks, head to our Office Hours area, where our speakers will be waiting for you.

  • FEATURING
    Limor Bergman Gross
    Leadership CoachLBG Consulting
    View Limor’s profile
  • Natalia Nazaruk
    Engineering Squad LeadKingfisher

    Natalia is an Engineering Squad Lead and mobile engineering leader with experience leading distributed, cross-country teams in large organisations. She focuses on building strong team culture, trust, and effective collaboration in remote-first environments. In her day-to-day work, she combines practical leadership patterns with a human-centred approach to engineering management. Natalia is active in engineering communities and regularly speaks at internal and external events, sharing real-world leadership lessons grounded in hands-on experience.

    View Natalia’s profile
  • Charity Majors
    Co-Founder & CTOHoneycomb

    Charity Majors is the co-founder and CTO of honeycomb.io. She pioneered the concept of modern Observability, drawing on her years of experience building and managing massive distributed systems at Parse (acquired by Facebook), Facebook, and Linden Lab building Second Life. She is the co-author of Observability Engineering and Database Reliability Engineering (O’Reilly). She loves free speech, free software and single malt scotch.

    View Charity’s profile
18:00
12:00

Contributor AMA

Become a LeadDev Contributor AMA

Join the LeadDev content team to explore ways to share your experience and get involved as a contributor.

+ More

Contributor AMA

Become a LeadDev Contributor AMA

12:00 – 12:00

Want to contribute to LeadDev but not sure where to start?

Join the LeadDev content team for a relaxed AMA session where you can ask questions about getting involved.

Whether you are interested in speaking on stage, writing an article, or hosting a meetup, this session will guide you through the process. You will learn how to create strong speaker submissions and engaging article proposals, and discover how to take your first step toward becoming a LeadDev contributor.

  • FEATURING
    Scott Carey
    Editor in ChiefLeadDev

    Scott Carey is the Editor in Chief at LeadDev. An experienced technology journalist, he has covered software development for Computerworld, CIO, and InfoWorld before joining LeadDev.

    View Scott’s profile
  • Ruth Yarnit
    CEO & Co-founderLeadDev

    Ruth Yarnit co-founded White October Events with Dave Fletcher in 2013 to run human-centred events for the tech industry. The White October Events team creates content and conferences for the leaders and changemakers in software engineering teams around the world, developing their tech, team and tools to advance their businesses. Lead Dev is their flagship event with conferences in London, New York, Berlin and San Francisco. Ruth is interested in human beings and teams, both in her own business and in the wider tech industry. Outside of work she is particularly interested in two small human beings, aged 1 and 3.

    View Ruth’s profile
12:00

Meet the Author

Meet the author: Mathias Meyer

Bring a book and get it signed – or just have a chat.

+ More

Meet the Author

Meet the author: Mathias Meyer

12:00 – 12:00

Sam will be signing copies of his book ‘The Intentional Organization‘.

Bring a book and get it signed – or just have a chat.

  • FEATURING
    Mathias Meyer
    Founding Partner & Executive CoachThe Intentional Organization

    Mathias is Founding Parter and Executive Coach at The Intentional Organization and executive coach to founders, CTOs, and senior engineering leaders. He supports his clients and their leadership teams in their personal and professional growth as they’re scaling out their business and their departments. Together with his business partner Sara, he’s co-authoring the forthcoming book “The Intentional Organization.” Starting his career as an engineer, Mathias has later worked in founder, CEO, and CTO roles across different companies, including Travis CI and Reaction Commerce.

    View Mathias’s profile
WORKSHOPS
11:25

Workshop

Reading your systems: Using technical skills to drive software delivery excellence

Learn to “read” your engineering systems using data and technical insight to uncover bottlenecks, optimize flow, and accelerate software delivery.

+ More

Workshop

Reading your systems: Using technical skills to drive software delivery excellence

11:25 – 12:44

Sponsored by

CircleCI Logo LeadDev

Whether you’re a CTO or a rising engineering leader, you’re likely under immense pressure to ship more value, faster. Yet, you know that jumping in and contributing code is unlikely to be the path to success. So, as a technical leader, how do you help your teams? They are likely dealing with increasing system complexity, siloed knowledge, and mounting technical debt. Many engineering metrics (DORA, DX Core 4, etc) can confirm there’s a problem. You should definitely talk to your people, but they have biases and will either tell you what they think you want to hear, or tell you what they have concluded is the problem. So how do you get past the gut feeling and put your skills to work to optimize your org and systems for software delivery excellence?

The answer lies in reframing the technical understanding you already have at a system level, using the strategies of systems thinking. It’s not about applying technical knowledge to solve technical problems (e.g., rewriting code), but rather paying attention to the flow of code and information to remove blockers in systems. By analyzing how code and PRs are structured, understanding how feedback flows through systems, and identifying where breakdowns occur, you can unlock the full potential of your software delivery system.
No matter how big or small your systems are, this workshop will help you develop the superpower of reading your systems’ vital signs to create environments where teams can deliver software quickly, confidently, and effectively.

What will you learn?

  • How to use your technical expertise to identify hidden system issues by analyzing code patterns, PR structures, and team interactions.
  • How to measure and quantify technical bottlenecks rather than relying on subjective assessments when prioritizing improvements.
  • Tips for designing team structures based on evidence of what actually enables faster delivery vs. relying on intuition.
  • FEATURING
    Olaf Molenveld
    Technology AdvisorCircleCI

    Olaf is a seasoned technology leader with over 25 years of experience in the software industry, excelling in both technical and leadership roles. He has a strong foundation in software development, architecture, and consulting, with a focus on aligning business challenges with cutting-edge technology solutions. As the founder and former CTO of Vamp.io, he played a key role in developing DevOps tools for containers, Kubernetes, and microservices. Following Vamp’s acquisition by CircleCI, Olaf now serves as a Technology Advisor, working closely with CTO Rob Zuber to advance CircleCI’s offerings. His expertise continues to drive technical innovation and excellence for the company and its customers.

    View Olaf’s profile
  • Rob Zuber
    CTOCircleCI

    Rob Zuber is a 20-year veteran of software startups; a three-time founder, and a five-time CTO. Since joining CircleCI, Rob has seen the company through its Series F funding and delivered on product innovation at scale while leading a team of 150+ engineers distributed worldwide.

    View Rob’s profile
13:00

Lunch and Learn

Lunch and Learn with women leaders

Grab lunch, meet your peers and discuss core engineering challenges.

+ More

Lunch and Learn

Lunch and Learn with women leaders

13:00 – 14:00

Sponsored by

Zalando LeadDev

Grab lunch, meet your peers and discuss core engineering challenges

Finding the right solution to complex engineering issues isn’t about isolated thinking – it’s about building your support network and leveraging the power of peer learning through diverse experiences.

Join us for a relaxed, drop-in Lunch & Learn session where women leaders in engineering will discuss key challenges, share their experiences, and learn from one another. The session will be facilitated by five experienced women engineering leaders who will guide the conversation.

Join conversations focused on

  • Building strong partnerships and upward influence to drive success for you and your teams
  • Preventing burnout for yourself and your teams
  • Evolving your leadership approach and identifying the skills your team needs to thrive in the age of AI

  • FEATURING
    Mareike Ziese
    Head of Software Engineering | Data Platforms & Outbound Commercemomox SE

    Mareike Ziese is Head of Software Engineering for Data Platforms & Outbound Commerce at momox, a leading European recommerce company. She leads teams building modern data and AI platforms that power pricing, marketing optimization, and large-scale commerce operations.

    A mother of two young girls and the owner of three horses — plus countless plants in her garden — she often connects lessons from nature and family life to her leadership approach. She believes great technology and strong teams grow under the same conditions: trust, clarity, and patience.

    View Mareike’s profile
  • Camille Jansen
    Academic Programs and Outreach CoordinatorUniversity of Saskatchewan

    Camille Jansen is an Academic Programs and Outreach Coordinator at the University of Saskatchewan.

    View Camille’s profile
  • Ivelina Dimova
    Senior Web EngineerAwesome Motive

    Ivelina is a Senior Web Developer at Awesome Motive, bringing over a decade of experience to crafting powerful back-end solutions. Proficient in PHP and WordPress, she excels at API integration and developing scalable products, with a portfolio including complex systems for international banks and booking platforms.

    Within the Research and Development team, Ivelina develops internal products leveraging Google Cloud for infrastructure solutions and is at the forefront of exploring AI agents using Python and Laravel. Her commitment to quality is evident in her dedication to automated testing and DevOps.

    When she’s not immersed in code, Ivelina enjoys yoga, exploring new destinations through travel, and photography. She’s also passionate about contributing to the tech community through speaking engagements and organizing WordPress events.

    View Ivelina’s profile
  • Daniela Matheis
    Chief of Staff to the CTOioki GmbH

    In her role as Chief of Staff to the CTO, she drives practical transformations in engineering culture, ensuring continuous learning is integrated into workflows. Using systemic coaching, she supports leaders in designing initiatives, improving team practices, and creating measurable impact across the organization.

    View Daniela’s profile
  • Limor Bergman Gross
    Leadership CoachLBG Consulting
    View Limor’s profile
  • Nikita Rathi
    Senior Engineering ManagerTaxfix

    Nikita Rathi is a dog-mum, a wife, a foodie amongst other things, and an engineering manager by day. She has spent her career in the tech industry between Illinois, New York, Dublin and Berlin solving problems, writing code, and managing engineering teams and now is a Senior Engineering Manager at Taxfix, a tax startup in Berlin that reduces the complexity of tax filing and helps save it’s users time and money. She has found herself ever-curious about human relationships and brings that curiosity to her work. Her thoughts and research have led her to think about different perceptions that folks might have based on past experiences and years of socialization and how that impacts the careers of those that are marginalized.

    View Nikita’s profile
14:15
12:00

Workshop

Navigating difference and disagreement

Explore how to turn differences and disagreements into opportunities for growth by practicing healthy conflict and effective team communication.

+ More

Workshop

Navigating difference and disagreement

12:00 – 12:00

Our differences in opinion, experience and approach can be a difficult source of tension in teams, and if ignored and overlooked people will feel demotivated, excluded and undervalued.

At the same time productive conflict is important to help us grow and find the best solutions.

In this session, we’ll explore what unhealthy or healthy conflict looks like – and how your own experiences of conflict shape the way you engage when there is disagreement within a team. We’ll also practice conversational frameworks for both group and 1-2-1 settings that you can use to improve your team’s interactions with one another and ensure you’re building environments where everyone can work together towards shared goals.

Our differences in opinion, experience and approach can be a difficult source of tension in teams, and if ignored and overlooked people will feel demotivated, excluded and undervalued.

At the same time productive conflict is important to help us grow and find the best solutions.

In this session, we’ll explore what unhealthy or healthy conflict looks like – and how your own experiences of conflict shape the way you engage when there is disagreement within a team. We’ll also practice conversational frameworks for both group and 1-2-1 settings that you can use to improve your team’s interactions with one another and ensure you’re building environments where everyone can work together towards shared goals.

What will you learn?

  • Understand what has shaped your own experiences of conflict
  • Identify you and your teams’ relationship with conflict
  • Use conversational frameworks and facilitation practices in both group and 1-2-1 settings to improve your team’s interactions with one another
  • FEATURING
    Joel Chippindale
    CTO CoachMonkey's Thumb Ltd

    Joel Chippindale is a CTO Coach who supports talented start-up and scale-up CTOs to successfully navigate the many changes in their roles as their companies evolve.

    He also has over 20 years experience building, scaling and leading software development teams, including CTO roles at Econsultancy, FutureLearn and Unmade.

    View Joel’s profile
12:00

Workshop

Designing an actionable tech strategy

Learn to define what a good strategy looks like, how to make it live and evolve with your team, and how to connect it to day-to-day decision-making.

+ More

Workshop

Designing an actionable tech strategy

12:00 – 12:00

For many of us, it feels like there’s no time to be strategic with our technical planning. Reorgs, incidents, market shifts, increasing competition, scope changes, personnel issues, and other factors at work mean that we have to be reactive rather than following out carefully laid plans. There is increasing pressure to deliver value with the promise to “clean up”, “unify”, and “test” code later.

In this workshop, we will take a big step back from all of these distractions to design a technical strategy for your team that is immediately actionable, yet flexible enough to adapt over time. We’ll center around the problems that your team actually has to solve in the coming 12+ months and evaluate how initiatives in people, process, and technology can get you there. Together, we’ll define what a good strategy looks like, how to make it live and evolve with your team, and how to connect it to day-to-day decision-making. You will walk away with practical next steps for your team.

Why not bring your team along and start thinking collaboratively about your tech strategy?

What will you learn?

  • Define what a technical strategy is (and isn’t) — and when to create one
  • Identify the most impactful technical problems your team should solve
  • Build a plan that adapts as priorities and technology evolve
  • Establish a feedback loop for refining and executing your strategy
  • FEATURING
    Najla Elmachtoub
    Director of EngineeringAligned

    Najla is a fractional engineering leader and leadership coach. She previously served as a Director of Engineering at companies like Delivery Hero and Etsy, where she led teams across New York, Mexico City, and Berlin. Her work focuses on coaching managers and teams to grow in alignment with their values and business goals, while building systems that support operational excellence. Najla is passionate about positioning teams for high leverage, fostering strong communities, and delivering meaningful value to customers. She leads with empathy, believes in transparent decision-making, and is a committed advocate for the people she works with.

    View Najla’s profile
16:30

Workshop

The AI amplifier: A hands-on workshop on the DORA 2025 State of AI-assisted Software Development

Harnessing AI’s power without amplifying chaos

+ More

Workshop

The AI amplifier: A hands-on workshop on the DORA 2025 State of AI-assisted Software Development

16:30 – 17:44

Artificial Intelligence is no longer on the horizon; it’s in our IDEs, our pipelines, and our workflows. The 2025 State of AI-assisted Software Development report reveals a critical paradox: while 90% of developers now use AI and throughput is finally increasing, software delivery instability is also on the rise. How can we harness AI’s power without amplifying chaos?

The answer lies in a fundamental insight from the DORA research team: AI is an amplifier. It magnifies the strengths of high-performing organizations and the dysfunctions of struggling ones. Success with AI isn’t a tools problem—it’s a systems problem.

In this highly interactive workshop, we will move beyond the hype and dive into the data. We won’t just share the report’s findings; we will help you apply them to your own teams. We will explore and discuss some of the competencies identified in the new DORA AI Capabilities Model

You will leave this session with:

  • A clear understanding of foundational capabilities that unlock AI’s true potential.
  • Actionable advice to diagnose your team’s strengths and weaknesses.
  • A framework to ensure your AI strategy translates into measurable improvements in performance and stability, not just localized pockets of productivity.
  • FEATURING
    Ursula Löbbert-Passing
    Value Realization Lead, AI Transformation EMEAGoogle
    View Ursula’s profile
  • Giovanni Galloro
    Application Modernization Solution LeadGoogle

    Giovanni Galloro has been working at Google since 2017 as a Customer Engineer specialising in software delivery tools and practices and container-based runtimes.

    Currently focused on helping multiple organizations across EMEA to improve developer productivity and software delivery performance using AI and Continuous Delivery.

    Giovanni is a Community Ambassador for the Continuous Delivery Foundation and is a frequent speaker at developer conferences.

    View Giovanni’s profile
SOLUTIONS STAGE
10:45

Demo Stage

Live demo: Harness – Break the bottleneck: AI and the new era of software delivery

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: Harness – Break the bottleneck: AI and the new era of software delivery

10:45 – 10:49

Sponsored by

Harness LeadDev

AI has changed how code is written, but the real bottleneck is getting this code to your customers in production. Join Harness for a look at how AI is transforming the entire software delivery lifecycle, from how teams test, secure, deploy, and optimize software at scale.

We’ll unveil Harness’ latest AI innovations and show what’s now possible when intelligent workflow orchestration meets your software delivery data. Through live demos, you’ll see how Harness turns AI innovation into concrete results—accelerating delivery, improving security and reliability, and unlocking developer productivity.

  • FEATURING
    Oliver Oehlenberg
    Senior Sales EngineerHarness

    Oliver believes that IT makes our lives easier and smarter. Digitalization is one of our biggest advantages, but it also drives many challenges. Over the last 20 years, Oliver worked in different positions at consultancy companies and software vendors to help customers to generate business value and drive innovation with software. With his experiences as Field-CTO for Observability and a founder of a software company, he supports organizations to modernize the DevOps value stream to operate with more efficiency but also to fulfill the governance, compliance, and data privacy targets.

    View Oliver’s profile
11:00

Demo Stage

Live demo: Incident.io – Incident response in the AI Era

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: Incident.io – Incident response in the AI Era

11:00 – 11:04

Sponsored by

Incident io logo

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

See how AI can transform incident management from chaos to clarity. In this 10-minute demo, we’ll show how incident.io’s new AI SRE autonomously diagnoses issues, assists with investigations, and empowers teams to resolve incidents faster – without replacing the human judgment that matters most.

  • FEATURING
    Alex Turley-Pound
    Senior Solutions EngineerIncident

    Alex is a Senior Solutions Engineer at Incident.io, working with large enterprises to assess and augment their incident response flows with the introduction of AI and automation.

    View Alex’s profile
11:15

Demo Stage

Live demo: CircleCI – Meet Chunk: Your agent to ship at AI speed with confidence

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: CircleCI – Meet Chunk: Your agent to ship at AI speed with confidence

11:15 – 11:24

Sponsored by

CircleCI Logo LeadDev

As AI-generated code accelerates development, teams face an impossible choice: ship what you haven’t fully validated, leading to buggy production and mounting tech debt, or lose all your AI productivity gains by creating validation checkpoints that feel like finding a needle in a haystack. Enter Chunk, CircleCI’s new autonomous agent (beta) that works 24/7 to fix the critical but time-consuming parts of your software delivery process that everyone knows are important but no one has time to maintain.

In this demo, we’ll focus on Chunk’s flaky test capability, demonstrating how it autonomously analyzes and fixes non-deterministic tests while learning your team’s patterns and best practices. We’ll explain why Chunk is a fundamental shift to proactive CI/CD processes that free engineers to focus on creative problem-solving and building features that differentiate your product.

  • FEATURING
    Derry Bradley
    Senior Solutions EngineerCircleCI

    Derry is a software delivery specialist helping organizations optimize development through CI/CD solutions. He translates complex technical concepts into business value, solving implementation challenges for engineering teams. Previously at Fidelity Investments, he architected automated deployment pipelines and cloud infrastructure. Derry’s expertise spans cloud architecture, DevOps practices, and continuous delivery

    View Derry ‘s profile
13:00

Demo Stage

Live demo: Honeycomb – From chaos to clarity: Fast, full-fidelity debugging without the guesswork

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: Honeycomb – From chaos to clarity: Fast, full-fidelity debugging without the guesswork

13:00 – 13:04

Sponsored by

Honeycomb LeadDev

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

Make the most of your breaks with the demo stage sessions, where leading tech providers will showcase their innovative solutions in informative and concise presentations. Each carefully curated 10 minute demo will show the very best engineering solutions available.

  • FEATURING
    Martin Thwaites
    Principal Developer AdvocateHoneycomb

    Martin is a Developer Advocate at Honeycomb, o11y enthusiast, and a delivery-focused Developer from the UK. With over 20 years experience in development in the .NET ecosystem, he’s worked with many companies on scaling up engineering teams and products. The past few years have been spent working on solving complex problems with some of the UK’s big names, including e-commerce retailers and credit lenders.

    View Martin’s profile
13:15

Demo Stage

Live demo: Retool – Generating production-ready internal applications: Enterprise app generation

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: Retool – Generating production-ready internal applications: Enterprise app generation

13:15 – 13:19

Sponsored by

Retool LeadDev

Prototyping is easy; production is messy. Retool shows how their customers have brought order to the chaos of app development by blending low-code, AI, and developer expertise to build robust apps that connect with real infrastructure and data.

  • FEATURING
    Tobias Urban
    Enterprise Solutions EngineerRetool

    As an Enterprise Solutions Engineer at Retool, Tobias Urban helps companies overcome the messiness of production app development. With a background in solutions leadership at Okta and Microsoft, Tobias has extensive experience in guiding organizations through complex technical problems. His work at Retool focuses on empowering developers and teams to build high-quality, robust applications by intelligently combining low-code tools, AI, and developer expertise.

    View Tobias’s profile
13:30

Demo Stage

Live demo: LaunchDarkly – The safety control plane for AI-generated code

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: LaunchDarkly – The safety control plane for AI-generated code

13:30 – 13:34

Sponsored by

LaunchDarkly LeadDev

See how LaunchDarkly enables teams to deploy continuously whilst maintaining complete control over what users experience. In this demo, we’ll show how feature flags, progressive rollouts, and real-time impact measurement work together to let you move from idea to production in minutes, not weeks. Perfect for teams dealing with increased code velocity from AI tools or looking to modernise their deployment practices without adding risk.

  • FEATURING
    Kevin Holler
    Enterprise Solutions EngineerLaunchDarkly

    Kevin Holler is an Enterprise Solutions Engineer at LaunchDarkly, working with the companies biggest customers in the DACH region to de-risk their software and AI-driven product releases.

    View Kevin’s profile
13:45

Demo Stage

Live demo: Checkly – Shift-left monitoring with Playwright & AI

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: Checkly – Shift-left monitoring with Playwright & AI

13:45 – 13:49

Sponsored by

Checkly LeadDev

In one workflow, see how your team can write, run, and scale Playwright tests as production synthetic monitors. In 10 minutes, you’ll learn how to cut costs, boost reliability, and use AI to setup and maintain of your observability code.

  • FEATURING
    Giovanni Rago
    Head of Customer SolutionsCheckly

    Giovanni Rago is Head of Customer Solutions at Checkly. He helps development teams and organizations ship quality software and increase reliability through the use of state-of-the-art synthetic monitoring.

    He is passionate about bridging the gap between testing and monitoring and creating more efficient workflows for software development teams.

    View Giovanni ‘s profile
14:00

Demo Stage

Live demo: Pandorian – The code enforcement magic show

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: Pandorian – The code enforcement magic show

14:00 – 14:09

Sponsored by

Pandorian LeadDev

Instantly transforms your engineering guidelines, standards and best practices into live system-wide enforcement with Pandorian

  • FEATURING
    Daniel Avital
    Co-Founder & CEOPandorian

    Daniel Avital is a former co-founder of cybersecurity unicorn CHEQ, where for 8 years he lead Product and GTM from zero to over $60M of ARR. He is now emerging from stealth with his second company, Pandorian, this time as co-founder and CEO – to give dev leaders enforcement superpowers in the age of AI-written code.

    View Daniel’s profile
16:00

Demo Stage

Live demo: Vercel – From idea to web: Building at the speed of thought

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: Vercel – From idea to web: Building at the speed of thought

16:00 – 16:09

Sponsored by

See how v0 is changing the way we prototype and build products. In this session, Leo will show how to combine v0, the Vercel AI SDK and the AI Gateway to build a fully functional, modern chatbot with agentic tool calls in just ten minutes.

  • FEATURING
    Leo Reuter
    Sales EngineerVercel

    Leo Reuter is a Sales Engineer at Vercel with a background in software development and a long history of building with Next.js. These days, he helps teams across Europe create, ship, and scale modern web apps using Vercel’s platform and new AI tools like v0.

    View Leo’s profile
DIRECTORPLUS
11:45
12:00

DirectorPlus Roundtable

How to effectively stay aware of everything going on in multiple teams

Conversations on how to position yourself most effectively as a leader and drive your teams towards success.

+ More

DirectorPlus Roundtable

How to effectively stay aware of everything going on in multiple teams

12:00 – 12:00

Conversations on how to position yourself most effectively as a leader and drive your teams towards success.

Discussion will include:

  • Avoiding communication bottlenecks
  • Counterbalancing alignment and autonomy for teams
  • Monitoring and course correcting as the project progresses.
  • FEATURING
    Raz Schweiger-Shuty
    CTOauxmoney GmbH

    Raz Schweiger-Shuty is CTO at auxmoney, author of Somehow We Manage, and co-founder of the Tech Leadership Exchange community. Known for his candid and sometimes humorous takes on tech culture and leadership, Raz has built and led engineering organizations at scale across fintech and logistics. His work focuses on turning chaos into a bit less chaos by adding some structure, building great teams, and leading with empathy and accountability.

    View Raz’s profile
12:00

DirectorPlus Roundtable

Director+

How to measure the impact of GenAI tooling investments

Conversations on quantifying the impact of GenAI investments and how to communicate those insights to your leadership team.

+ More

DirectorPlus Roundtable

How to measure the impact of GenAI tooling investments

12:00 – 12:00

This session is suitable for:

Director+

Conversations on quantifying the impact of GenAI investments and how to communicate those insights to your leadership team.

Discussion will include:

  • Defining the right metrics to measure productivity gains
  • Crafting a compelling narrative that balances realism with optimism
  • Exploring real-world business cases for GenAI
  • FEATURING
    Yenny Cheung
    VP of EngineeringBluefish

    Yenny Cheung is Vice President of Engineering at Bluefish, where she leads the development of the marketing platform in the age of generative search.

    She has built and scaled global teams across conversational commerce, developer platforms, and Adtech, with a proven record of translating complex technology into measurable business outcomes.

    An experienced B2B SaaS leader, Yenny specializes in guiding startups through enterprise-grade transformations: aligning product, engineering, and go-to-market functions for rapid growth. She is known for her clarity of thought, operational rigor, and ability to empower teams with the strategic context to lead.

    View Yenny’s profile
14:30
12:00

DirectorPlus Roundtable

Director+

How to move fast while building resilient systems

Conversations on how to balance innovation with system resilience.

+ More

DirectorPlus Roundtable

How to move fast while building resilient systems

12:00 – 12:00

This session is suitable for:

Director+

Sponsored by

Honeycomb LeadDev

Conversations on how to balance innovation with system resilience.

Discussions will include:

  • Getting teams ready for AI and LLMs
  • Driving speed, resilience, and ROI across the software cycle
  • Connecting engineering to business value
  • FEATURING
    Colin Burke
    Director of Customer Success – EMEAHoneycomb

    Colin Burke is the Director of Customer Success for EMEA at Honeycomb.io, where he helps engineering and technology leaders harness the full potential of observability to drive business outcomes. With more than a decade of experience at industry leaders like VMware and Pivotal, Colin has worked at the intersection of enterprise platforms, developer productivity, and system resilience.

    Throughout his career, Colin has partnered closely with product and engineering teams to scale modern platforms and improve velocity – always with a sharp focus on connecting technical excellence to strategic advantage. At Honeycomb, he empowers teams to shift observability from a reactive tool to a proactive driver of innovation and performance.

    View Colin’s profile
12:00

DirectorPlus Roundtable

Director+

Tackling tech debt: How to identify, quantify, and decide when to pay it down

Conversations on how senior engineering leaders can evaluate and manage technical debt to drive long-term engineering effectiveness and organizational impact.

+ More

DirectorPlus Roundtable

Tackling tech debt: How to identify, quantify, and decide when to pay it down

12:00 – 12:00

This session is suitable for:

Director+

Conversations on how senior engineering leaders can evaluate and manage technical debt to drive long-term engineering effectiveness and organizational impact.

Discussion includes:

  • Identifying and categorizing different types of technical debt across systems and teams
  • Quantifying the cost and trade-offs of tech debt for better decision-making
  • Communicating debt impact to executives and stakeholders in business terms
  • Establishing frameworks for prioritizing when to pay down debt versus when to defer
  • FEATURING
    Chris Jimenez
    Director of Platform EngineeringZenjob

    Chris is the Director of Platform Engineering at Zenjob, bringing over 15 years of experience leading Platform and Infrastructure teams across Latin America, the United States, and Europe

    With a genuine passion for mentoring engineering managers and fostering supportive communities, Chris is passionate about enabling engineers to successfully transition into leadership roles while promoting growth and support within organizations.

    Chris actively contributes to open-source projects, embracing collaboration and knowledge-sharing within the developer community.

    Outside of work, Chris leads non-profit initiatives dedicated to wildlife conservation in Latin America and Asia. Chris also finds joy in photography, running, and cycling, sometimes mixing them all at the same time. “

    View Chris’s profile
18:00

DirectorPlus Meetup

Director+

DirectorPlus Underrepresented Leaders Meetup

A networking meetup for DirectorPlus leaders from underrepresented groups to connect, share experiences, and build community.

  • Lena Reinhard
    Engineering Leader, Organizational Developer, Coach, Facilitator
+ More

DirectorPlus Meetup

DirectorPlus Underrepresented Leaders Meetup

18:00 – 18:29

This session is suitable for:

Director+

Join fellow DirectorPlus leaders from underrepresented communities to connect, share experiences, and build community. This informal meetup offers space for open conversation among LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC leaders, neurodivergent and disabled professionals, women, and anyone who identifies as underrepresented at senior levels in tech.

Guiding discussion prompts will help spark meaningful exchanges about leadership, belonging, and navigating challenges as “the first” or “one of few” at your level.

If your identity or experience isn’t explicitly mentioned but you feel underrepresented, you’re warmly invited to join us.

You can also take part in the Community Representation Groups running throughout the day as part of LeadDev.

  • FEATURING
    Lena Reinhard
    Engineering Leader, Organizational Developer, Coach, Facilitator

    Lena Reinhard is a seasoned technology leader, currently helping leaders and their teams succeed through her work as a leadership coach, organizational developer, and facilitator. Having served the majority of her 20-year career in leadership roles, such as VP Engineering with CircleCI, Travis CI, and a SaaS startup co-founder & CEO, she has partnered with a variety of remote, hybrid, and co-located companies at all stages, from startups, to scale-ups, corporations, and NGOs. Lena loves to paint, read, and ride her bike around the forests and lakes of her home, Berlin, in Germany. She hosts O’Reilly’s Tech Leadership Tuesday podcast.

    View Lena’s profile
TALK SCHEDULE
08:00–09:00

Arrival & Coffee

09:00

Talk

Welcome to LeadDev Berlin 2025

A welcome from the host, Pat Kua.

+ More

Talk

Welcome to LeadDev Berlin 2025

09:00 – 09:24

A welcome to LeadDev Berlin 2024 from the host, Pat Kua.
09:25

Talk

What happened last night? Highlights of LeadDev’s first AI Hackathon

Hackathon host Yenny Cheung takes us behind the scenes. Get the inside story on what unfolded at the first-ever LeadDev AI Hackathon.

+ More

Talk

What happened last night? Highlights of LeadDev’s first AI Hackathon

09:25 – 09:29

Hackathon host Yenny Cheung takes us behind the scenes.

Get the inside story on what unfolded at the first-ever LeadDev AI Hackathon.

  • FEATURING
    Yenny Cheung
    VP of EngineeringBluefish

    Yenny Cheung is Vice President of Engineering at Bluefish, where she leads the development of the marketing platform in the age of generative search.

    She has built and scaled global teams across conversational commerce, developer platforms, and Adtech, with a proven record of translating complex technology into measurable business outcomes.

    An experienced B2B SaaS leader, Yenny specializes in guiding startups through enterprise-grade transformations: aligning product, engineering, and go-to-market functions for rapid growth. She is known for her clarity of thought, operational rigor, and ability to empower teams with the strategic context to lead.

    View Yenny’s profile
09:30

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager

The joy of being wrong

Discover how rethinking assumptions drives better decisions, strengthens leadership, and builds more adaptive, collaborative teams.

+ More

Talk

The joy of being wrong

09:30 – 09:59

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager

You spend a lot of your workday thinking, but how much time do you spend rethinking? Failure to challenge our own assumptions can lead us to miss big opportunities. Sometimes, failure to rethink can even have deadly consequences.

Through real-world examples from NASA’s Challenger explosion to Blackberry’s failure to thrive, we’ll examine how thinking like a scientist can make us a better leader and improve team dynamic.

You’ll learn how to challenge your assumptions, encouraging you to actively seek out information that challenges your views.
You’ll learn how to inspire a learning mindset in our teams through a strong foundation of psychological safety and promoting constructive conflict.
And you’ll learn why we should replace a culture of “best practices” with a learning culture.

We’re quick to update our possessions. When our clothes are out of style, we go shopping. When our phones are old, we replace them. So why shouldn’t we update our opinions and assumptions? It’s time we stop listening to views that make us feel good and seek out views that make us think hard.

Key takeaways

  • Frequently updating our own views makes us a stronger leader.
  • Challenging others to open their minds and potentially change their views strengthens team bonds and allows for healthy discussions.
  • Replacing “best practice” culture with a learning culture at work improves psychological safety and efficiency.
  • FEATURING
    Emma Bostian
    Engineering ManagerSpotify

    Emma Bostian is an Engineering Manager at Spotify in Stockholm. She is an instructor at LinkedIn Learning and Frontend Masters and Co-Host of the Ladybug Podcast.

    View Emma’s profile
10:00

Talk

Director+•Experienced Manager•New Manager•Staff+•Tech Lead

Measuring system performance in 2026

Insights from the inaugural LeadDev Engineering Performance Report, with Honeycomb.

+ More

Talk

Measuring system performance in 2026

10:00 – 10:09

This session is suitable for:

Director+ Experienced Manager New Manager Staff+ Tech Lead

Insights from the inaugural LeadDev Engineering Performance Report, with Honeycomb. Find out how organizations measure the performance of their software and systems, the impact AI is having on that performance, and the most impactful ways to unblock performance bottlenecks.

  • FEATURING
    Martin Thwaites
    Principal Developer AdvocateHoneycomb

    Martin is a Developer Advocate at Honeycomb, o11y enthusiast, and a delivery-focused Developer from the UK. With over 20 years experience in development in the .NET ecosystem, he’s worked with many companies on scaling up engineering teams and products. The past few years have been spent working on solving complex problems with some of the UK’s big names, including e-commerce retailers and credit lenders.

    View Martin’s profile
  • Julie Neumann
    Chief Marketing OfficerHoneycomb

    Julie Neumann is the Chief Marketing Officer at Honeycomb.

    View profile
  • Scott Carey
    Editor in ChiefLeadDev

    Scott Carey is the Editor in Chief at LeadDev. An experienced technology journalist, he has covered software development for Computerworld, CIO, and InfoWorld before joining LeadDev.

    View Scott’s profile
10:15

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Staff+•Tech Lead

Migrations done right: Success stories and lessons learned

Learn proven strategies for executing large-scale system migrations safely, using incremental rollouts, clear planning, and strong stakeholder communication.

+ More

Talk

Migrations done right: Success stories and lessons learned

10:15 – 10:39

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager Staff+ Tech Lead

Learn how to perform large-scale migrations and rewrites of complex systems safely. An experienced engineering leader will share his learnings from leading teams that have successfully performed multiple migrations over the past few years.

Performing large-scale migrations, rewrites, and sunsetting systems in software engineering is inevitable. They are an organic part of continuously growing, improving, and evolving the systems we work on. Teams and organizations that master these tasks successfully have a competitive advantage when it comes to adapting to changes and innovation.

This talk will share hard-earned lessons and insights on how to successfully migrate key functionalities safely and without negatively impacting users. It will first explore common reasons why teams usually need to undertake these projects. Then, it will present and assess different execution strategies, focusing in particular on different techniques that enable having incremental progress instead of a big bang switchover. Finally, it will cover how to effectively measure and communicate the progress of the migration, as well as how to build trust with stakeholders.

Key techniques discussed in this talk will include:

  • Learning how to break down your problem and set up an incremental delivery plan
  • Partial rollouts that provide faster feedback loops and avoid risky releases
  • Dual-read approaches, on-the-fly migrations, and hard cuts
  • Traffic splitting through feature flags and load balancing

The speaker will share his firsthand experience and learnings after having migrated several complex systems during the last years. Attend this session to gain valuable knowledge on ensuring your migrations are both safe and successful.

Key takeaways

  • Understand common triggers for large-scale migrations and rewrites
  • Learn strategies for executing migrations successfully and understand their trade-offs
  • Discover techniques for planning and implementing incremental rollouts
  • Learn how to build trust and effectively communicate the progress of the migration to your stakeholders
  • Explore methods for traffic splitting at both application and infrastructure levels
10:40–11:25

Morning Break

11:25

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Staff+

Leveling up engineers in an AI-driven world

Learn how to mentor junior engineers in an AI-driven world by reinforcing core skills and balancing AI-assisted workflows.

+ More

Talk

Leveling up engineers in an AI-driven world

11:25 – 11:54

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager Staff+

How can senior ICs and managers strategically guide junior engineers to develop critical engineering skills amid the rise of AI coding assistants?

In a landscape where generative AI and coding assistants are increasingly prevalent, how do we ensure that junior engineers develop the critical thinking and problem-solving skills necessary to progress to senior roles?

This talk explores how senior ICs can foster a learning environment that leverages AI tools without allowing them to become crutches. We will discuss frameworks for evaluating when AI can accelerate learning versus when it might obscure skill gaps, and share case studies on effective mentorship strategies in this new paradigm.

Attendees will leave with actionable insights on balancing AI-assisted workflows with traditional engineering skill development, ensuring that emerging engineers are prepared to thrive as senior ICs in the future.

Key takeaways

  • Identify key skill areas that AI tools may obscure and strategies for reinforcing them.
  • Implement mentorship frameworks that balance AI use with traditional problem-solving techniques.
  • Develop actionable plans to assess junior engineers’ readiness for senior roles amid AI-driven workflows.
  • FEATURING
    Jonathan Fielding
    Principal EngineerLegend

    Jonathan is a Principal Engineer at Legend, focusing on building systems that scale with the company’s growth. Previously, he’s held individual contributor and management roles, including acting principal engineer at both Spendesk and RVU and engineering manager at Beamly, allowing him to have a broad understanding of the technical and business sides of working in tech.

    What drives Jonathan is creating inclusive, empowered teams. He loves working with teams to simplify complex technical problems in ways that bring everyone along for the journey. When he’s not coding or coaching, he’s a huge advocate for diversity and inclusion, launching successful Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) across multiple companies to support underrepresented voices and build more connected workplaces. He’s a frequent speaker in the tech community, whether sharing insights on modern system design or advocating for equity in tech spaces

    View Jonathan’s profile
11:55

Talk

From code tsunami to controlled innovation: Launching software in the age of AI

How to harness the explosive speed of AI-driven development without losing control, compromising safety, or putting customer experience at risk.

+ More

Talk

From code tsunami to controlled innovation: Launching software in the age of AI

11:55 – 12:04

How to harness the explosive speed of AI-driven development without losing control, compromising safety, or putting customer experience at risk.

AI is rewriting the rules of software delivery. Features that once took weeks to design and build now appear in minutes with the help of copilots. Prototypes rapidly morph into production-ready code, and the volume of changes flooding into systems feels like an unstoppable tsunami.

While this acceleration is a gift, it also introduces new risks — moving too fast without the right guardrails can compromise safety, reliability, and customer trust.

In this session, we’ll explore how leading engineering teams are evolving their delivery practices for the AI era. You’ll learn how to separate deployment from release to maintain control, and walk away with actionable practices to launch software at AI speed — safely.

Separating Deployment from Release — controlling exposure without slowing innovation.

Actionable Practices — concrete steps to launch software at AI speed, safely.

  • FEATURING
    Kevin Holler
    Enterprise Solutions EngineerLaunchDarkly

    Kevin Holler is an Enterprise Solutions Engineer at LaunchDarkly, working with the companies biggest customers in the DACH region to de-risk their software and AI-driven product releases.

    View Kevin’s profile
12:05

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Staff+•Tech Lead

Machine learning in production. The hidden effort

Uncover the hidden engineering work behind real-world ML products, from scaling and orchestration to cost control and team alignment.

+ More

Talk

Machine learning in production. The hidden effort

12:05 – 12:19

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager Staff+ Tech Lead

The gap between AI demo and AI product is full of hard engineering work. I’m sharing 10 years of experience involving scaling, orchestration and cost optimisation.

How much does it take to go from a shiny AI demo to a deployed application? Everyone’s excited about new AI capabilities, but few talk about the engineering work required to use ML models in production. Getting this hidden part right is what separates successful AI projects from failed ones. In my talk I’ll show what it takes to turn ML experiments into robust, scalable products.

At Chattermill we’ve spent 10 years bringing ML to production. I’ll share hard-won lessons on orchestration of a dozen self-hosted ML services. We’ve had to tame the unpredictability of LLMs at scale, bridge the velocity gap between engineering and data science, and drive down both processing time and infrastructure costs. Have you ever thought that innocent retries could cost you hundreds of dollars?

You’ll walk away with methods to iterate faster and deliver more reliably in a heterogeneous environment of data scientists and software engineers. Whether you are a tech lead, architect or manager, this talk will prepare you to ship real-world ML applications, not just experiments.

Key takeaways

  • Dealing with pace differences between data science and engineering
  • Methods to iterate faster with ML products
  • Awareness of the hidden effort required to bring ML to production and differences between regular software projects and ML ones
  • FEATURING
    Maciej Rząsa
    Senior Backend EngineerChattermill

    Software engineer with 10+ years of experience. He started applications from scratch, dealt with legacy, extracted services from a monolith and led teams. Strong proponent of diving deep into black boxes, he focuses on distributed systems and database internals. Has a strange hobby of writing regular expressions by hand and discussing their performance. Knowledge-sharing advocate: after work, he’s a university instructor, public speaker and meetup organiser. Bookworm, hiker and history buff (ask him about Napoleon!).

    View Maciej’s profile
12:20

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Staff+

Couple’s therapy for product and tech

Learn how to build a strong, lasting partnership between product and tech through alignment, trust, and intentional collaboration.

+ More

Talk

Couple’s therapy for product and tech

12:20 – 12:44

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager Staff+

No matter what your org chart says, if you’re building a lasting product, you’re in a product and tech relationship. Make it a good one.

Good means effective and efficient, but also enjoyable. That kind of partnership takes time, care, and intention.

Here are the three pillars of a strong product and tech relationship:

  1. Alignment – Are you actually on the same page? Leadership styles, ways of working, and long-term goals need to match before you can make real progress.
  2. Date Night – Keep the spark alive with regular check-ins, syncs, and collaborative rituals to ensure ongoing alignment — especially at the leadership level.
  3. Best Friend to Moan To – No relationship is without its challenges. Have a trusted partner to vent, troubleshoot, and work through friction before it turns into conflict.

Key takeaways

  • Tools and best practices for alignment and collaboration
  • How to create moments of being human to develop trust and make your relationship stronger
  • A laugh or two as I share stories from the messy reality at the intersection between product and tech and what we can learn from them.
12:45–14:15

Lunch

14:15

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager

Journeys in diversity – what difference really means

Discover what true inclusion means by exploring practical ways to support neurodivergent colleagues and create genuinely diverse teams.

+ More

Talk

Journeys in diversity – what difference really means

14:15 – 14:44

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager

What does it really mean to support people who are different and create an inclusive working environment for all neurotypes? Learn the difference between lip service and real diversity.

This talk is about the difference between paying superficial support to diversity and inclusion, versus truly understanding how different colleagues, team members, and employees have varying challenges and needs. From the small, everyday details to the bigger picture, this talk includes practical ideas and examples of how your behaviour and the support you offer can have a major impact on whether you and those around you are able to thrive.

Clare draws on years of experience supporting people with a wide range of needs as a mentor, tutor, interviewer, and line manager. She also shares her own perspective as a middle-aged autistic woman with ADHD navigating menopause. Through personal stories, she highlights the challenges she has faced and what has made a real difference.

Small actions can have a big impact.

This is a grounded and honest look at what it really means to be different, with practical advice and insights on how greater awareness can lead to meaningful change.

Key takeaways

  • How to identify the needs and strengths of all your team members
  • How to create a supportive working environment for people with differing needs
  • What neurodivergence means
  • The strengths of neurodivergent team members
  • FEATURING
    Clare Sudbery
    Independent Technical CoachSudbery Software Engineering Ltd

    Clare Sudbery is an independent technical coach with 25+ years of software engineering experience. She specialises in TDD, refactoring, pair programming, continuous integration and other eXtreme Programming (XP) practices.

    Clare taught the Coding Black Females’ Return to Tech programme and co-ran Made Tech’s academy – coaching inexperienced engineers to learn on the job. She has a passion for helping under-represented groups to flourish in tech.

    Clare hosted Season One of the acclaimed Making Tech Better podcast and publishes content on Medium (“A Woman in Technology”) and her own site (“In Simple Terms”). She is the author of the Stupidity Manifesto, has written about trunk-based development and refactoring for O’Reilly and for Martin Fowler’s site, and regularly presents workshops and keynotes at events all over the world.

    Subscribe to Clare’s newsletter: https://queen-of-questions.kit.com/

    View Clare’s profile
14:45

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

We brought AI into our sprints, here’s what changed

Explore how integrating AI into product sprints changed team habits, improved delivery, and revealed what works and what breaks in practice.

+ More

Talk

We brought AI into our sprints, here’s what changed

14:45 – 14:59

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager Tech Lead

A real-world story of how we integrated AI into our product development workflow, what broke, what worked, and how it’s changing our sprints, our quality, and our team habits.

How do you bring AI into your product development workflow without slowing your team down or making things worse?
At Learnn, an italian EdTech startup with over 200,000 users, we set out to do just that.

In this talk, I’ll walk you through how we introduced AI into our engineering process, not as a shiny tool, but as part of how we build, test, and deliver product. You’ll see what worked, what failed, and how AI is now helping us write code, deliver features, generate tests, improve documentation, and even speed up product discovery.

We’ll look at the impact on sprint velocity, product quality, and team dynamics with honest lessons from the trenches.

Whether you’re leading a small team or scaling a large org, this talk will give you practical ideas (and cautionary tales) on how to adopt AI in a way that’s sustainable, measurable, and team-friendly.

Key takeaways

  • A practical framework to start integrating AI into your workflow.
  • Key insights into what AI is good at and where it breaks.
  • How AI adoption changed our sprint dynamics and team mindset.
  • Strategies to introduce AI without losing control or quality.
  • A real-world use case of AI’s impact on our product delivery
15:00

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager

Rethinking interviewing in an AI era

Explore how to redesign technical interviews for an AI era by focusing on real-world thinking, communication, and human-centered evaluation.

+ More

Talk

Rethinking interviewing in an AI era

15:00 – 15:24

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager

AI is reshaping what’s easy to solve in technical interviews, prompting us to revisit what we ask and why. This talk explores how more thoughtful, human interviews can lead to deeper signal and better hiring.AI is reshaping what’s easy to solve in technical interviews, prompting us to revisit what we ask and why. This talk explores how more thoughtful, human interviews can lead to deeper signal and better hiring.

AI is changing the landscape of technical interviews. With tools that can generate code, explanations, and solutions in seconds, many traditional formats are losing their ability to surface meaningful signal. At the same time, AI is becoming a natural part of how engineers work – so why design interviews that ignore it?

This talk explores how we can adapt interviews to this new reality. Rather than relying on questions that are easy to offload, we’ll focus on ways to uncover deeper qualities: how candidates think through ambiguity, weigh trade-offs, and communicate their decisions. It’s not about avoiding AI—it’s about designing interviews that reveal what it can’t answer for someone.

We’ll dig into practical strategies for structuring interviews around your team’s actual workflows, crafting questions that invite thoughtful discussion, and creating an environment where candidates feel comfortable showing how they approach real problems. You’ll also learn how interviewer tone and feedback can elevate – not dilute – evaluation.

More humane interviews don’t just feel better for candidates – they give your team a clearer signal, more honest conversations, and ultimately,
stronger hires.

  • FEATURING
    Justin Lee
    Senior Software EngineerNotion

    Justin Lee is a Senior Software Engineer at Notion.

    View Justin’s profile
15:25

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager

Latency, load, and leadership: Building a team nervous system

Discover how to build feedback systems that detect early stress signals, enabling healthier, more resilient, and productive teams.

+ More

Talk

Latency, load, and leadership: Building a team nervous system

15:25 – 15:39

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager

Discover a system that monitors your team’s stress signals, staves off burnout, and evolves leadership into a dynamic and adaptive framework.

Engineering teams face challenges that traditional KPIs often overlook. In this talk, I share practical lessons learned from creating systems to detect early signs of burnout, stress, and misalignment across teams. I compare how we monitor code performance with the way we notice subtle signals in team behavior, such as variations in energy, mood, or engagement that typically remain unseen.

I will outline straightforward methods for implementing regular check-ins and feedback loops that capture early warning signs. You’ll learn simple practices that encourage transparent communication and prompt the reporting of issues before they escalate into burnout or operational disarray.

This talk is geared toward anyone who leads engineering teams, whether managing a small group or an entire department. The techniques I share are practical and straightforward, focusing on establishing routine assessments that serve as health-checks for your organization. By shifting from a reactive approach to proactive management, leaders can maintain steady progress while ensuring team well-being.

Ultimately, you’ll come away with actionable insights that help you build a self-regulating team system: one that detects early stress signals and enables timely intervention. This approach not only boosts productivity, but also helps create a sustainable, supportive work environment where innovation can thrive.

Key takeaways

  • How to track subtle signals of stress and low energy in your team.
  • Practical steps for setting up regular feedback and check-in processes.
  • Methods for addressing issues before they escalate into burnout.
  • How to balance productivity with the ongoing well-being of your team.
  • FEATURING
    Saba Khurram
    FounderHypha Labs

    Saba is an engineer who has wiggled her way through teams both big and small. She is fascinated by the hidden systems that either help teams work together smoothly, or cause them to fall apart. Through years in fast-paced environments and a non-linear journey into engineering, Saba has learned practical methods to spot early warning signs of stress and misalignment. By drawing exciting parallels from seemingly-unrelated domains, she applies a data & systems-based approach to fine-tune team dynamics, anticipate falling productivity, and maintain alignment. When she is not coding, you might find her chasing her dog to save her shoes or diving into watercolour “alchemy”.

    View profile
15:40–16:25

Afternoon Break

16:25

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Staff+

Building AI into critical systems: Lessons learned

Learn how the Financial Times built AI into paywalls and retention systems, navigating trade-offs, risks, and real-world complexity at scale.

+ More

Talk

Building AI into critical systems: Lessons learned

16:25 – 16:54

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager Staff+

Discover how the Financial Times used AI to personalise paywalls and reduce churn – along with the architecture, trade-offs, and unexpected side effects of applying machine learning to real business-critical decisions.

Over the past year, the FT has partnered with two external AI providers to deliver large-scale machine learning projects focused on subscriber acquisition and retention. By using predictive models to personalise user journeys on FT.com, we’ve more than doubled our projected lifetime revenue per customer.

In this talk, I’ll walk through the real-world implementation of AI at a media organisation – what worked, what didn’t, and what we’d do differently. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at our architecture for integrating Sub(X) into the paywall, and how we navigated unintended consequences, like a risk to advertising revenue we initially handled the wrong way. I’ll also share how we tackled churn reduction with a different AI model built by VectorLabs, which runs on our own infrastructure – and the unique technical and operational challenges that came with that.

Finally, I’ll offer hard-earned lessons on evaluating and maintaining AI in production: how to adapt to disruptions like price changes, what to monitor during model training, and how we revisited our approach to testing to cope with the explosion of possible user journeys AI introduced. Whether you’re considering an AI initiative or already running one, this talk will give you a clear-eyed look at the trade-offs, stakeholder dynamics, and surprising complexity that come with applying machine learning in a real business context.

Key takeaways

  • Strategies to minimise risk and build stakeholder confidence when integrating AI into critical user journeys
  • Practical techniques for evaluating models that continuously adapt and evolve
  • Why we chose different AI providers and model architectures for acquisition vs. retention – and what we learned from that decision
  • FEATURING
    Tatiana Stantonian
    Principal EngineerFinancial Times

    Tatiana Stantonian is a Principal Engineer and engineering manager at the Financial Times, based in London. She works across teams to shape the systems and direction for FT.com’s Customer Lifecycle area, including subscription growth and retention. With a background at the Government Digital Service and over a decade in software engineering, she’s passionate about the intersection of user experience, business impact, and technical systems. She recently led the implementation of two major AI projects at the FT, and loves helping teams find the highest value work they can deliver.

    View Tatiana’s profile
16:55

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Staff+•Tech Lead

No promotion. Now what!?

Explore how to navigate promotion denial with resilience, clarity, and strategy to reignite career growth and fulfillment.

+ More

Talk

No promotion. Now what!?

16:55 – 17:04

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager New Manager Staff+ Tech Lead

Promotion denial stings. Discover strategies for bouncing back, effectively managing expectations, and reigniting your career growth and fulfillment, with insights on effective communication and managerial support.

Rejection stings. Especially when it’s a promotion a person was aiming for and putting significant effort in. So what happens when that ‘next step’ doesn’t happen?

This presentation dives into the different aspects of navigating this challenging situation, offering valuable insights for both employees and managers. Understanding the emotional impact of rejection, the potential loss of trust, and the various ways disappointment can manifest are crucial first steps in effectively addressing the aftermath of a denied promotion.

This session will dive into the critical questions and decision-making process an employee faces after a promotion denial:
“Who am I without this promotion?” Having a promotion denied often feels like a personal rejection instead of a professional one. We will look into how to reframe success beyond the title.

“Is it me or the company?” It’s important to get clarity why the promotion was denied. We will examine common reasons, such as personal factors, role preparedness, or simply unfair treatment.

“Should I stay or should I go?” Should the person remain with the organization (double down on any growth areas or pursue alternative paths internally) or to seek new challenges elsewhere? We will analyze the factors that might influence this decision and provide frameworks for evaluating different options.

We will also explore the importance of well-defined promotion pathways. Transparent communication throughout the promotion process is crucial, ensuring that employees understand the criteria of performance and promotion, and have clarity on their progress. The role of managerial support in providing constructive feedback, guidance, plans, and ongoing development opportunities is key for navigating the situation successfully.

Furthermore, we will focus on the essential skill of resilience in case of a career setback. We will discover practical strategies for bouncing back from a missed promotion, effectively managing expectations and adapting to unexpected turns in their career trajectory. We will explore how to transform disappointment into renewed focus on personal and professional development, ultimately reigniting career growth and fostering a sense of fulfillment.

Key takeaways

  • Techniques to transform promotion denial to an opportunity of personal and career growth
  • 30-day comeback plan after promotion denial
  • Mini-resilience self assessment

  • FEATURING
    Jenny Warnke
    Director of EngineeringDelivery Hero

    Jenny Warnke is the Director of Engineering at Delivery Hero.

    View Jenny’s profile
17:05

Talk

Staff+•Tech Lead

Try, try again

Learn why intelligent retries are essential for resilient systems, and how to implement them safely with proper limits and timing.

  • Sam Newman Sam Newman & Associates
    Independent Tech Consultant & Author
+ More

Talk

Try, try again

17:05 – 17:29

This session is suitable for:

Staff+ Tech Lead

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again” – this quote attributed to Einstein warns us of the danger of magical thinking, hoping that trying something just one more time will achieve success when before we failed.

In this talk, I’ll argue that retrying things actually does make a lot of sense, and is in fact key to improving the resilience of a distributed system. Along the way, I’ll explain the importance of timeouts, retry limits and knowing when giving up does make sense. I’ll also show how retries can be made safe (and help avoid draining your bank account), and perhaps we’ll get to examine that Einstein quote in a bit more detail…

  • FEATURING
    Sam Newman
    Independent Tech Consultant & AuthorSam Newman & Associates
    Sam Newman is an independent consultant who loves solving problems with technology. Focusing primarily in the areas of cloud, microservice architecture and continuous delivery, Sam works with companies big and small all over the world. He is also an experienced conference speaker, and author of the O’Reilly books Monolith To Microservices, Building Microservices, and the forthcoming Building Resilient Distributed Systems.
    View Sam’s profile
17:30

Talk

End of day wrap-up

Closing thoughts from the host, Pat Kua.

+ More

Talk

End of day wrap-up

17:30 – 17:44

Closing thoughts from the host, Pat Kua.
HALLWAY ACTIVITIES
10:00

Speed Coaching

Speed Coaching

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Mathias Meyer.

+ More

Speed Coaching

Speed Coaching

10:00 – 10:04

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Mathias Meyer.

  • FEATURING
    Mathias Meyer
    Founding Partner & Executive CoachThe Intentional Organization

    Mathias is Founding Parter and Executive Coach at The Intentional Organization and executive coach to founders, CTOs, and senior engineering leaders. He supports his clients and their leadership teams in their personal and professional growth as they’re scaling out their business and their departments. Together with his business partner Sara, he’s co-authoring the forthcoming book “The Intentional Organization.” Starting his career as an engineer, Mathias has later worked in founder, CEO, and CTO roles across different companies, including Travis CI and Reaction Commerce.

    View Mathias’s profile
10:15
12:00

Solution Swap

How do I stop firefighting and make space for long-term improvements?

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges.

+ More

Solution Swap

How do I stop firefighting and make space for long-term improvements?

12:00 – 12:00

It’s easy to get stuck in constant firefighting. One production issue after another. Stakeholders demanding quick fixes. Urgent requests that feel impossible to ignore. This session is about breaking the cycle.

How do you push back on “urgent” tasks that aren’t truly urgent? What techniques help you make time for long-term work without losing trust from the business? We’ll talk about how to set boundaries, prioritise effectively, and win support for technical health.

Bring your experiences, frustrations, and tactics. Together, we’ll explore how to build breathing room into team life and move from reactive to proactive.
10:40

Office Hours

Meet the speakers

Chat with speakers face-to-face in a relaxed, conversational environment.

+ More

Office Hours

Meet the speakers – Day 2, 10:45

10:40 – 10:44

If you’re inspired by a talk, want to learn more, or just want to chat about it with other folks, head to our Office Hours area, where our speakers will be waiting for you.

  • FEATURING
    Fernando Cristiani
    Vice President User Growth & LifecycleSeven.One
    View Fernando’s profile
  • Emma Bostian
    Engineering ManagerSpotify

    Emma Bostian is an Engineering Manager at Spotify in Stockholm. She is an instructor at LinkedIn Learning and Frontend Masters and Co-Host of the Ladybug Podcast.

    View Emma’s profile
  • Scott Carey
    Editor in ChiefLeadDev

    Scott Carey is the Editor in Chief at LeadDev. An experienced technology journalist, he has covered software development for Computerworld, CIO, and InfoWorld before joining LeadDev.

    View Scott’s profile
10:45
12:00

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Trans and Gender Non-conforming leaders

Connect with other leaders who have similar backgrounds and experiences to yours, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

+ More

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Trans and Gender Non-conforming leaders

12:00 – 12:00

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but some have a unique set of challenges that they need to navigate through. At times it can lead to leaders feeling isolated in their experiences.

We welcome you to the community representation groups, where you’ll be able to connect with folks who might have similar experiences to yours, where you’ll be able to build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

  • FEATURING
    Katrin Kirchert
    Senior Lead Consultant]init[ AG für digitale Kommunikation

    Katrin Kirchert is a neurodivergent and queer senior lead consultant at ]init[ AG in Berlin. Since 2023, they have been working on digitalisation projects for public administration in Germany. Previously, they were a freelance data protection officer and solicitor specialising in data protection law. Katrin has a Master of Laws degree, but is very tech-savvy and deals with topics such as artificial intelligence and digital sovereignty. They identify themselves as non-binary.

    View Katrin’s profile
  • Lætitia Delvaux
    Engineering ManagerGÉANT

    Lætitia Delvaux holds an M.Sc.Eng. degree in Computer Science from the University of Liège, Belgium. She is working as task leader of the network monitoring activity for the GÉANT project through PCSS, the Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center. She leads 4 software development and DevOps teams. She has participated in different high-speed network and service monitoring projects, both on the operational and the software development sides, in the Research & Education Community (NREN).

    View Lætitia ‘s profile
  • Sasha Göbbels
    Senior Engineering Manager

    With a PhD in Theoretical Chemistry Sasha never worked as a chemist but went straight into software development. After writing software for telco providers, airports and federal German police she fell for web development.
    First as an individual contributor, then as a tech/team lead and senior engineering manager because she discovered that working with people is even more awesome than working with tech alone. On her way she also co-founded two companies and currently is working as a (senior) engineering manager at Overleaf/Digital Science. But still she couldn’t let go of writing software. Sasha is trans femme.

    View Sasha’s profile
12:00

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Disabled leaders

Connect with other leaders who have similar backgrounds and experiences to yours, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

+ More

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Disabled leaders

12:00 – 12:00

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but some have a unique set of challenges that they need to navigate through. At times it can lead to leaders feeling isolated in their experiences.

We welcome you to the community representation groups, where you’ll be able to connect with folks who might have similar experiences to yours, where you’ll be able to build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

  • FEATURING
    Julian Fink
    Senior Engineering ManagerDoctolib

    Julian is a versatile and passionate engineering leader with over 15 years of experience in developing complex software systems in highly regulated environments, specializing in AI/ML and digital health.

    View Julian’s profile
  • Alexander Reichert
    Senior Engineering ManagerDoctolib

    Alexander Reichert is an Engineering Manager with over 13 years of experience , currently serving as a Senior Engineering Manager at Doctolib, a health-tech platform. He has experience in guiding teams through legacy system migrations and transitioning monolithic applications towards service-oriented architectures.

    Previously, he was a founding team member at ArtificialIndustries LLC, implementing search and RAG systems. He also held senior leadership roles at the meal-kit service MarleySpoon AG, including VP of Consumer Engineering , and at heycar, an online car marketplace. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Technische Universität – Darmstadt.

    View Alexander’s profile
  • Daniela Matheis
    Chief of Staff to the CTOioki GmbH

    In her role as Chief of Staff to the CTO, she drives practical transformations in engineering culture, ensuring continuous learning is integrated into workflows. Using systemic coaching, she supports leaders in designing initiatives, improving team practices, and creating measurable impact across the organization.

    View Daniela’s profile
  • Sérgio Laranjeira
    CTOMetacore

    Sérgio is passionate about engineering management, leadership and software delivery. He strives to make a meaningful impact on organizations by delivering exceptional experiences to both internal and external customers. In parallel, he is deeply committed to the cause of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I). He believes that fostering D&I is not just a moral imperative but also a strategic advantage, and actively works to create inclusive workplaces, promote D&I at various events, and drive recruitment activities that promote diversity. He dedicates his time to working with people, building a culture where individuals can be themselves and bringing great results to the business.

    View Sérgio ‘s profile
12:00

Next Steps AMA

Making the leap to Engineering Manager

Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for making the leap to Engineering Manager.

+ More

Next Steps AMA

Making the leap to Engineering Manager

12:00 – 12:00

Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for making the leap to Engineering Manager.

Moderated by Phil Bennett, Experienced Engineering Leader & Former Director of Engineering at Kilo Health.

  • FEATURING
    Dmytro Mindra
    Engineering ManagerGrammarly
    View Dmytro’s profile
  • Marta Kędzior-Krasoczko
    Engineering ManagerBackbase
    View Marta’s profile
  • Phil Bennett
    Director of EngineeringKilo Health
    View Phil’s profile
  • Rui Posse
    Engineering ManagerRaaft

    Engineering Manager and Full-Stack engineer with 10+ years’ experience leading remote teams, Rui specialises in JavaScript/TypeScript, Vue.js and Node.js. Passionate about mentoring and team culture, he focuses on clear direction, modern engineering practices and pragmatic delivery that balances business impact with technical quality. He is passionate about tech communities and actively engages in sharing knowledge and supporting other engineers.

    View Rui’s profile
  • Anna Kurylo
    Senior Manager, Software EngineeringSentinelOne

    Anna Kurylo is Senior Manager of Software Engineering, Platform at SentinelOne. She leverages deep technical expertise and leadership to manage complex cybersecurity engineering projects, champion accessibility, and build resilient, user-friendly platforms. Her leadership follows a “people first” motto, grounded in the belief that kindness is fundamental to fostering strong technical teams. Outside of work, she enjoys running and walking outdoors with her husband, making matcha for friends, and spending time with her cat, Cory.

    View Anna’s profile
11:00

Meet the Author

Meet the author: Charity Majors

Bring a book and get it signed – or just have a chat.

+ More

Meet the Author

Meet the author: Charity Majors

11:00 – 11:29

Charity will be signing copies of her book ‘Observability Engineering‘.

Bring a book and get it signed – or just have a chat.

  • FEATURING
    Charity Majors
    Co-Founder & CTOHoneycomb

    Charity Majors is the co-founder and CTO of honeycomb.io. She pioneered the concept of modern Observability, drawing on her years of experience building and managing massive distributed systems at Parse (acquired by Facebook), Facebook, and Linden Lab building Second Life. She is the co-author of Observability Engineering and Database Reliability Engineering (O’Reilly). She loves free speech, free software and single malt scotch.

    View Charity’s profile
11:30
12:00

Speed Coaching

Speed Coaching

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Lena Reinhard.

  • Lena Reinhard
    Engineering Leader, Organizational Developer, Coach, Facilitator
+ More

Speed Coaching

Speed Coaching

12:00 – 12:00

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Lena Reinhard.

  • FEATURING
    Lena Reinhard
    Engineering Leader, Organizational Developer, Coach, Facilitator

    Lena Reinhard is a seasoned technology leader, currently helping leaders and their teams succeed through her work as a leadership coach, organizational developer, and facilitator. Having served the majority of her 20-year career in leadership roles, such as VP Engineering with CircleCI, Travis CI, and a SaaS startup co-founder & CEO, she has partnered with a variety of remote, hybrid, and co-located companies at all stages, from startups, to scale-ups, corporations, and NGOs. Lena loves to paint, read, and ride her bike around the forests and lakes of her home, Berlin, in Germany. She hosts O’Reilly’s Tech Leadership Tuesday podcast.

    View Lena’s profile
12:00

Solution Swap

What’s the best way to get engineers more interested in the business side of things?

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges.

+ More

Solution Swap

What’s the best way to get engineers more interested in the business side of things?

12:00 – 12:00

Some engineers love diving deep into technical puzzles. But business context? Not so much. When engineers connect their work to business goals, they make smarter trade-offs and feel more invested in outcomes. Without that link, teams risk building technically elegant solutions that don’t move the needle for customers or the company.

So, how do you get them interested without it feeling like homework? We’ll share ways to make business knowledge engaging and relevant. This room is a chance to swap ideas, test assumptions, and learn how to spark curiosity in the bigger picture.
12:00

Table Talks

How to ensure software quality and reliability can keep pace with AI powered development velocity?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How to ensure software quality and reliability can keep pace with AI powered development velocity?

12:00 – 12:00

Sponsored by

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Subhamoy Sengupta
    Engineering Leader

    Subhamoy is an engineering leader best known for scaling B2B content filtering solutions from 80 million to over 220 million global users through browser and OEM partnerships. After a hands-on career building performance-critical software across embedded systems, browsers, backends for IoT devices, and EV chargers, he transitioned into technical and managerial roles. He now specialises in driving user and company growth for privacy- and performance-focused products, and is keen to explore new challenges beyond his current horizon.

    View Subhamoy’s profile
  • Mariana Pasichnyk
    Senior Engineering Director IDEMIA

    Mariana is a Senior Engineering Director of the Digital ID Platform at IDEMIA, where she leads cross-functional teams across development, QA, DevOps, and delivery. She drives engineering excellence while ensuring the delivery of scalable, secure digital identity solutions. Deeply committed to talent development and team engagement, she focuses on building high-performing teams and nurturing leadership growth. Mariana brings a collaborative, people centric approach to engineering. She combines strategic vision with strong execution to deliver impactful solutions. Outside of work, she enjoys running, swimming, hiking in the mountains, learning tennis, and mentoring others.

    View Mariana’s profile
  • Mudit Singh
    VP of Product and GrowthLambdaTest

    Mudit Singh, VP of Growth & Product at LambdaTest, is a dynamic force in the world of software innovation. With over a decade of expertise in building and scaling remarkable software products, Mudit has played a pivotal role in LambdaTest’s mission to transform the software testing landscape. His strategic vision is centered around shifting testing ecosystems to the cloud, optimizing efficiency, and driving tangible business outcomes. Known for his hands-on approach to product development, Mudit thrives on creating solutions that deliver immense value to customers. When he’s not pushing the boundaries of product and growth, Mudit enjoys exploring the intersection of technology and business trends, always staying ahead of the curve.

    View Mudit’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How to go from code reviewer to AI leader and confidently deploy AI generated code?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How to go from code reviewer to AI leader and confidently deploy AI generated code?

12:00 – 12:00

Sponsored by

CircleCI Logo LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Dušan Warzok
    Head of EngineeringParto Group GmbH

    Dušan Warzok is Head of Engineering at Parto. He spent five years at Trade Republic, joining early and staying through the company’s growth to unicorn status and 20x customer expansion. He led engineering teams in the Growth area through hypergrowth phases across multiple platforms. Dušan takes a direct approach to leadership, prioritizing honest feedback and product quality. His philosophy centers on transparency, persistence, and learning through difficult problems rather than avoiding them.

    View Dušan’s profile
  • Olaf Molenveld
    Technology AdvisorCircleCI

    Olaf is a seasoned technology leader with over 25 years of experience in the software industry, excelling in both technical and leadership roles. He has a strong foundation in software development, architecture, and consulting, with a focus on aligning business challenges with cutting-edge technology solutions. As the founder and former CTO of Vamp.io, he played a key role in developing DevOps tools for containers, Kubernetes, and microservices. Following Vamp’s acquisition by CircleCI, Olaf now serves as a Technology Advisor, working closely with CTO Rob Zuber to advance CircleCI’s offerings. His expertise continues to drive technical innovation and excellence for the company and its customers.

    View Olaf’s profile
  • Anna Kurylo
    Senior Manager, Software EngineeringSentinelOne

    Anna Kurylo is Senior Manager of Software Engineering, Platform at SentinelOne. She leverages deep technical expertise and leadership to manage complex cybersecurity engineering projects, champion accessibility, and build resilient, user-friendly platforms. Her leadership follows a “people first” motto, grounded in the belief that kindness is fundamental to fostering strong technical teams. Outside of work, she enjoys running and walking outdoors with her husband, making matcha for friends, and spending time with her cat, Cory.

    View Anna’s profile
12:15
12:00

Table Talks

How can I create the conditions for my team to be their most productive?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How can I create the conditions for my team to be their most productive?

12:00 – 12:00

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Mariia Punda
    Engineering ManagerLimehome

    Mariia is an Engineering Manager at Limehome with a background in frontend engineering. She leads a team focused on creating seamless digital booking experiences. Mariia enjoys bringing structure and clarity to complex challenges while helping people and products grow.

    View Mariia’s profile
  • Dmytro Basan
    Engineering ManagerKlarna

    Driving the future of engineering leadership, Dmytro combines extensive experience in
    uniting business and technology to drive impactful results. At Klarna, he managed multiple teams across cross-functional areas, delivering scalable business solutions, optimizing high-load applications, and integrating cutting-edge AI innovations. He is a strong advocate for empathy and growth in tech careers, with a passion for building high-performing teams and fostering innovation.
    Beyond Klarna, Dmytro contributes to industry dialogue through speaking engagements and podcasts, shaping trends in engineering and leadership excellence.

    View Dmytro’s profile
  • Ferit Topcu
    Senior Manager, Engineering ManagementZenjob SE

    Ferit Topcu is a Berlin-based Engineering Manager at Zenjob SE, where he leads the Mobile & Marketing Platform Team. With over a decade of software engineering expertise, he’s passionate about exploring AI’s intersection with current engineering roles, its impact on the future of work and React Native. Known for his humor, often derived from his adventures raising three kids, Ferit brings authenticity and humanity to technical leadership. As an active community contributor, he is co-host of the LeadDev Meetup in Berlin.

    View Ferit’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How can you facilitate valuable post-incident reviews?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How can you facilitate valuable post-incident reviews?

12:00 – 12:00

Sponsored by

Incident io logo

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Christian Dewein
    Chief Technology Officerioki GmbH

    Christian Dewein is a software engineer and CTO based in Frankfurt am Main. He leads the development of innovative mobility solutions for public transport at ioki GmbH, a Deutsche Bahn subsidiary. Passionate about technology, community building, and elegant software design, he actively contributes to open-source projects and local developer meetups. Christian values simplicity, craftsmanship, and the intersection of code and real-world impact. Besides that, he organizes Europe’s biggest conference for mechanical computer keyboards, a free community-event for fans of the hobby.

    View Christian’s profile
  • Alicia Collymore
    Engineering Manager incident.io

    Alicia has been an engineering managing for over 2 years, with experience working in many different industries, from biotech where she lead a team of molecular biologist to fintech where she helped build out the pay later space. Alicia is currently an EM at incident.io, who build software to help companies manage incidents more easily, helping her teams to get shit done and have fun doing it.

    View Alicia ‘s profile
  • Arjit Srivastava
    Senior Engineering ManagerDelivery Hero

    Arjit is the Engineering Lead for Quick Commerce domain at Delivery Hero. A software engineer at heart, he thrives at the intersection of leadership and technology, bringing a wealth of experience from various industries. Arjit is passionate about building intentional team culture and operational excellence. He excels in chaotic situations, finding clarity and direction. Outside of work, Arjit enjoys reading, playing video games, and writing.

    View Arjit’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How can AI be leveraged in day to day workflows?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How can AI be leveraged in day to day workflows?

12:00 – 12:00

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Samuel Okoth
    Engineering ManagerBabbel

    Samuel is an Engineering Manager based in Berlin, deeply passionate about the intersection of people and technology. His career journey began as a software engineer in Kenya, where he honed his technical skills before transitioning into leadership. Samuel now excels at guiding high-performing teams, empowering engineers to achieve their full potential. He is a strong advocate for leveraging cutting-edge advancements in AI and Cloud technologies to drive innovation and create meaningful impact in the tech landscape.

    View Samuel’s profile
  • Ilya Savin
    Engineering ManagerQonto
    View Ilya’s profile
  • Ciro Anunciação
    Senior Engineering ManagerOn

    Ciro is a senior engineering manager with over 20 years in software, from hands-on coding to scaling teams and organizations. He built teams from the ground up, like growing a startup from 1 to 30 engineers. And he led product-driven engagement at Babbel, where his team boosted retention year over year. At PandaDoc, he shaped growth-focused engineering teams and sustainable processes. Today, he’s part of On, continuing his journey of building high-performing teams, strong product partnerships, and preparing the next generation of leaders.

    View Ciro’s profile
12:45

Office Hours

Meet the speakers

Chat with speakers face-to-face in a relaxed, conversational environment.

+ More

Office Hours

Meet the speakers – Day 2, 12:50

12:45 – 12:49

If you’re inspired by a talk, want to learn more, or just want to chat about it with other folks, head to our Office Hours area, where our speakers will be waiting for you.

  • FEATURING
    Kevin Holler
    Enterprise Solutions EngineerLaunchDarkly

    Kevin Holler is an Enterprise Solutions Engineer at LaunchDarkly, working with the companies biggest customers in the DACH region to de-risk their software and AI-driven product releases.

    View Kevin’s profile
  • Laura Dietze
    Fractional Product Leader and CoachProduct and Change
    View Laura’s profile
  • Maciej Rząsa
    Senior Backend EngineerChattermill

    Software engineer with 10+ years of experience. He started applications from scratch, dealt with legacy, extracted services from a monolith and led teams. Strong proponent of diving deep into black boxes, he focuses on distributed systems and database internals. Has a strange hobby of writing regular expressions by hand and discussing their performance. Knowledge-sharing advocate: after work, he’s a university instructor, public speaker and meetup organiser. Bookworm, hiker and history buff (ask him about Napoleon!).

    View Maciej’s profile
  • Jonathan Fielding
    Principal EngineerLegend

    Jonathan is a Principal Engineer at Legend, focusing on building systems that scale with the company’s growth. Previously, he’s held individual contributor and management roles, including acting principal engineer at both Spendesk and RVU and engineering manager at Beamly, allowing him to have a broad understanding of the technical and business sides of working in tech.

    What drives Jonathan is creating inclusive, empowered teams. He loves working with teams to simplify complex technical problems in ways that bring everyone along for the journey. When he’s not coding or coaching, he’s a huge advocate for diversity and inclusion, launching successful Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) across multiple companies to support underrepresented voices and build more connected workplaces. He’s a frequent speaker in the tech community, whether sharing insights on modern system design or advocating for equity in tech spaces

    View Jonathan’s profile
13:00
12:00

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Queer leaders

Connect with other leaders who have similar backgrounds and experiences to yours, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

+ More

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Queer leaders

12:00 – 12:00

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but some have a unique set of challenges that they need to navigate through. At times it can lead to leaders feeling isolated in their experiences.

We welcome you to the community representation groups, where you’ll be able to connect with folks who might have similar experiences to yours, where you’ll be able to build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

  • FEATURING
    David Gómez
    Engineering ManagerFlix

    David Gómez is an Engineering Manager with a past life as a Head of QA and developer — which means he’s spent years both building things and breaking them on purpose. He’s passionate about creating inclusive spaces where LGBTQ+ professionals can show up as their full selves and lead with confidence. For David, inclusion is just good engineering: fewer blind spots, better systems, stronger teams. Better together!

    View David’s profile
  • Rolando Angelini
    Director of Software EngineeringAffirm

    Rolando is currently working in the world of agile product development in FinTech, with a focus on Developer Productivity. He has extensive experience in Tech Leadership, Software Engineering, Project Management, Strategic Planning, and IT Coaching across various industries: Finance/Banking/FinTech, People & Talent, TELCO, EdTech, Retail, and eCommerce (OTA/Travel industry). He considers himself a seasoned Tech Leader and Software Engineer. He is also an enthusiast of TDD, Kubernetes (k8s), Kotlin, Golang, and DevSecOps. Building teams and crafting software are not just duties of my profession, they are two of his greatest passions. Rolando also loves learning new things, mentoring, coaching, researching, and traveling.

    View Rolando ‘s profile
  • Steven Langbroek
    Director of Software DevelopmentCuculus

    Steven has over 15 years of experience building teams across interfaces, APIs, and developer tools, balancing curiosity with pragmatism. Passionate about equity and inclusion, he creates psychologically safe environments where people thrive. Steven specializes in helping organizations shift from project-based delivery to product thinking, bringing DevOps and systems thinking to bureaucratic, siloed environments. He participates regularly in community events, like QueerJS and LeadDev.

    View Steven ‘s profile
  • Janina Kim Marks
    Engineering ManagerZalando SE

    Janina Kim Marks is an Engineering Manager at Zalando SE with over seven years of full-stack software engineering experience, experienced in Java, Kotlin, and the Spring Framework. She has a strong track record in leading projects that enhance customer experience and is skilled in cross-functional collaboration. Passionate about diversity and inclusion, Janina actively contributes to Zalando’s Women in Tech ERG and is proud to be part of the LGBTQ+ community as a woman in engineering leadership. As a dedicated mentor and advocate for continuous learning, she aims to inspire growth within her team and the broader tech community.

    View Janina ‘s profile
12:00

Next Steps AMA

Diving into the role of Engineering Director

Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for preparing for the role of an Engineering Director.

+ More

Next Steps AMA

Diving into the role of Engineering Director

12:00 – 12:00

Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for preparing for the role of an Engineering Director.

Moderated by Phil Bennett, Experienced Engineering Leader & Former Director of Engineering at Kilo Health.

  • FEATURING
    Mariana Pasichnyk
    Senior Engineering Director IDEMIA

    Mariana is a Senior Engineering Director of the Digital ID Platform at IDEMIA, where she leads cross-functional teams across development, QA, DevOps, and delivery. She drives engineering excellence while ensuring the delivery of scalable, secure digital identity solutions. Deeply committed to talent development and team engagement, she focuses on building high-performing teams and nurturing leadership growth. Mariana brings a collaborative, people centric approach to engineering. She combines strategic vision with strong execution to deliver impactful solutions. Outside of work, she enjoys running, swimming, hiking in the mountains, learning tennis, and mentoring others.

    View Mariana’s profile
  • Phil Bennett
    Director of EngineeringKilo Health
    View Phil’s profile
  • Gisela Rossi
    Engineering DirectorTrustpilot

    Gisela is an Engineering Director leading the B2B engine at Trustpilot. She enjoys leading and improving complex organisations and systems. Her colleagues have described her as a “force for change”, and she treasures that. She is devoted to helping people in the tech community grow and reach their full potential. Outside work, she enjoys oil painting, exercising, and quiet weekends at home with her husband and her cat.

    View Gisela’s profile
  • Chris Jimenez
    Director of Platform EngineeringZenjob

    Chris is the Director of Platform Engineering at Zenjob, bringing over 15 years of experience leading Platform and Infrastructure teams across Latin America, the United States, and Europe

    With a genuine passion for mentoring engineering managers and fostering supportive communities, Chris is passionate about enabling engineers to successfully transition into leadership roles while promoting growth and support within organizations.

    Chris actively contributes to open-source projects, embracing collaboration and knowledge-sharing within the developer community.

    Outside of work, Chris leads non-profit initiatives dedicated to wildlife conservation in Latin America and Asia. Chris also finds joy in photography, running, and cycling, sometimes mixing them all at the same time. “

    View Chris’s profile
  • Anita Singh
    Director of EngineeringFreeNow

    Anita is an engineering leader and international speaker with more than a decade of experience building mobile products that users love. After starting her career at Microsoft and Intuit, she has spent the past several years scaling startups in both Silicon Valley and Berlin. She is passionate about building great products, fostering strong engineering cultures and mentoring emerging leaders.

    View Anita’s profile
13:45
12:00

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Non-traditional leaders

Connect with other leaders who have similar backgrounds and experiences to yours, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

+ More

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Non-traditional leaders

12:00 – 12:00

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but some have a unique set of challenges that they need to navigate through. At times it can lead to leaders feeling isolated in their experiences.

We welcome you to the community representation groups, where you’ll be able to connect with folks who might have similar experiences to yours, where you’ll be able to build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

  • FEATURING
    Sebastian Gerhardt
    CEOFlea

    Sebastian Gerhardt is the co-founder and CEO of Flea, a Berlin-based startup that helps engineering leaders surface hidden friction and improve developer experience in the AI era. He also founded the Dev Leaders Lunch Club, a peer community that hand-matches senior engineering leaders for monthly 1:1 lunch conversations. Coming from a business background, Sebastian had to immerse himself deeply in the engineering world to build Flea. That journey makes him one of many leaders who’ve taken a non-traditional path into tech leadership.

    View Sebastian’s profile
  • Irene Anggreeni
    Mental Fitness CoachWhole Person Leaders

    Irene Anggreeni is a mental fitness coach and leadership speaker bridging the technical mind and the thriving heart.
    A former engineer with over 12 years in software development and research across Indonesia, Sweden, and the Netherlands, she is passionate about helping tech leaders build strong, resilient teams. You can talk to her about any aspects of it, including sustainable performance, psychological safety, and bouncing back after burnout.
    Outside of work, Irene is also an active mentor and trainer in the Toastmasters community.
    Based in Rotterdam with her husband and their cat, she enjoys dancing Argentinian tango, swimming, and doing nothing.

    View Irene’s profile
  • Kimberly Schmitt
    Engineering ManagerBabbel

    Kimberly Schmitt, Engineering Manager has led the development of a data-driven platform to combat homelessness and the creation of innovative products at Babbel.

    Kimberly’s drive to develop high performing and quality data platforms and related services began when she led efforts to use data to first understand and then address the challenge of homelessness. She led a team of data analysts and engineers to develop a centralized means of identifying those experiencing homelessness and in connecting them to the appropriate housing resource.

    Kimberly has transformed experiences gained from developing strategies to work with diverse individuals and communities to building consensus to create change, improving teams and engineering practices.

    View Kimberly’s profile
12:00

Next Steps AMA

Becoming a VP of Engineering

Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for Becoming a VP of Engineering.

+ More

Next Steps AMA

Becoming a VP of Engineering

12:00 – 12:00

Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for Becoming a VP of Engineering.

Moderated by Phil Bennett, Experienced Engineering Leader & Former Director of Engineering at Kilo Health.

  • FEATURING
    Shobhna Srivastava
    VP EngineeringAccredible

    Shobhna Srivastava is Vice President of Engineering at Accredible, with over 23 years of experience in technology leadership, architecture, and data & search platforms. She brings deep expertise in scaling engineering teams, building resilient systems, and driving organisational change. With a background spanning Elsevier, The Economist, and Thomson Reuters, Shobhna combines high-level strategic vision with hands-on architectural thinking. An architect at heart, she uses principles like Lean Architecture and Conway’s Law to align systems, teams, and culture. Her leadership style emphasises trust, ownership, and long-term impact—making her a respected voice in transforming organisations through both technology and people.

    View Shobhna’s profile
  • Daniel Paulus
    VP of EngineeringCheckly

    Daniel Paulus has taken a unique journey from military officer to tech leader, and he’s now the VP of Engineering at Checkly. Along the way, he’s worn many hats— from engineering lead to director —learning how to build strong teams and solve tough challenges. Outside of work, Daniel lives near Berlin with his family and four kids, while also finding time to maintain an open-source project. Whether it’s scaling teams or debugging code, he’s passionate about technology and enjoys sharing his knowledge with others.

    View Daniel’s profile
  • Phil Bennett
    Director of EngineeringKilo Health
    View Phil’s profile
  • Anthony Mayer
    VP Engineeringcharles

    Anthony is the VP Engineering at charles, focused on expanding conversational commerce on top of WhatsApp across Europe. He was previously at Getsafe, working on modernizing the consumer insurance experience in Europe. Having grown up between the US and Germany and after having worked for US based tech companies like NextRoll and Yelp, he’s excited to now be a part of the German and broader European tech scene.

    When he’s not working on being the best engineering leader he can be and helping his team to grow, Anthony spends his time obsessing over his 2 dogs, 1 cat, and rotating cast of foster cats.

    View Anthony’s profile
14:15
12:00

Table Talks

How can you measure developer productivity without damaging morale?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How can you measure developer productivity without damaging morale?

12:00 – 12:00

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Kimberly Schmitt
    Engineering ManagerBabbel

    Kimberly Schmitt, Engineering Manager has led the development of a data-driven platform to combat homelessness and the creation of innovative products at Babbel.

    Kimberly’s drive to develop high performing and quality data platforms and related services began when she led efforts to use data to first understand and then address the challenge of homelessness. She led a team of data analysts and engineers to develop a centralized means of identifying those experiencing homelessness and in connecting them to the appropriate housing resource.

    Kimberly has transformed experiences gained from developing strategies to work with diverse individuals and communities to building consensus to create change, improving teams and engineering practices.

    View Kimberly’s profile
  • Shadi Sharaf
    Senior Software EngineerClave

    Senior software engineer, with background in Enterprise publishing platforms, leading high performing teams, open source contributions, and building AI-assisted platforms.

    View Shadi ‘s profile
  • Arjit Srivastava
    Senior Engineering ManagerDelivery Hero

    Arjit is the Engineering Lead for Quick Commerce domain at Delivery Hero. A software engineer at heart, he thrives at the intersection of leadership and technology, bringing a wealth of experience from various industries. Arjit is passionate about building intentional team culture and operational excellence. He excels in chaotic situations, finding clarity and direction. Outside of work, Arjit enjoys reading, playing video games, and writing.

    View Arjit’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How do you manage your team’s workload spikes?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How do you manage your team's workload spikes?

12:00 – 12:00

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Smit Thakkar
    Site Reliability EngineerCoralogix

    Smit recently began his journey as a Site Reliability Engineer at Coralogix, drawn to the unique scalability challenges of building a modern observability product. He loves to geek out about all things Observability, Kubernetes, and OpenTelemetry. Based in Berlin, Smit enjoys hiking and is also a licensed private pilot who dreams of one day exploring all of Europe in his own little plane.

    View Smit’s profile
  • Tomasz Dacewicz
    Senior Engineering ManagerKlarna

    Tomasz Dacewicz is a seasoned engineering leader with deep expertise in building scalable, high-impact software systems. With experience spanning startups and global organizations, he combines technical excellence with a people-first leadership style, fostering collaboration and continuous improvement within his teams. Passionate about clean architecture, mentoring, and delivering customer-focused solutions, Tom drives engineering cultures that balance innovation with reliability — helping teams ship better software, faster.

    View Tomasz’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How do you manage your workload with your parenthood duties, without burning out?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

+ More

Table Talks

How do you manage your workload with your parenthood duties, without burning out?

12:00 – 12:00

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams.

  • FEATURING
    Ivelina Dimova
    Senior Web EngineerAwesome Motive

    Ivelina is a Senior Web Developer at Awesome Motive, bringing over a decade of experience to crafting powerful back-end solutions. Proficient in PHP and WordPress, she excels at API integration and developing scalable products, with a portfolio including complex systems for international banks and booking platforms.

    Within the Research and Development team, Ivelina develops internal products leveraging Google Cloud for infrastructure solutions and is at the forefront of exploring AI agents using Python and Laravel. Her commitment to quality is evident in her dedication to automated testing and DevOps.

    When she’s not immersed in code, Ivelina enjoys yoga, exploring new destinations through travel, and photography. She’s also passionate about contributing to the tech community through speaking engagements and organizing WordPress events.

    View Ivelina’s profile
  • Tatsiana Mihai
    Staff Engineer Tractable

    Tatsiana Mihai, a skilled Staff Engineer at Tractable, brings over 12 years of expertise in crafting sophisticated software solutions across diverse industries—Automotive, AdTech, Education, Travel, E-commerce, and Gaming. As a leader with diverse capabilities, she excels not only in developing customer-facing products and nuanced software design but also in transforming challenges into successes. Tatsiana’s visionary approach, coupled with her adept problem-solving, is complemented by a unique ability to integrate engineering practices seamlessly with team management strategies. From startups to industry giants, her strategic decisions reflect a commitment to excellence and innovation in every venture.

    View Tatsiana ‘s profile
  • Ferit Topcu
    Senior Manager, Engineering ManagementZenjob SE

    Ferit Topcu is a Berlin-based Engineering Manager at Zenjob SE, where he leads the Mobile & Marketing Platform Team. With over a decade of software engineering expertise, he’s passionate about exploring AI’s intersection with current engineering roles, its impact on the future of work and React Native. Known for his humor, often derived from his adventures raising three kids, Ferit brings authenticity and humanity to technical leadership. As an active community contributor, he is co-host of the LeadDev Meetup in Berlin.

    View Ferit’s profile
12:00

Solution Swap

How do I build trust with a new team?

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges.

+ More

Solution Swap

How do I build trust with a new team?

12:00 – 12:00

Walking into a new team as leader is tricky. You inherit old habits, relationships, and maybe a few scars from past managers. The question is: how do you quickly earn trust without overplaying your hand? How do you build psychological and challenger safety?

In this session, we’ll talk about what worked, what backfired, and what helped people shift from seeing you as “the new boss” to a trusted partner.
14:45

Speed Coaching

Speed Coaching

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Lena Reinhard.

  • Lena Reinhard
    Engineering Leader, Organizational Developer, Coach, Facilitator
+ More

Speed Coaching

Speed Coaching

14:45 – 14:49

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Lena Reinhard.

  • FEATURING
    Lena Reinhard
    Engineering Leader, Organizational Developer, Coach, Facilitator

    Lena Reinhard is a seasoned technology leader, currently helping leaders and their teams succeed through her work as a leadership coach, organizational developer, and facilitator. Having served the majority of her 20-year career in leadership roles, such as VP Engineering with CircleCI, Travis CI, and a SaaS startup co-founder & CEO, she has partnered with a variety of remote, hybrid, and co-located companies at all stages, from startups, to scale-ups, corporations, and NGOs. Lena loves to paint, read, and ride her bike around the forests and lakes of her home, Berlin, in Germany. She hosts O’Reilly’s Tech Leadership Tuesday podcast.

    View Lena’s profile
15:40
12:00

Office Hours

Meet the speakers

Chat with speakers face-to-face in a relaxed, conversational environment.

+ More

Office Hours

Meet the speakers – Day 2, 15:40

12:00 – 12:00

If you’re inspired by a talk, want to learn more, or just want to chat about it with other folks, head to our Office Hours area, where our speakers will be waiting for you.

  • FEATURING
    Saba Khurram
    FounderHypha Labs

    Saba is an engineer who has wiggled her way through teams both big and small. She is fascinated by the hidden systems that either help teams work together smoothly, or cause them to fall apart. Through years in fast-paced environments and a non-linear journey into engineering, Saba has learned practical methods to spot early warning signs of stress and misalignment. By drawing exciting parallels from seemingly-unrelated domains, she applies a data & systems-based approach to fine-tune team dynamics, anticipate falling productivity, and maintain alignment. When she is not coding, you might find her chasing her dog to save her shoes or diving into watercolour “alchemy”.

    View profile
  • Omar Diop
    Technical LeadLearnn

    Omar Diop is a Technical Lead at Learnn.

    View Omar’s profile
  • Justin Lee
    Senior Software EngineerNotion

    Justin Lee is a Senior Software Engineer at Notion.

    View Justin’s profile
  • Jenny Warnke
    Director of EngineeringDelivery Hero

    Jenny Warnke is the Director of Engineering at Delivery Hero.

    View Jenny’s profile
  • Tatiana Stantonian
    Principal EngineerFinancial Times

    Tatiana Stantonian is a Principal Engineer and engineering manager at the Financial Times, based in London. She works across teams to shape the systems and direction for FT.com’s Customer Lifecycle area, including subscription growth and retention. With a background at the Government Digital Service and over a decade in software engineering, she’s passionate about the intersection of user experience, business impact, and technical systems. She recently led the implementation of two major AI projects at the FT, and loves helping teams find the highest value work they can deliver.

    View Tatiana’s profile
  • Sam Newman
    Independent Tech Consultant & AuthorSam Newman & Associates
    Sam Newman is an independent consultant who loves solving problems with technology. Focusing primarily in the areas of cloud, microservice architecture and continuous delivery, Sam works with companies big and small all over the world. He is also an experienced conference speaker, and author of the O’Reilly books Monolith To Microservices, Building Microservices, and the forthcoming Building Resilient Distributed Systems.
    View Sam’s profile
  • Clare Sudbery
    Independent Technical CoachSudbery Software Engineering Ltd

    Clare Sudbery is an independent technical coach with 25+ years of software engineering experience. She specialises in TDD, refactoring, pair programming, continuous integration and other eXtreme Programming (XP) practices.

    Clare taught the Coding Black Females’ Return to Tech programme and co-ran Made Tech’s academy – coaching inexperienced engineers to learn on the job. She has a passion for helping under-represented groups to flourish in tech.

    Clare hosted Season One of the acclaimed Making Tech Better podcast and publishes content on Medium (“A Woman in Technology”) and her own site (“In Simple Terms”). She is the author of the Stupidity Manifesto, has written about trunk-based development and refactoring for O’Reilly and for Martin Fowler’s site, and regularly presents workshops and keynotes at events all over the world.

    Subscribe to Clare’s newsletter: https://queen-of-questions.kit.com/

    View Clare’s profile
12:00

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Parent leaders

Connect with other leaders who have similar backgrounds and experiences to yours, and build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

+ More

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Parent leaders

12:00 – 12:00

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but some have a unique set of challenges that they need to navigate through. At times it can lead to leaders feeling isolated in their experiences.

We welcome you to the community representation groups, where you’ll be able to connect with folks who might have similar experiences to yours, where you’ll be able to build a peer network for support throughout your leadership journey.

  • FEATURING
    Ivelina Dimova
    Senior Web EngineerAwesome Motive

    Ivelina is a Senior Web Developer at Awesome Motive, bringing over a decade of experience to crafting powerful back-end solutions. Proficient in PHP and WordPress, she excels at API integration and developing scalable products, with a portfolio including complex systems for international banks and booking platforms.

    Within the Research and Development team, Ivelina develops internal products leveraging Google Cloud for infrastructure solutions and is at the forefront of exploring AI agents using Python and Laravel. Her commitment to quality is evident in her dedication to automated testing and DevOps.

    When she’s not immersed in code, Ivelina enjoys yoga, exploring new destinations through travel, and photography. She’s also passionate about contributing to the tech community through speaking engagements and organizing WordPress events.

    View Ivelina’s profile
  • Ferit Topcu
    Senior Manager, Engineering ManagementZenjob SE

    Ferit Topcu is a Berlin-based Engineering Manager at Zenjob SE, where he leads the Mobile & Marketing Platform Team. With over a decade of software engineering expertise, he’s passionate about exploring AI’s intersection with current engineering roles, its impact on the future of work and React Native. Known for his humor, often derived from his adventures raising three kids, Ferit brings authenticity and humanity to technical leadership. As an active community contributor, he is co-host of the LeadDev Meetup in Berlin.

    View Ferit’s profile
  • Anita Singh
    Director of EngineeringFreeNow

    Anita is an engineering leader and international speaker with more than a decade of experience building mobile products that users love. After starting her career at Microsoft and Intuit, she has spent the past several years scaling startups in both Silicon Valley and Berlin. She is passionate about building great products, fostering strong engineering cultures and mentoring emerging leaders.

    View Anita’s profile
15:45
12:00

Next Steps AMA

The path to CTO

Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for the path to CTO.

+ More

Next Steps AMA

The path to CTO

12:00 – 12:00

Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for the path to CTO.

Moderated by Phil Bennett, Experienced Engineering Leader & Former Director of Engineering at Kilo Health.

  • FEATURING
    Jan Scheffler
    Founderqodev

    Jan Scheffler is the founder of qodev, a German startup where he’s building an AI coworker that helps developers tackle technical debt before it piles up. After more than a decade in software engineering – from early-stage startups to Google – Jan saw how much creativity gets lost fixing yesterday’s code. His work now focuses on giving that time back to developers, empowering teams to ship cleaner code faster and focus on what really matters: building great products.

    View Jan’s profile
  • Nasreen AbdulJaleel
    CTO & CPOMarley Spoon
    View Nasreen’s profile
  • Christine Pinto
    CTPO and Co-FounderEpic Test Quest

    Christine Pinto is a Berlin-born female tech leader with nearly two decades of experience in software testing. As the Co-founder and CTPO at Epic Test Quest, she combines her extensive testing expertise with strategic product leadership.
    Throughout her 18-year journey from manual tester to tech founder, Christine has worked across diverse environments – from dynamic startups to complex government organizations – both in Germany and worldwide. She specializes in AI-enhanced testing practices and test automation, with particular expertise in bridging traditional testing methodologies with emerging technologies.
    A passionate advocate for quality engineering, Christine regularly shares her insights at international conferences and meetups, focusing on practical applications of AI in testing, public sector quality assurance, and the evolution of testing leadership in modern tech organizations.

    View profile
  • Phil Bennett
    Director of EngineeringKilo Health
    View Phil’s profile
  • Bernie Miles
    CTOPPRO

    Bernie Miles is a technology exec with over 20 years of experience in the e-commerce and fintech sectors. He has held leadership roles at prominent companies, including Expedia, Hotels.com, Klarna, and Wayfair. In December 2021, he was appointed CTO at PPRO, a global provider of local payments infrastructure. In this role, Bernie oversees a global engineering team across Munich, Berlin, London, São Paulo, Córdoba, Luxembourg and Singapore, focusing on scaling PPRO’s platform to support the company’s rapid growth trajectory. His extensive technology leadership and product development background has been instrumental in advancing cross-border payment technologies and fostering financial inclusion.

    Bernie also advises tech scale-ups, guiding investors, CTOs, CPOs, and founders. With experience in e-commerce, payments, re-platforming, and scaling teams, he offers expertise in navigating scaling tech whilst supporting global growth.

    View Bernie ‘s profile
12:00

Meet the Author

Meet the author: Mathias Meyer

Bring a book and get it signed – or just have a chat.

+ More

Meet the Author

Meet the author: Mathias Meyer

12:00 – 12:00

Sam will be signing copies of his book ‘The Intentional Organization‘.

Bring a book and get it signed – or just have a chat.

  • FEATURING
    Mathias Meyer
    Founding Partner & Executive CoachThe Intentional Organization

    Mathias is Founding Parter and Executive Coach at The Intentional Organization and executive coach to founders, CTOs, and senior engineering leaders. He supports his clients and their leadership teams in their personal and professional growth as they’re scaling out their business and their departments. Together with his business partner Sara, he’s co-authoring the forthcoming book “The Intentional Organization.” Starting his career as an engineer, Mathias has later worked in founder, CEO, and CTO roles across different companies, including Travis CI and Reaction Commerce.

    View Mathias’s profile
WORKSHOPS
09:15
12:00

Workshop

Learning from failure: How to adapt your leadership style to lead effectively through uncertainty

Learn how to adapt your leadership style, embrace failure, and build trust to lead teams confidently through uncertainty and change.

+ More

Workshop

Learning from failure: How to adapt your leadership style to lead effectively through uncertainty

12:00 – 12:00

Learning from failure can provide you with impactful outcomes. It enables your teams to experiment, iterate quickly, and deliver business impact. But it’s hard enough to create “good” conditions for experimentation in tolerant market conditions, let alone in today’s turbulent tech landscape, where people are burned out, risk-averse, and operating from a place of fear and uncertainty.

As technical leaders, it’s crucial to understand that different market environments require different leadership styles to help teams build trust and deliver business value.

This workshop will cover how to lead through uncertainty and how to build a culture where failure is accepted – even when times are tough. We’ll talk about examples of failure, the insights gained from them, and learn how to reinforce psychological safety as a leader to foster trust and confidence among team members.

What will you learn?

  • How to adapt your leadership toolkit to market change
  • Tactics to build comfort with failure even when teams face fear and uncertainty
  • Strategies to rebuild trust without becoming a distraction or long-term dependency
  • FEATURING
    Rob Zuber
    CTOCircleCI

    Rob Zuber is a 20-year veteran of software startups; a three-time founder, and a five-time CTO. Since joining CircleCI, Rob has seen the company through its Series F funding and delivered on product innovation at scale while leading a team of 150+ engineers distributed worldwide.

    View Rob’s profile
12:00

Workshop

The AI amplifier: A hands-on workshop on the DORA 2025 State of AI-assisted Software Development

Harnessing AI’s power without amplifying chaos

+ More

Workshop

The AI amplifier: A hands-on workshop on the DORA 2025 State of AI-assisted Software Development

12:00 – 12:00

Artificial Intelligence is no longer on the horizon; it’s in our IDEs, our pipelines, and our workflows. The 2025 State of AI-assisted Software Development report reveals a critical paradox: while 90% of developers now use AI and throughput is finally increasing, software delivery instability is also on the rise. How can we harness AI’s power without amplifying chaos?

The answer lies in a fundamental insight from the DORA research team: AI is an amplifier. It magnifies the strengths of high-performing organizations and the dysfunctions of struggling ones. Success with AI isn’t a tools problem—it’s a systems problem.

In this highly interactive workshop, we will move beyond the hype and dive into the data. We won’t just share the report’s findings; we will help you apply them to your own teams. We will explore and discuss some of the competencies identified in the new DORA AI Capabilities Model

You will leave this session with:

  • A clear understanding of foundational capabilities that unlock AI’s true potential.
  • Actionable advice to diagnose your team’s strengths and weaknesses.
  • A framework to ensure your AI strategy translates into measurable improvements in performance and stability, not just localized pockets of productivity.
  • FEATURING
    Ursula Löbbert-Passing
    Value Realization Lead, AI Transformation EMEAGoogle
    View Ursula’s profile
  • Giovanni Galloro
    Application Modernization Solution LeadGoogle

    Giovanni Galloro has been working at Google since 2017 as a Customer Engineer specialising in software delivery tools and practices and container-based runtimes.

    Currently focused on helping multiple organizations across EMEA to improve developer productivity and software delivery performance using AI and Continuous Delivery.

    Giovanni is a Community Ambassador for the Continuous Delivery Foundation and is a frequent speaker at developer conferences.

    View Giovanni’s profile
11:30

Workshop

Designing an actionable tech strategy

Learn to define what a good strategy looks like, how to make it live and evolve with your team, and how to connect it to day-to-day decision-making.

+ More

Workshop

Designing an actionable tech strategy

11:30 – 12:49

For many of us, it feels like there’s no time to be strategic with our technical planning. Reorgs, incidents, market shifts, increasing competition, scope changes, personnel issues, and other factors at work mean that we have to be reactive rather than following out carefully laid plans. There is increasing pressure to deliver value with the promise to “clean up”, “unify”, and “test” code later.

In this workshop, we will take a big step back from all of these distractions to design a technical strategy for your team that is immediately actionable, yet flexible enough to adapt over time. We’ll center around the problems that your team actually has to solve in the coming 12+ months and evaluate how initiatives in people, process, and technology can get you there. Together, we’ll define what a good strategy looks like, how to make it live and evolve with your team, and how to connect it to day-to-day decision-making. You will walk away with practical next steps for your team.

Why not bring your team along and start thinking collaboratively about your tech strategy?

What will you learn?

  • Define what a technical strategy is (and isn’t) — and when to create one
  • Identify the most impactful technical problems your team should solve
  • Build a plan that adapts as priorities and technology evolve
  • Establish a feedback loop for refining and executing your strategy
  • FEATURING
    Najla Elmachtoub
    Director of EngineeringAligned

    Najla is a fractional engineering leader and leadership coach. She previously served as a Director of Engineering at companies like Delivery Hero and Etsy, where she led teams across New York, Mexico City, and Berlin. Her work focuses on coaching managers and teams to grow in alignment with their values and business goals, while building systems that support operational excellence. Najla is passionate about positioning teams for high leverage, fostering strong communities, and delivering meaningful value to customers. She leads with empathy, believes in transparent decision-making, and is a committed advocate for the people she works with.

    View Najla’s profile
14:15
12:00

Workshop

Reading your systems: Using technical skills to drive software delivery excellence

Learn to “read” your engineering systems using data and technical insight to uncover bottlenecks, optimize flow, and accelerate software delivery.

+ More

Workshop

Reading your systems: Using technical skills to drive software delivery excellence

12:00 – 12:00

Sponsored by

CircleCI Logo LeadDev

Whether you’re a CTO or a rising engineering leader, you’re likely under immense pressure to ship more value, faster. Yet, you know that jumping in and contributing code is unlikely to be the path to success. So, as a technical leader, how do you help your teams? They are likely dealing with increasing system complexity, siloed knowledge, and mounting technical debt. Many engineering metrics (DORA, DX Core 4, etc) can confirm there’s a problem. You should definitely talk to your people, but they have biases and will either tell you what they think you want to hear, or tell you what they have concluded is the problem. So how do you get past the gut feeling and put your skills to work to optimize your org and systems for software delivery excellence?

The answer lies in reframing the technical understanding you already have at a system level, using the strategies of systems thinking. It’s not about applying technical knowledge to solve technical problems (e.g., rewriting code), but rather paying attention to the flow of code and information to remove blockers in systems. By analyzing how code and PRs are structured, understanding how feedback flows through systems, and identifying where breakdowns occur, you can unlock the full potential of your software delivery system.
No matter how big or small your systems are, this workshop will help you develop the superpower of reading your systems’ vital signs to create environments where teams can deliver software quickly, confidently, and effectively.

What will you learn?

  • How to use your technical expertise to identify hidden system issues by analyzing code patterns, PR structures, and team interactions.
  • How to measure and quantify technical bottlenecks rather than relying on subjective assessments when prioritizing improvements.
  • Tips for designing team structures based on evidence of what actually enables faster delivery vs. relying on intuition.
  • FEATURING
    Olaf Molenveld
    Technology AdvisorCircleCI

    Olaf is a seasoned technology leader with over 25 years of experience in the software industry, excelling in both technical and leadership roles. He has a strong foundation in software development, architecture, and consulting, with a focus on aligning business challenges with cutting-edge technology solutions. As the founder and former CTO of Vamp.io, he played a key role in developing DevOps tools for containers, Kubernetes, and microservices. Following Vamp’s acquisition by CircleCI, Olaf now serves as a Technology Advisor, working closely with CTO Rob Zuber to advance CircleCI’s offerings. His expertise continues to drive technical innovation and excellence for the company and its customers.

    View Olaf’s profile
  • Rob Zuber
    CTOCircleCI

    Rob Zuber is a 20-year veteran of software startups; a three-time founder, and a five-time CTO. Since joining CircleCI, Rob has seen the company through its Series F funding and delivered on product innovation at scale while leading a team of 150+ engineers distributed worldwide.

    View Rob’s profile
12:00

Workshop

Navigating difference and disagreement

Explore how to turn differences and disagreements into opportunities for growth by practicing healthy conflict and effective team communication.

+ More

Workshop

Navigating difference and disagreement

12:00 – 12:00

Our differences in opinion, experience and approach can be a difficult source of tension in teams, and if ignored and overlooked people will feel demotivated, excluded and undervalued.

At the same time productive conflict is important to help us grow and find the best solutions.

In this session, we’ll explore what unhealthy or healthy conflict looks like – and how your own experiences of conflict shape the way you engage when there is disagreement within a team. We’ll also practice conversational frameworks for both group and 1-2-1 settings that you can use to improve your team’s interactions with one another and ensure you’re building environments where everyone can work together towards shared goals.

Our differences in opinion, experience and approach can be a difficult source of tension in teams, and if ignored and overlooked people will feel demotivated, excluded and undervalued.

At the same time productive conflict is important to help us grow and find the best solutions.

In this session, we’ll explore what unhealthy or healthy conflict looks like – and how your own experiences of conflict shape the way you engage when there is disagreement within a team. We’ll also practice conversational frameworks for both group and 1-2-1 settings that you can use to improve your team’s interactions with one another and ensure you’re building environments where everyone can work together towards shared goals.

What will you learn?

  • Understand what has shaped your own experiences of conflict
  • Identify you and your teams’ relationship with conflict
  • Use conversational frameworks and facilitation practices in both group and 1-2-1 settings to improve your team’s interactions with one another
  • FEATURING
    Joel Chippindale
    CTO CoachMonkey's Thumb Ltd

    Joel Chippindale is a CTO Coach who supports talented start-up and scale-up CTOs to successfully navigate the many changes in their roles as their companies evolve.

    He also has over 20 years experience building, scaling and leading software development teams, including CTO roles at Econsultancy, FutureLearn and Unmade.

    View Joel’s profile
SOLUTIONS STAGE
10:45

Demo Stage

Live demo: Harness – Break the bottleneck: AI and the new era of software delivery

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: Harness – Break the bottleneck: AI and the new era of software delivery

10:45 – 10:49

Sponsored by

Harness LeadDev

AI has changed how code is written, but the real bottleneck is getting this code to your customers in production. Join Harness for a look at how AI is transforming the entire software delivery lifecycle, from how teams test, secure, deploy, and optimize software at scale.

We’ll unveil Harness’ latest AI innovations and show what’s now possible when intelligent workflow orchestration meets your software delivery data. Through live demos, you’ll see how Harness turns AI innovation into concrete results—accelerating delivery, improving security and reliability, and unlocking developer productivity.

  • FEATURING
    Oliver Oehlenberg
    Senior Sales EngineerHarness

    Oliver believes that IT makes our lives easier and smarter. Digitalization is one of our biggest advantages, but it also drives many challenges. Over the last 20 years, Oliver worked in different positions at consultancy companies and software vendors to help customers to generate business value and drive innovation with software. With his experiences as Field-CTO for Observability and a founder of a software company, he supports organizations to modernize the DevOps value stream to operate with more efficiency but also to fulfill the governance, compliance, and data privacy targets.

    View Oliver’s profile
11:00

Demo Stage

Live demo: Incident.io – Incident response in the AI Era

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: Incident.io – Incident response in the AI Era

11:00 – 11:04

Sponsored by

Incident io logo

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

See how AI can transform incident management from chaos to clarity. In this 10-minute demo, we’ll show how incident.io’s new AI SRE autonomously diagnoses issues, assists with investigations, and empowers teams to resolve incidents faster – without replacing the human judgment that matters most.

  • FEATURING
    Alex Turley-Pound
    Senior Solutions EngineerIncident

    Alex is a Senior Solutions Engineer at Incident.io, working with large enterprises to assess and augment their incident response flows with the introduction of AI and automation.

    View Alex’s profile
11:15

Demo Stage

Live demo: Pandorian – The code enforcement magic show

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: Pandorian – The code enforcement magic show

11:15 – 11:24

Sponsored by

Pandorian LeadDev

Instantly transforms your engineering guidelines, standards and best practices into live system-wide enforcement with Pandorian

  • FEATURING
    Daniel Avital
    Co-Founder & CEOPandorian

    Daniel Avital is a former co-founder of cybersecurity unicorn CHEQ, where for 8 years he lead Product and GTM from zero to over $60M of ARR. He is now emerging from stealth with his second company, Pandorian, this time as co-founder and CEO – to give dev leaders enforcement superpowers in the age of AI-written code.

    View Daniel’s profile
13:00

Demo Stage

Live demo: Honeycomb – From chaos to clarity: Fast, full-fidelity debugging without the guesswork

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: Honeycomb – From chaos to clarity: Fast, full-fidelity debugging without the guesswork

13:00 – 13:04

Sponsored by

Honeycomb LeadDev

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

Make the most of your breaks with the demo stage sessions, where leading tech providers will showcase their innovative solutions in informative and concise presentations. Each carefully curated 10 minute demo will show the very best engineering solutions available.

  • FEATURING
    Martin Thwaites
    Principal Developer AdvocateHoneycomb

    Martin is a Developer Advocate at Honeycomb, o11y enthusiast, and a delivery-focused Developer from the UK. With over 20 years experience in development in the .NET ecosystem, he’s worked with many companies on scaling up engineering teams and products. The past few years have been spent working on solving complex problems with some of the UK’s big names, including e-commerce retailers and credit lenders.

    View Martin’s profile
13:15

Demo Stage

Live demo: Retool – Generating production-ready internal applications: Enterprise app generation

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: Retool – Generating production-ready internal applications: Enterprise app generation

13:15 – 13:19

Sponsored by

Retool LeadDev

Prototyping is easy; production is messy. Retool shows how their customers have brought order to the chaos of app development by blending low-code, AI, and developer expertise to build robust apps that connect with real infrastructure and data.

  • FEATURING
    Tobias Urban
    Enterprise Solutions EngineerRetool

    As an Enterprise Solutions Engineer at Retool, Tobias Urban helps companies overcome the messiness of production app development. With a background in solutions leadership at Okta and Microsoft, Tobias has extensive experience in guiding organizations through complex technical problems. His work at Retool focuses on empowering developers and teams to build high-quality, robust applications by intelligently combining low-code tools, AI, and developer expertise.

    View Tobias’s profile
13:30

Demo Stage

Live demo: LaunchDarkly – The safety control plane for AI-generated code

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: LaunchDarkly – The safety control plane for AI-generated code

13:30 – 13:34

Sponsored by

LaunchDarkly LeadDev

See how LaunchDarkly enables teams to deploy continuously whilst maintaining complete control over what users experience. In this demo, we’ll show how feature flags, progressive rollouts, and real-time impact measurement work together to let you move from idea to production in minutes, not weeks. Perfect for teams dealing with increased code velocity from AI tools or looking to modernise their deployment practices without adding risk.

  • FEATURING
    Kevin Holler
    Enterprise Solutions EngineerLaunchDarkly

    Kevin Holler is an Enterprise Solutions Engineer at LaunchDarkly, working with the companies biggest customers in the DACH region to de-risk their software and AI-driven product releases.

    View Kevin’s profile
13:45

Demo Stage

Live demo: Checkly – Shift-left monitoring with Playwright & AI

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: Checkly – Shift-left monitoring with Playwright & AI

13:45 – 13:49

Sponsored by

Checkly LeadDev

In one workflow, see how your team can write, run, and scale Playwright tests as production synthetic monitors. In 10 minutes, you’ll learn how to cut costs, boost reliability, and use AI to setup and maintain of your observability code.

  • FEATURING
    Giovanni Rago
    Head of Customer SolutionsCheckly

    Giovanni Rago is Head of Customer Solutions at Checkly. He helps development teams and organizations ship quality software and increase reliability through the use of state-of-the-art synthetic monitoring.

    He is passionate about bridging the gap between testing and monitoring and creating more efficient workflows for software development teams.

    View Giovanni ‘s profile
14:00

Demo Stage

Live demo: Vercel – From idea to web: Building at the speed of thought

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: Vercel – From idea to web: Building at the speed of thought

14:00 – 14:04

Sponsored by

See how v0 is changing the way we prototype and build products. In this session, Leo will show how to combine v0, the Vercel AI SDK and the AI Gateway to build a fully functional, modern chatbot with agentic tool calls in just ten minutes.

  • FEATURING
    Leo Reuter
    Sales EngineerVercel

    Leo Reuter is a Sales Engineer at Vercel with a background in software development and a long history of building with Next.js. These days, he helps teams across Europe create, ship, and scale modern web apps using Vercel’s platform and new AI tools like v0.

    View Leo’s profile
15:45

Demo Stage

Live demo: CircleCI – Meet Chunk: Your agent to ship at AI speed with confidence

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: CircleCI – Meet Chunk: Your agent to ship at AI speed with confidence

15:45 – 15:54

Sponsored by

CircleCI Logo LeadDev

As AI-generated code accelerates development, teams face an impossible choice: ship what you haven’t fully validated, leading to buggy production and mounting tech debt, or lose all your AI productivity gains by creating validation checkpoints that feel like finding a needle in a haystack. Enter Chunk, CircleCI’s new autonomous agent (beta) that works 24/7 to fix the critical but time-consuming parts of your software delivery process that everyone knows are important but no one has time to maintain.

In this demo, we’ll focus on Chunk’s flaky test capability, demonstrating how it autonomously analyzes and fixes non-deterministic tests while learning your team’s patterns and best practices. We’ll explain why Chunk is a fundamental shift to proactive CI/CD processes that free engineers to focus on creative problem-solving and building features that differentiate your product.

  • FEATURING
    Derry Bradley
    Senior Solutions EngineerCircleCI

    Derry is a software delivery specialist helping organizations optimize development through CI/CD solutions. He translates complex technical concepts into business value, solving implementation challenges for engineering teams. Previously at Fidelity Investments, he architected automated deployment pipelines and cloud infrastructure. Derry’s expertise spans cloud architecture, DevOps practices, and continuous delivery

    View Derry ‘s profile
16:00

Demo Stage

Live demo: Uptime Labs – Incident response training through simulation

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo Stage

Live demo: Uptime Labs – Incident response training through simulation

16:00 – 16:09

Sponsored by

Uptime Labs LeadDev

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

Make the most of your breaks with the demo stage sessions, where leading tech providers will showcase their innovative solutions in informative and concise presentations. Each carefully curated 10 minute demo will show the very best engineering solutions available.

  • FEATURING
    Joe McKevitt
    Co-Founder and CTOUptime Labs

    Joe McKevitt is the Co-Founder and CTO at Uptime Labs.

    View Joe’s profile
DIRECTORPLUS
11:30
12:00

DirectorPlus Roundtable

Director+

Growing your influence: How to become a trusted Executive Partner

A roundtable on communication and building strong relationships and influence with executives and boards.

+ More

DirectorPlus Roundtable

Growing your influence: How to become a trusted Executive Partner

12:00 – 12:00

This session is suitable for:

Director+

A roundtable on communication and building strong relationships and influence with executives and boards.

Discussion includes:

  • Communicating and building relationships with your CEO and executive team peers
  • Effectively influencing the Board
  • Influencing organizational goals, strategies, and outcomes
  • FEATURING
    Bernie Miles
    CTOPPRO

    Bernie Miles is a technology exec with over 20 years of experience in the e-commerce and fintech sectors. He has held leadership roles at prominent companies, including Expedia, Hotels.com, Klarna, and Wayfair. In December 2021, he was appointed CTO at PPRO, a global provider of local payments infrastructure. In this role, Bernie oversees a global engineering team across Munich, Berlin, London, São Paulo, Córdoba, Luxembourg and Singapore, focusing on scaling PPRO’s platform to support the company’s rapid growth trajectory. His extensive technology leadership and product development background has been instrumental in advancing cross-border payment technologies and fostering financial inclusion.

    Bernie also advises tech scale-ups, guiding investors, CTOs, CPOs, and founders. With experience in e-commerce, payments, re-platforming, and scaling teams, he offers expertise in navigating scaling tech whilst supporting global growth.

    View Bernie ‘s profile
12:00

DirectorPlus Roundtable

Director+

How to redefine performance and leadership growth in an AI-first world

Tackle tough leadership challenges with your peers.

+ More

DirectorPlus Roundtable

How to redefine performance and leadership growth in an AI-first world

12:00 – 12:00

This session is suitable for:

Director+

Details coming soon.

  • FEATURING
    Sérgio Laranjeira
    CTOMetacore

    Sérgio is passionate about engineering management, leadership and software delivery. He strives to make a meaningful impact on organizations by delivering exceptional experiences to both internal and external customers. In parallel, he is deeply committed to the cause of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I). He believes that fostering D&I is not just a moral imperative but also a strategic advantage, and actively works to create inclusive workplaces, promote D&I at various events, and drive recruitment activities that promote diversity. He dedicates his time to working with people, building a culture where individuals can be themselves and bringing great results to the business.

    View Sérgio ‘s profile