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Day 1 – October 15, 2025
Day 2 – October 16, 2025

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MAIN TRACK
08:00–09:15

Arrival & Coffee

09:15

Talk

Welcome to LeadDev New York 2025

A welcome from the host

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Talk

Welcome to LeadDev New York 2025

This session is suitable for:

A welcome to LeadDev London 2025 from the host, David Yee.

  • FEATURING
    David Yee
    VP of EngineeringThe New York Times

    David Yee is VP of Engineering at the New York Times. As an engineering leader, he’s built and scaled teams at both small and enormous companies in the worlds of journalism, music, and art—with an emphasis on product-oriented engineering and humane management.

    His career has included roles as Chief Architect and co-founder at 20×200, co-founder and CTO at Editorially, and Engineering Director of Chorus at Vox Media

    View David’s profile
09:50

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

All the things I misunderstood about being a leader

Candid insights into the biggest misconceptions about leadership and what truly makes a team exceptional.

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Talk

All the things I misunderstood about being a leader

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

I tried to behave like I thought a great leader would, and it almost killed the company.

Before we become leaders, we observe leaders, both up close and through the lens of the stories told about what great leaders do. I thought a great leader would be strong, decisive, quick to action; I thought they’d be fully transparent; I thought they’d address problems with swift, sweeping changes. And when I got my chance to be an executive at a tech startup, I tried to behave the way I thought leaders should — and it led to chaos, panic, and frustration. In this talk, I’ll share my mistakes as a first-time leader, what I thought I was supposed to do, and what actually worked instead.

Key takeaways

  • Learn common misconceptions about what leadership means
  • Hear real stories of how so-called “leadership qualities” led to poor outcomes
  • Learn counterintuitive leadership practices that get actually good outcomes
  • FEATURING
    Jason Lengstorf
    CreatorCodeTV

    Jason makes tv for developers at CodeTV. He believes that a career in tech is more successful, rewarding, and sustainable when it’s built on fun, curiosity, and community.

    View Jason’s profile
10:20

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

No one left behind: Inside the largest domain migration in history

A look at the industry’s most complex domain transfer, managed under pressure without losing a single team member.

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Talk

No one left behind: Inside the largest domain migration in history

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

The Google Domains acquisition wasn’t just any domain migration – it was the largest in the history of the domains industry. High stakes, massive complexity, tight timelines, and pressure from every direction. But here’s what made it truly remarkable: we didn’t lose a single person along the way. In this talk, you’ll learn about what it took to lead a project of this scale while keeping the team fully intact, engaged, and motivated. From tough calls to small wins that mattered, you’ll hear the real story of how we stayed aligned, avoided burnout, and came out stronger than we started.

  • FEATURING
    Divya Kamat
    Senior Software Engineering LeaderSquarespace

    Divya Kamat is an accomplished engineering leader and currently heads the engineering teams within the Squarespace Domains organization. Since joining Squarespace in 2018 as an engineer, Divya has played a pivotal role in the growth and evolution of the Domains team. She was a key contributor to the development and launch of Squarespace Registrar in 2020, led the engineering effort on the Domains org for the Google Domains acquisition and has successfully scaled the team from 8 engineers to a thriving 40-person organization. Before her tenure at Squarespace, Divya worked at Microsoft, where she built highly scalable microservices to enhance the resiliency and efficiency of Azure Stack, the company’s private and hybrid cloud solution. With deep expertise in engineering leadership, scalability, and domains, Divya brings a wealth of experience to every project she undertakes

    View Divya’s profile
10:50–11:45

Morning Break

11:45

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Beyond the code: Leading engineering teams in the GenAI era

Explore how engineering leaders can guide teams through GenAI’s rise by focusing on the critical human work AI can’t replace.

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Talk

Beyond the code: Leading engineering teams in the GenAI era

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

GenAI is fundamentally transforming software development, but the narrative that it will replace engineers or solve all our problems is misleading. In this talk, we’ll explore how leaders should approach the “70% Problem” – how AI excels at routine coding tasks but still requires significant human expertise for the critical remaining 30% that makes the difference between functional code and excellent software. How teams approach the “30% that matters” will be vital moving forward.

Drawing from real-world case studies at companies like Google, GitHub, and Microsoft, I’ll share practical strategies for engineering leaders navigating this new landscape. We’ll examine how the role of technical leadership is evolving from hands-on problem-solving to strategic guidance and ethical oversight.

You’ll learn:

  • How to establish effective “trust but verify” processes for AI-generated code
  • Strategies to prevent skill erosion and maintain code quality
  • Approaches for upskilling both junior and senior developers to thrive alongside AI
  • Techniques for measuring impact beyond speed to ensure long-term code quality
  • Frameworks for responsible AI governance and usage in your organization

Whether you’re skeptical or enthusiastic about AI coding tools, this talk will provide a balanced, pragmatic guide to leading effective engineering teams in an era where the question isn’t whether to use AI, but how to use it to build better software while keeping humans at the center of the creative process.

  • FEATURING
    Addy Osmani
    Head of Chrome Developer ExperienceGoogle

    Addy Osmani is Head of Developer Experience working on Google Chrome. He leads up teams focused on making the web fast and low-friction to build on for developers. Addy has authored a number of books and has spoken at conferences around the world.

    View Addy’s profile
12:15

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Supply chain: Data infrastructure pipeline

Discover how modern data pipelines transform supply chains, enabling real-time insights, improving data quality, and optimizing logistics through advanced analytics.

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Talk

Supply chain: Data infrastructure pipeline

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Discover how modern data infrastructure pipelines optimize supply chain operations by enabling real-time insights, improving data quality, and supporting advanced analytics for demand forecasting, inventory optimization, and smarter decision-making across logistics networks.

I architected a scalable data integration solution that transformed our supply chain analytics, enabling ML-powered predictions from multi-vendor data streams. Drawing from hands-on implementation experience, I’ll share critical insights on designing robust data pipelines for enterprise-scale operations – from handling complex edge cases to ensuring data quality at scale. Join me to discover practical strategies for building resilient data architectures that can drive significant revenue impact through enhanced logistics and supply chain operations.

Key takeaways

  • Learn how data moves through modern supply chain pipelines – from ingestion to actionable insights.
  • Gain insights into designing resilient, scalable data infrastructure that supports supply chain complexity.
  • Explore how real-time analytics drive faster, smarter decisions in inventory, demand, and logistics management
  • Discover methods to improve data accuracy and consistency across systems for better operational outcomes.
12:25

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

3 data-backed ideas to deter AI code quality problems

Learn what 250 million+ lines of code reveal about AI’s impact on code quality and how to address it.

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Talk

3 data-backed ideas to deter AI code quality problems

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Drawing from recent research of 250m+ lines of code: three risks of AI-authored code, with an idea or policy to mitigate each.

As AI continues to reduce the proportion of code guided by human experience, what is lost? This talk examines industry-scale code line data (including repos from Google, Microsoft, Meta, and 1,000+ others) to enumerate three main areas where AI-authored code bends toward incubating tech debt.

While the benefits of AI accumulate in the daylight of well-funded industry reports, the maintainability challenges of AI fester in dark corners. To illuminate how AI-authored code differs from its human counterpart, we take five years of “code operation” trends, and combine it with newly-released AI usage APIs.

The story emerging from the data suggests that historic “best practices” (e.g., DRY code) have loosened. The magnitude of this change appears unprecedented. Effective policies can mitigate the downside risk. Engineering leaders can sharpen their intuition for how to build smart policies by leveraging recently available data.

Key takeaways

  • The scale of code quality changes are measurable and unprecedented
  • There is learnable consistency in how AI can poison code quality
  • Even though we often read about profound increases in code velocity, the incentives of the companies building the LLMs remain undocumented and likely imperfect
  • Higher velocity carries new costs: better to understand them than to spike adoption without regard for long-term detriment
  • FEATURING
    Bill Harding
    CEO/ProgrammerGitClear

    Bill Harding is the founder and CEO of Alloy.dev, the company behind GitClear and Amplenote. He began programming as a teenager and has remained deeply engaged in the craft ever since. In his 20s, he founded the Bonanza.com marketplace, which consistently outperformed eBay in seller ratings before its sale in 2023.

    Outside of software development, Bill is passionate about measurement, music, writing, and research.

    View Bill’s profile
12:55

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Developing and supporting 12 SDKs with a team of 3

How Eppo by Datadog runs a dozen production SDKs with only a team of three, by treating them as a platform – not twelve separate codebases.

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Talk

Developing and supporting 12 SDKs with a team of 3

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Sponsored by

Eppo by Datadog LeadDev

Eppo by Datadog runs a dozen production SDKs to support feature flagging and experimentation at world-scale. More impressive, these SDKs are built and maintained by a small team of three. The key? Treating the SDKs as a platform, not twelve separate codebases. One Rust core holds the logic, thin adapters expose it per language, and a single conformance suite keeps behavior identical everywhere. Staff Engineer Leo Romanovsky will share how this allows them to add new longtail-usage SDKs (think C++ or Elixir) in days, fix a bug once and roll it out across the fleet, and say “yes” faster when supporting sales conversations and RFPs.

Key takeaways

  • Core design patterns and how their schema is set up to travel cleanly across SDKs
  • Config delivery you can prove: signed artifacts, edge read-through cache, surrogate-key purges, SWR, and OTel metrics (freshness age, purge lag, eval latency) rolled up per POP/org.
  • How the engineers power faster go-to-market: a “new SDK” playbook (templates, samples, conformance runner) to spin up the next language quickly
13:05–14:30

Lunch

14:30

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Marcy Lab’s 90-day lift-off playbook: Building high-impact, durable engineers

From classroom to commit: How a one-year, industry-co-designed fellowship equips engineers to ship in the AI era and the simple onboarding patterns partner teams use to turn early talent into durable performers.

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Talk

Marcy Lab’s 90-day lift-off playbook: Building high-impact, durable engineers

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

From classroom to commit: How a one-year, industry-co-designed fellowship equips engineers to ship in the AI era and the simple onboarding patterns partner teams use to turn early talent into durable performers.
14:45

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

The accidental AI revolution: How an engineering tool won over the entire company

Learn how an internal AI tool sparked unexpected company-wide adoption and became a catalyst for cross-functional productivity gains.

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Talk

The accidental AI revolution: How an engineering tool won over the entire company

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

AI adoption usually starts in engineering, but what happens when it proves so useful that the entire company wants in? That’s exactly what happened with Goose, our autonomous AI agent. Initially built as an internal developer tool, Goose helped our engineers become 20% more efficient, streamlining workflows and automating tedious tasks. But what we didn’t expect? Non-engineering teams across the company started using it too, finding creative ways to boost their own productivity.

As adoption spread organically, leadership took notice. Seeing the measurable impact, we pushed to expand Goose as a company-wide initiative.

In this talk, Angie Jones will share the journey of how an AI tool went from an engineering experiment to a business-wide enabler, the roadblocks we hit along the way, and the strategies we used to turn skeptics into superusers.

Whether you’re introducing AI at a small scale or looking to drive enterprise-wide adoption, this session will give you a playbook for making AI indispensable across your organization.

  • FEATURING
    Angie Jones
    VP Engineering, AI Tools & EnablementBlock, Inc

    Angie Jones is the VP of Engineering, AI Tools & Enablement at Block, Inc.

    An award-winning educator and international keynote speaker, Angie shares her extensive knowledge with software companies and conference audiences worldwide.

    As a Master Inventor, Angie is recognized for her innovative, out-of-the-box thinking, which has led to 27 patented inventions in virtual worlds, collaboration software, social networking, smarter planet initiatives, and software development processes.

    View Angie’s profile
15:15

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Tech lead to manager – a blueprint for successful transition

Navigate the shift from tech lead to manager with a clear roadmap, practical tools, and strategies for early success.

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Talk

Tech lead to manager – a blueprint for successful transition

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

You have recently switched from being a staff engineer/tech lead on the team to a manager. This talk covers common challenges that you may encounter during this transition and provide tools to succeed.

When you switch from being an individual contributor to an engineering manager, it can be a very lonely job as your peer group shrinks and due to confidential nature of the challenges, new managers often struggle alone and deal with imposter syndrome. In this talk, we will cover common challenges encountered in first 90 days to six months and how to build a roadmap to success.

Key takeaways

  • Understand differences in expectation of both roles and build your transition plan for success
  • Tips to win trust with direct reports and how to provide effective feedback.
  • List of books/resources/tips that can help first time managers.
  • Identify common challenges and share best practices on how to overcome them.
  • Tips to effectively manage upwards.
15:25

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Beyond the hype: What test automation really costs

Test automation promises speed and savings, but this talk reveals the hidden costs and how to avoid common strategic pitfalls.

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Talk

Beyond the hype: What test automation really costs

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

As AI accelerates coding and fuels hype to “automate everything,” the hidden costs of test automation are becoming painfully clear. This talk helps leaders evaluate ROI, avoid common pitfalls, and build smarter, more sustainable strategies.

Test automation is often pitched as the answer to faster releases, fewer bugs, and happier developers. But what’s left out of that pitch are the hidden costs: maintenance overhead, brittle frameworks, misaligned tooling, and automation that looks impressive but delivers little real value. Too often, leaders approve automation efforts without a clear strategy, or the wrong one altogether.

In this talk, I’ll break down what engineering leaders need to know before investing in test automation at scale. I’ll share stories from organizations where automation efforts failed quietly or spectacularly – and what we did to turn things around. We’ll look beyond tool choices to the organizational patterns, architectural decisions, and incentive structures that make or break automation ROI.

Whether you’re assessing a current framework or planning a new investment, this talk will help you ask better questions: What does success look like? Who owns it? Is the automation solving real problems, or just creating a false sense of coverage? You’ll walk away with a sharper understanding of how to evaluate automation strategically, so you can build confidence without burning your team or your budget. Automation can absolutely accelerate delivery – but only when it’s paired with clarity, alignment, and the right level of investment. This talk gives you the playbook to get there.

Key takeaways

  • How to spot the hidden cotsts of poorly planned automation initiatives
  • Key questions to ask before scaling or pivoting your automation strategy
  • How to align automation goals with business and team maturity
  • Common failure modes (and success signals) of test automation at scale
  • How to avoid “automation theater” and focus on meaningful outcomes
15:35

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Leadership in AI-assisted engineering

Learn leadership strategies for AI assisted engineering focusing on adoption productivity psychological safety and responsible AI use.

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Talk

Leadership in AI-assisted engineering

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Sponsored by

DX x LeadDev

An overview of the leadership strategies employed by top AI-assisted engineering organizations.

To realize meaningful returns on AI investments, leadership must take accountability and ownership of establishing best practices, enabling engineers, and ensuring proper guardrails are in place. When prompting practice and reflexive AI use is driven from the top down, engineers can align on the highest value use cases and experience peak productivity gains.In this session, Justin Reock, Deputy CTO at DX, will explain what the most effective leaders of AI enabled engineering organizations are doing to drive satisfactory utilization, augmentation, and psychological safety across their teams. Based on interviews, use cases, and data, leaders will walk away with an understanding of how to best lead their teams through mature AI rollouts.

Key takeaways

  • Measuring and improving AI adoption and efficacy
  • Nurturing a psychologically safe AI engineering culture
  • Driving adoption through grassroots initiatives and experimentation
16:05–16:45

Afternoon Break

16:45

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

From friction to function: Strengthening the product-engineering alliance

Learn practical strategies to turn product-engineering friction into alignment through better prioritization, communication, and shared decision-making.

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Talk

From friction to function: Strengthening the product-engineering alliance

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Transform product-engineering tensions into strategic partnerships by addressing prioritization conflicts, technical debt advocacy, decision-making processes, and business alignment through practical collaboration frameworks.

The product-engineering partnership forms the backbone of technical delivery, yet remains one of the most challenging relationships to navigate effectively. When this alliance falters, the consequences cascade throughout the organization: delivery timelines slip, technical quality suffers, and team morale deteriorates. Development leads and engineering managers frequently encounter specific pain points: priorities that seem to change without technical consideration, insufficient investment in system health, opaque decision-making processes, and difficulty connecting daily work to strategic objectives.

Drawing from extensive experience spanning startups to enterprise organizations, this session offers battle-tested approaches that engineering leaders can implement immediately. You’ll learn how to establish mutually respected prioritization frameworks that balance business momentum with technical sustainability, create structured processes for engineering input during product planning stages, and develop shared metrics that unite rather than divide these critical functions.

Beyond process improvements, we’ll address the critical human elements of successful collaboration: building psychological safety when advocating for technical needs, establishing confidence-building communication patterns between teams, and creating the conditions where product and engineering leaders become genuine strategic partners rather than occasional collaborators. This practical session delivers concrete tools for transforming product-engineering dynamics from a source of organizational friction to a catalyst for delivery excellence. You’ll walk away with implementation frameworks you can adapt to your specific context, regardless of your organization’s size or maturity level.

Key takeaways

  • Implement a balanced prioritization system that creates visibility for both technical health and product initiatives
  • Establish engineering’s strategic voice through structured participation models in the product development lifecycle
  • Create shared metrics and success definitions that align technical and business perspectives
  • Master effective communication strategies for technical advocacy across organizational boundaries

  • FEATURING
    Kevin Goldsmith
    CTODistroKid

    Kevin Goldsmith is the Chief Technology Officer at DistroKid with over 28 years of experience as a developer, software architect, technology manager, and senior technology executive.

    View Kevin’s profile
17:15

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

The uncomfortable middle: Growing as a Director in uncertain times

Grow as a leader of leaders through reorgs, role shifts, and team tensions in the messy middle of uncertainty.

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Talk

The uncomfortable middle: Growing as a Director in uncertain times

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Promoted to Director during a company downsizing, I navigated leading managers and teams with clashing dynamics. This talk explores leadership growth, balancing process and discomfort, and driving outcomes in challenging times.

Being promoted during a downsizing can be a jarring experience when your role grows into suddenly managing managers. This talk explores the unique challenges of growing into your new role and trying to level-up an entire department in the wake of a significant reorganization.

Key takeaways

  • How to navigate a sudden promotion during a down-sizing when morale is low and acknowledging how strange that can feel
  • Navigating leading managers with clashing dynamics as the organization adopts new processes
  • How to push a team into healthy levels of discomfort to facilitate growth, even admist all the turmoil
  • Growing as a leader of leaders during tumolt is hard and you can’t rush change (the first mistake I made)
  • The unique experience of managing the same person in different roles (IC -> manager) and the wildly different experience it was
  • Aftermath of a challenging decision to move a manager back into IC and how I wish I’d acted sooner
  • FEATURING
    George Mandis
    Software Engineering ManagerRecidiviz

    George has been many things in his 20 years career— software engineer, consultant, engineering manager, creative technologist, conference speaker, mentor and more. He enjoys helping teams build interesting things with computers and has a verifiable track record of leaving people, projects and software better than he found it. Currently he is the Senior Engineering Manager at Recidiviz. You may have also seen him previously presenting about JavaScript art projects at Microsoft Build, writing about music hardware protocols in the browser on CSS Tricks or accidentally cheating at marathons in North Korea.

    View George’s profile
17:25

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

How systems, power, and organizational design shape developer experience

Talk details coming soon

+ More

Talk

How systems, power, and organizational design shape developer experience

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

  • FEATURING
    Anil Dash
    Entrepreneur and writerIndependent

    Anil Dash is an entrepreneur, writer, and activist known for his advocacy for more humane, inclusive, and ethical technology. Honored by the Webby Awards with its lifetime achievement award in 2022, he previously led developer experience at Fastly, which he joined through its acquisition of Glitch, the developer community startup he led as CEO. Dash has served on the boards of organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Stack Overflow, was a digital strategy advisor to the Obama White House, and was a contributing editor to Wired, and has written for Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, and New York Magazine.

    View Anil’s profile
17:55

Talk

End of day wrap-up

Closing thoughts from the hosts.

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Talk

End of day wrap-up

This session is suitable for:

Closing thoughts from the hosts.

  • FEATURING
    David Yee
    VP of EngineeringThe New York Times

    David Yee is VP of Engineering at the New York Times. As an engineering leader, he’s built and scaled teams at both small and enormous companies in the worlds of journalism, music, and art—with an emphasis on product-oriented engineering and humane management.

    His career has included roles as Chief Architect and co-founder at 20×200, co-founder and CTO at Editorially, and Engineering Director of Chorus at Vox Media

    View David’s profile
18:00–19:30

Networking Mixer

INTERACTIVE SESSIONS
10:50

Office Hours

Meet the speakers

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

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Office Hours

Meet the speakers – Day 1, 10:50

This session is suitable for:

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
    Divya Kamat
    Senior Software Engineering LeaderSquarespace

    Divya Kamat is an accomplished engineering leader and currently heads the engineering teams within the Squarespace Domains organization. Since joining Squarespace in 2018 as an engineer, Divya has played a pivotal role in the growth and evolution of the Domains team. She was a key contributor to the development and launch of Squarespace Registrar in 2020, led the engineering effort on the Domains org for the Google Domains acquisition and has successfully scaled the team from 8 engineers to a thriving 40-person organization. Before her tenure at Squarespace, Divya worked at Microsoft, where she built highly scalable microservices to enhance the resiliency and efficiency of Azure Stack, the company’s private and hybrid cloud solution. With deep expertise in engineering leadership, scalability, and domains, Divya brings a wealth of experience to every project she undertakes

    View Divya’s profile
  • Jason Lengstorf
    CreatorCodeTV

    Jason makes tv for developers at CodeTV. He believes that a career in tech is more successful, rewarding, and sustainable when it’s built on fun, curiosity, and community.

    View Jason’s profile
11:00
12:00

Voltron Quest

Voltron Quest

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

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Voltron Quest

Voltron Quest

This session is suitable for:

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

  • FEATURING
    Taylor Poindexter
    Engineering Manager IISpotify

    Engineering Manager and co-founder, are both titles Taylor Poindexter holds. She is an Engineering Manager at Spotify and cofounder of Black Code Collective — an organization that strives to create a safe space for Black engineers to grow their skills and network. In her spare time, she enjoys sharing her knowledge of whiskey with anyone that will listen.

    View Taylor’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

This session is suitable for:

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but folks who are underrepresented in tech often face their own unique set of challenges. And that can lead to people feeling isolated in their experiences. 

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

  • FEATURING
    Quincy Iheme
    Senior Manager, Software Development and EngineeringComcast

    Quincy has always had a passion for technology and the industry, from the time he built his own personal computer from scratch to editing his Myspace page with basic HTML and CSS. Since attending an intensive program to learn web development, Quincy began his career at Comcast as an engineer and continues as an Engineering Manager today.

    View Quincy’s profile
  • Marqueze Sawyers
    Senior Manager Software EngineeringAsurion

    Marqueze Sawyers is a Senior Manager of Software Engineering at Asurion with over a decade of experience driving product innovation and leading cross-functional teams. His expertise includes enhancing user experience, optimizing efficiency, and managing complex projects. He leads multiple engineering teams that work across diverse technologies and use cases, ensuring they tackle challenges effectively and deliver exceptional results.

    Specializing in Agile application development, lean engineering principles, web accessibility, and integrating design systems, Marqueze brings both technical depth and strategic leadership to his work. He is passionate about continuous learning and development, consistently fostering growth within his teams and himself.

    View Marqueze’s profile
  • Boomie Odumade
    Senior Engineering LeaderTechBees

    Boomie Odumade is a dynamic senior software engineering leader with over 20 years of experience in technology, including building teams, scaling systems, and growing organizations. She also provides career coaching. She was most recently Senior Director of Engineering at a small company. Previously, she led engineering teams at NPR, Capital One, and Accenture, and co-founded Nexercise, a mobile fitness startup. Boomie is passionate about mentoring youth and supporting future STEM leaders. She holds a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering, a Master’s in Computer Science, and an MBA from Wharton.

    View Boomie’s profile
12:00

Director+ Drop In

Director+ Networking Coffee

Meet other senior leaders and grow your peer network

+ More

Director+ Drop In

Director+ Networking Coffee

This session is suitable for:

Meet other senior leaders and grow your peer network

  • FEATURING
    Caroline Lacoste
    Director of EngineeringNative Instruments

    Caroline Lacoste is a Director of Engineering at Native Instruments, where she leads the engineering teams responsible for the development of iZotope products. These AI-powered audio software products for Audio Restoration, Mixing, and Mastering provide high-quality tools for professionals in major film and TV studios, music producers, and mixing engineers. Prior to her work in the audio industry, she spent 13 years in the travel industry, including four years as a Software Engineering Manager at Amadeus Boston. In this capacity, she spearheaded a team to design and deliver solutions for airlines and travel agencies in the Americas. With a strong academic background, she holds a Ph.D. in Image Processing.

    View Caroline’s profile
  • Jared Silver
    Senior Director of EngineeringBrilliant

    Jared has spent his career improving access to effective, equitable, engaging learning experiences. His talks and writing on career development, education technology, and engineering management have been featured in TEDx, LeadDev, Developer Week, and EdSurge. Jared serves as Senior Director of Engineering at Brilliant, where he helps shape the future of learning. Prior, he was the first employee and founding engineer at Hellosaurus, which he grew through acquisition, and built the Growth Engineering team at DataCamp. Jared lives in NYC where he advises early stage founders and engineering leaders, roots for the Yankees, and consumes an irresponsible amount of pastries.

    View Jared’s profile
11:45
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?

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Spencer Taylor
    Lead Developer Relations EngineerNew Relic

    Spence Taylor is a Lead Developer Relations Engineer at New Relic, based in Los Angeles. Before his tech career, he was a US Navy sailor and a fine dining chef. He is passionate about data, cooking, and exploring the world.

    View Spencer’s profile
  • Oakley Hall
    Principal Software EngineerWalmart Global Tech

    Oakley is a Principal Software Engineer at Walmart Global Tech who focuses on solving big problems and building high-performing teams. He spends his free time with his wife and three children, fishing, and enjoying the outdoors.

    View Oakley’s profile
  • Ishita Jain
    Senior Software EngineerBloomberg

    Ishita is a software engineering team lead at Bloomberg, building multimedia workflows with her team that make photos, videos, and documents seamless to access across the Terminal and Bloomberg.com.

    Known for fostering inclusive, high-performing teams, she blends technical expertise with a global perspective shaped by living and working across APAC, EMEA, and the Americas.

    With empathy, adaptability, and a drive to turn ideas into impact, Ishita brings energy to every challenge. Outside work, she finds inspiration sketching portraits or chasing panoramic views.

    View Ishita’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How do you ensure your team knows what AI code is doing in production?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

+ More

Table Talks

How do you ensure your team knows what AI code is doing in production?

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

CircleCI Logo LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Matt Zukowski
    Engineering DirectorCedar

    Matt Zukowski is the Engineering Director at Cedar.

    View Matt’s profile
  • Iswarya Parupudi
    VP of EngineeeingVoxy

    As an engineering leader in the EdTech space, Iswarya combines technical expertise with empathy and over a decade of experience to deliver innovative solutions, scale engineering teams, and drive product strategy. She is committed to continuous learning, mentoring the next generation, and fostering inclusive environments where everyone can thrive. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling, exploring new cultures, and life as a mom of two.

    View Iswarya’s profile
  • Shelly Stuart
    Director of EngineeringCircleCI

    Shelly is an experienced engineering leader who is passionate about building a strong and supportive engineering culture that fosters diversity and growth. She is currently the Director of Engineering at CircleCI.

    View Shelly’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

Staff+

How do you know where to focus your attention as a staff+ leader?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

+ More

Table Talks

How do you know where to focus your attention as a staff+ leader?

This session is suitable for:

Staff+

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Curtis John
    Manager, Software Development and EngineeringComcast

    Over 15+ years driving software development initiatives, with a strong track record of leading, planning, and delivering technology solutions for both customer-facing and internal applications across the financial and entertainment sectors.

    View Curtis’s profile
  • Jonathan Jin
    Staff Machine Learning EngineerHinge
    View Jonathan’s profile
  • Daisy Liu
    Staff Engineering ManagerGoogle
    View Daisy’s profile
12:00

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fiona Siseman

+ More

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

This session is suitable for:

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fiona Siseman.

  • FEATURING
    Fiona Siseman
    Co-founder, Coach & FacilitatorFrank & Eddy Leadership

    Fiona is the cofounder of Frank & Eddy Leadership. She is passionate about fostering authentic, self-aware, and collaborative leadership teams through coaching and facilitating. Prior to founding Frank & Eddy, she spent 7 years at Spotify supporting product and engineering leaders (Sr, Director, VP) to lead through fast-paced change, and building a high-performing senior leadership team in a large Platform Engineering organization (for a period, leading a cross-functional organization of 130 people).

    View Fiona’s profile
12:00

Solution Swap

Experienced Manager•New Manager

I have a mix of junior and senior engineers – how do I adjust my management style to fit their needs?

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges.

+ More

Solution Swap

I have a mix of junior and senior engineers – how do I adjust my management style to fit their needs?

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges

Sometimes it can feel like every problem has only one answer – but the truth is, in leadership there’s never a single solution. But when you’re in the thick of a problem, it can be hard to get the headspace to see other ways to tackle a challenge. 

In our solution swap sessions, attendees will get the chance to say how they’d tackle a common issue and compare their ideas with how other leaders would confront the same problem. Our coaches will give direct feedback about the possible consequences (both positive and negative) of the ideas – and will ask the key question – if you were to do this, and then this happened – what would you do next?

  • FEATURING
    Alia Rose Connor
    Co-founder, Coach & FacilitatorFrank & Eddy Leadership

    Alia is the cofounder of Frank & Eddy Leadership and is passionate about building collaborative cross-functional product development teams. She is a coach and facilitator, and has been a founder and engineer. Prior to founding Frank & Eddy, she coached at Spotify during 7 years of explosive growth, where she supported product and engineering leaders (Sr, Director, VP) to lead through continual change.

    View Alia’s profile
12:30
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?

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Incident.io LeadDev

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

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Tess Shapiro
    Engineering Director, AdTech MarTechCondé Nast

    Tess Shapiro is an engineering leader with experience in ad tech, affiliate marketing, and subscription services at Conde Nast. She is a problem solver at heart, and thrives on building things — whether it’s software, teams, or relationships. Tess lives in New York City with her husband and 1 year old baby, Walker.

    View Tess’s profile
  • Philip Lee
    Principle Engineerev.energy

    Philip Lee is a Principal Engineer at ev.energy – making the world’s electric car charging simpler, greener, and cheaper. He spends his time thinking about how to become a better senior IC – hello LeadDev! – as well as indulging in too many hobbies.

    View Philip’s profile
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?

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

O'Reilly x LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Meagan Villone
    Content DirectorO'Reilly

    Meagan Villone is a Content Director at O’Reilly.

    View Meagan’s profile
  • Mattan Bitner
    Engineering ManagerAmazon

    Mattan is an engineering leader at Amazon Live Events Advertising, with extensive experience in both startups and large enterprises. He frequently speaks at technical and leadership conferences on topics such as engineering culture, growth, and long-term strategy. At home in NJ, Mattan enjoys a vibrant life with his wife and their three daughters.

    View Mattan’s profile
  • Gargee Anjikar
    Engineering ManagerRenaissance Learning

    Gargee Anjikar is an engineering manager in educational software, leading a team focused on school roster data systems. She has expertise in cloud services, data migration, and complex service rewrites, including large-scale database transitions. Passionate about applying AI and AI agents to improve efficiency and data consistency, she combines technical leadership with a focus on team growth, productivity, and building scalable solutions.

    View Gargee’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

Staff+

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

This session is suitable for:

Staff+

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Seth Wimberly
    Senior Software EngineerGoogle

    Seth is a Senior Software Engineer at Google with over a decade of experience. For the past four years, he’s been a Technical Lead, currently guiding a team of ten engineers. His professional journey is centered on technical leadership, a passion he shares by mentoring other Technical Leads to enhance their effectiveness. In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his family and focusing on fitness.

    View Seth’s profile
  • Alexandra Batchelor
    Founder & CEOPebble

    Alexandra Batchelor is the Founder & CEO of Pebble.

    View Alexandra’s profile
12:00

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fiona Siseman

+ More

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

This session is suitable for:

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fiona Siseman.

  • FEATURING
    Fiona Siseman
    Co-founder, Coach & FacilitatorFrank & Eddy Leadership

    Fiona is the cofounder of Frank & Eddy Leadership. She is passionate about fostering authentic, self-aware, and collaborative leadership teams through coaching and facilitating. Prior to founding Frank & Eddy, she spent 7 years at Spotify supporting product and engineering leaders (Sr, Director, VP) to lead through fast-paced change, and building a high-performing senior leadership team in a large Platform Engineering organization (for a period, leading a cross-functional organization of 130 people).

    View Fiona’s profile
12:00

Solution Swap

Experienced Manager•New Manager

I have to work closely with my product management peer – how do I make that relationship work?

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges.

+ More

Solution Swap

I have to work closely with my product management peer – how do I make that relationship work?

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges

Sometimes it can feel like every problem has only one answer – but the truth is, in leadership there’s never a single solution. But when you’re in the thick of a problem, it can be hard to get the headspace to see other ways to tackle a challenge. 

In our solution swap sessions, attendees will get the chance to say how they’d tackle a common issue and compare their ideas with how other leaders would confront the same problem. Our coaches will give direct feedback about the possible consequences (both positive and negative) of the ideas – and will ask the key question – if you were to do this, and then this happened – what would you do next?

  • FEATURING
    Alia Rose Connor
    Co-founder, Coach & FacilitatorFrank & Eddy Leadership

    Alia is the cofounder of Frank & Eddy Leadership and is passionate about building collaborative cross-functional product development teams. She is a coach and facilitator, and has been a founder and engineer. Prior to founding Frank & Eddy, she coached at Spotify during 7 years of explosive growth, where she supported product and engineering leaders (Sr, Director, VP) to lead through continual change.

    View Alia’s profile
13:05

Office Hours

Meet the speakers

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

+ More

Office Hours

Meet the speakers – Day 1, 13:05

This session is suitable for:

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
    Leo Romanovsky
    Staff Software EngineerDatadog
    View Leo’s profile
  • Jinal Hitesh Mehta
    Data Engineer IIAmazon
    View Jinal’s profile
  • Bill Harding
    CEO/ProgrammerGitClear

    Bill Harding is the founder and CEO of Alloy.dev, the company behind GitClear and Amplenote. He began programming as a teenager and has remained deeply engaged in the craft ever since. In his 20s, he founded the Bonanza.com marketplace, which consistently outperformed eBay in seller ratings before its sale in 2023.

    Outside of software development, Bill is passionate about measurement, music, writing, and research.

    View Bill’s profile
  • Addy Osmani
    Head of Chrome Developer ExperienceGoogle

    Addy Osmani is Head of Developer Experience working on Google Chrome. He leads up teams focused on making the web fast and low-friction to build on for developers. Addy has authored a number of books and has spoken at conferences around the world.

    View Addy’s profile
13:15
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

This session is suitable for:

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

Moderated by Jessica Tai, Career Coach & Former Engineering Manager.

  • FEATURING
    Sam Richard
    Senior Developer Relations EngineerGoogle

    Sam Richard, better known as Snugug throughout the Internet, is a Senior Developer Relations Enginner for Chrome at Google. He has a background leading software architecture, development, design, and strategy for the web at Fortune 100 companies and loves being able to share the knowledge he’s gained doing so with anyone interested through teaching, speaking, and open source work. Outside of work, Sam is an avid amateur chef, foodie, and photographer, and often combines all three.

    View Sam’s profile
  • Divya Chandrasekar
    Software Engineering Team LeaderBloomberg

    Divya Chandrasekar is a team lead at Bloomberg, where she manages FXGO Orders, one of the trading platforms within FXGO. She joined Bloomberg after earning a master’s in computer engineering from The University of Florida and has since held multiple engineering roles across the company. Known for her empathetic, non-authoritative leadership style, Divya is passionate about developing talent and building psychologically safe teams. She has presented at internal conferences and contributed to panel discussions on a range of topics. Additionally, she is a certified mental health advocate who believes emotional intelligence and empathy are key to effective, resilient leadership.

    View Divya’s profile
  • Ayush Jain
    Tech LeadMicrosoft

    With over 10 years of experience spanning startups, established tech firms and research labs, Ayush brings a versatile background in software and research engineering. Passionate about platform engineering and building impactful technology using AI, they have been leading projects focused on making software reliable, secure and performant at scale. Currently, they work in Agents platform and tools team at Microsoft that enables developers to build next generation of applications seamlessly for wide variety of business use cases.

    View Ayush’s profile
  • Sally Northmore
    Lead Software EngineerClimatebase

    Sally is a Fullstack Engineer with over 10 years of big-tech, product, studio, agency, and start-up experience, delivering world-class digital.

    View Sally’s profile
  • Jessica Tai
    Career Coach & Former Engineering ManagerJessicamtai.com

    After 11 years as an engineering manager and leader at Airbnb, Jessica has switched to being a career coach. Most recently she managed the GraphQL unified data access layer product infra team. She has given talks around the world about Service-Oriented Architecture migrations and Managing Remote Engineering Teams. She holds a Masters in CS from Stanford and a Bachelors from UCLA.

    View Jessica’s profile
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

This session is suitable for:

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but folks who are underrepresented in tech often face their own unique set of challenges. And that can lead to people feeling isolated in their experiences. 

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

  • FEATURING
    Francisco Estevez
    Software Engineering ManagerVCS HR

    Francisco Estevez is a Software Engineering Manager at VCS HR.

    View Francisco’s profile
  • Fiona Siseman
    Co-founder, Coach & FacilitatorFrank & Eddy Leadership

    Fiona is the cofounder of Frank & Eddy Leadership. She is passionate about fostering authentic, self-aware, and collaborative leadership teams through coaching and facilitating. Prior to founding Frank & Eddy, she spent 7 years at Spotify supporting product and engineering leaders (Sr, Director, VP) to lead through fast-paced change, and building a high-performing senior leadership team in a large Platform Engineering organization (for a period, leading a cross-functional organization of 130 people).

    View Fiona’s profile
  • Alex Karp
    Software Engineering ManagerThumbtack

    Alex Karp is an engineering leader with a focus on people-first management and ethical management in a late-stage capitalist society. He is also the author of “Running Start: How to get a job in tech, keep that job, and thrive”. He is currently an engineering manager at Thumbtack, and lives near Boston in the US with his wife, adorable son, and his mischievous cockapoo.

    In his spare time, he loves to play the piano, read YA fantasy fiction, and bring back the 1920s by dancing Lindy Hop.

    View Alex’s profile
13:30
12:00

Table Talks

Director+

How do you stay aware of everything going on in multiple teams?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

+ More

Table Talks

How do you stay aware of everything going on in multiple teams?

This session is suitable for:

Director+

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Joe Cardali
    Head of EngineeringConstrafor

    Joe Cardali is the Head of Engineering at Constrafor.

    View Joe’s profile
  • Carly Fleming
    Deputy Director, Data Systems and AnalyticsSEIU

    Carly Fleming (she/her) is currently a Deputy Director in the Data Systems and Analytics department overseeing the technical teams focused on building products that will help working people win. She has made a career of establishing the infrastructure needed for data teams to provide strategic value to their organization by taking a wide-range of approaches to problem solving: analytics at a large ad agency, product management at NGPVAN, data engineering at AFL-CIO, and Director of a NYC agency using data to fight against tenant harassment. Carly lives in Brooklyn, NY. She enjoys books, bikes, board games, and apparently the letter B.

    View Carly’s profile
  • Sebastiano Armeli
    Engineering LeaderMeta

    Sebastiano Armeli is an engineering leader currently at Meta. He has previously served as a Director of Engineering at Upwork and held leadership roles at companies such as Pinterest, PayPal, Snap, and Spotify. His work has spanned diverse domains including shopping, crypto, messaging, video creation, and ads.


    Sebastiano is passionate about building healthy engineering cultures, mentoring the next generation of leaders, and supporting teams through periods of growth and change. He mentors engineering managers and senior engineers, enjoys speaking at conferences, and shares his perspectives on leadership in his Substack, The Healthy Engineering Leader. He also serves on the board of a community-owned grocery store.


    In all his work, Sebastiano takes a pragmatic, people-first approach to leadership, focusing on clarity, continuous improvement, and long-term impact.

    View Sebastiano’s profile
  • Adam Berman
    VP of Engineering Semgrep

    Adam Berman is the VP of Engineering at Semgrep, building static analysis tools to improve software security. He enjoys the pendulum between IC and Manager, and has built multiple teams and products at Semgrep and Meraki. Adam is a bay area local, a proud holder of a US National Parks pass, and an ultimate frisbee player.

    View Adam’s profile
12:00

Industry Interest Groups

Meet leaders from the Banking and Financial Services domain

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

Meet leaders from the Banking and Financial Services domain

This session is suitable for:

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

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

DX x LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Tosha Ottey
    Technical Program ManagerNerdFrame

    Tosha is a Technical Program Manager and founder of NerdFrame, a consultancy specializing in fractional PMO and engineering operations. She helps teams bridge the gap between strategy and execution, addressing gaps in expertise, outcomes, or processes. Tosha brings over 14 years of experience from leading organizations including NASA, Visa, GE, and LinkedIn, where she has delivered impactful technical initiatives and driven organizational success. Through NerdFrame, she partners with organizations to strengthen their delivery capabilities and align technical execution with business objectives. When not driving innovation in the tech space, she enjoys spending time with her rescue dog, traveling, reading, and connecting with friends.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

    View Tosha’s profile
  • Carlos Rymer
    Sr. Engineering ManagerLinkedin

    Carlos Rymer is a Senior Engineering Manager at LinkedIn. He is responsible for building technology that empowers marketers to reach and engage audiences that can benefit from LinkedIn’s products. He has a background in building content publishing systems, big data analytics, and cloud computing. As an engineering leader, he invests in growing talent in and out of work, driving focus on mission, and nurturing a culture that promotes transparency, engineering excellence, and doing good.

    View Carlos’s profile
  • Justin Reock
    Deputy CTODX
    View Justin’s profile
14:00
12:00

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

This session is suitable for:

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

Moderated by Jessica Tai, Career Coach & Former Engineering Manager.

  • FEATURING
    David Giesberg
    Senior Staff Site Reliability EngineerH-E-B

    David is a Senior Staff Site Reliability Engineer at H-E-B Grocery in Austin, Texas, where he helps keep systems and engineers resilient and Texans fed. He spends his time guiding teams through service reliability and incident response challenges. He enjoys untangling messy socio-technical knots and empowering engineers to solve problems on their own. At H-E-B, he is working to expand possibilities for people on the StaffPlus individual contributor growth path.

    View David’s profile
  • Veronika Pliusnina
    Staff SDETex-Peloton, ex-Block

    Veronika Pliusnina is a seasoned Software Engineering Leader and Staff SDET with over 15 years of experience driving quality strategy, test automation, and engineering excellence across web and mobile platforms. She has led cross-functional initiatives at companies including Peloton and Cash App, where she built scalable frameworks, unified testing strategies, and mentored engineers into senior roles. With a background spanning QA to Staff leadership, Veronika is passionate about elevating developer productivity and customer experience through quality-first practices. She also co-hosts the Engineering Quality podcast, where they explore modern approaches to testing, leadership, and building resilient teams.

    View Veronika’s profile
  • Ajay George Palakuzhy
    Staff Software EngineerCoinbase

    Ajay is a Staff Software Engineer at Coinbase, where he focuses on databases, analytics, and storage infrastructure. His primary role is building high-performance scalable distributed systems. His specific expertise spans several key areas including: technical architecture, JVM optimization, SQL analytics, and financial technology systems.

    Prior to Coinbase, Ajay had over fifteen years experience as a technology leader at organizations like Meta and Goldman Sachs. He is also a Presto committer working on the open-source distributed SQL query engine for big data.

    View Ajay George’s profile
  • Jessica Tai
    Career Coach & Former Engineering ManagerJessicamtai.com

    After 11 years as an engineering manager and leader at Airbnb, Jessica has switched to being a career coach. Most recently she managed the GraphQL unified data access layer product infra team. She has given talks around the world about Service-Oriented Architecture migrations and Managing Remote Engineering Teams. She holds a Masters in CS from Stanford and a Bachelors from UCLA.

    View Jessica’s profile
  • Lesley Cordero
    Staff Software EngineerThe New York Times

    Lesley Cordero is currently a Staff Engineer at The New York Times. She has spent the majority of her career on edtech teams as an engineer, including Google for Education and edtech startups.

    She is primarily focused on platform engineering and reliability management, particularly in the observability space. Her leadership style focuses on cultivating a culture that builds with the most vulnerable employees in mind first, and she shows care for others by holding them accountable to the best versions of themselves – and by buying them the occasional bubble tea.

    View Lesley’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

This session is suitable for:

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but folks who are underrepresented in tech often face their own unique set of challenges. And that can lead to people feeling isolated in their experiences. 

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

  • FEATURING
    Yan Wang
    Engineering Team LeadBloomberg

    Yan Wang is an engineering leader at Bloomberg, where he leads a team developing automated trading workflows for financial institutions. He is passionate about building high-performance, scalable software that addresses the critical needs of the financial industry while fostering resilient, high-performing teams. With a focus on both technical excellence and leadership growth, Yan is dedicated to preparing teams to meet the evolving challenges of the industry.

    View Yan’s profile
  • Jenny Gu
    Software Engineering ManagerBloomberg

    Jenny Gu is a Senior Software Engineering Manager at Bloomberg LP, where she leads the Workflow Services team within the Enterprise Products Platform. She focuses on building scalable, high-performance systems that power critical workflows for global financial clients. With deep experience in software engineering and technical leadership, Jenny is passionate about driving innovation, growing diverse teams, and delivering solutions that bridge technology and business needs

    View Jenny’s profile
  • Mallika Rao
    Engineering ManagerNetflix

    Mallika Rao is an engineering leader with deep experience in designing and operating large-scale distributed systems, including search infrastructure. She brings a systems-thinking approach to problem-solving and is passionate about building resilient, transparent platforms that empower teams to move fast without compromising stability. Outside of work, she’s equally inspired by the structures of mathematics and the improvisation of music. She also mentors early-career engineers and leaders navigating growth in high-performance environments.

    View Mallika’s profile
14:30

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fabian Camargo

+ More

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

This session is suitable for:

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fabian Camargo.

  • FEATURING
    Fabian Camargo
    Owner, Leadership & Management CoachCamargo Consulting LLC

    Fabian Camargo is a leadership and management coach with a background in Software Engineering. He loves the craft of coaching and helping people achieve their goals while becoming their best selves. He has been coaching full-time since 2019. He has coached leaders from entry-level managers to SVP and every level in between. Prior to this, he had a 22 year career as a software engineer, making his way from entry-level engineer to Director.

    He has a Certificate in Leadership Coaching for Organizational Well-Being from George Mason University, a B.S. and M.Eng. in Computer Science from Cornell University, and is an ICF-certified coach (PCC).

    View Fabian’s profile
14:45
12:00

Table Talks

How can developer teams increase productivity while raising the security bar?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

+ More

Table Talks

How can developer teams increase productivity while raising the security bar?

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Tailscale x LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Omar Biggle
    Senior Staff Security EngineerBetterment
    View Omar’s profile
  • Leif Dreizler
    Senior Engineering Manager

    Leif is currently leading multiple teams as a Senior Engineering Manager at Semgrep, the company behind the eponymous open-source tool and Application Security platform. Previously, Leif was a manager at Twilio Segment where his team was focused on building customer-facing security features and internal security tools.

    Leif has worked in the information security space for over a decade, has helped organize multiple conferences and meetups, and is currently the co-host of the podcast 404: Security Not Found.

    View Leif’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?

This session is suitable for:

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

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Marilyn Cole
    Engineering ManagerJellyfish

    Marilyn Cole has spent a quarter century in tech, and almost a decade in tech leadership. She’s currently an Engineering Manager at a Boston-based startup, Jellyfish, that’s reimagining how engineering leaders connect with the business and their teams.

    Before Jellyfish, Marilyn spent time in engineering at Intuit, Google, Seller Labs, and Tuft & Needle. Marilyn’s interests include well-designed command line tools, beautiful and informative data visualizations, and tools to motivate people to learn, grow, and create. She also loves Tybee Island, her twin kiddos, vegan gummy candy, and Janet from The Good Place.

    View Marilyn’s profile
  • Pavel Ivanov
    Software EngineerAirtable

    Pavel is a software engineer and engineering manager with over a decade of experience building infrastructure, automation, and applications at companies including Airtable, Apple, and The New York Times. He has alternated between individual contributor and leadership roles, giving him a well-rounded perspective on scaling products and teams. Outside of work, Pavel is an active angel investor, supporting early-stage founders in Nevada and beyond through several angel groups. He also enjoys creating side projects, having shipped mobile and web apps used by thousands of people.

    View Pavel’s profile
  • Shawn Gandhi
    Director of EngineeringShopify

    Shawn has spent the last 25 years building low-latency highly available systems across the US and Canada. Early in his career, Shawn lived in NYC building ultra-low-latency single dealer platforms for Wall Street’s biggest banks, hedge funds, and exchanges. 

    He then moved to AWS helping build the world’s largest cloud computing platform, and designing planetary-scale systems for the likes of Comcast, New York Times, and the Weather Channel.

    After moving back home to Canada and launching the first Canadian AWS Region, Shawn joined the Royal Bank of Canada as the Chief Digital Architect where he married AI with day-to-day retail banking. Building on this, Shawn rejoined AWS as the Head of AI Solutions before joining Shopify.

    View Shawn’s profile
15:00

Solution Swap

Staff+

I want to be able to influence direction outside of my direct team – how can I do that?

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges.

+ More

Solution Swap

I want to be able to influence direction outside of my direct team – how can I do that?

This session is suitable for:

Staff+

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges

Sometimes it can feel like every problem has only one answer – but the truth is, in leadership there’s never a single solution. But when you’re in the thick of a problem, it can be hard to get the headspace to see other ways to tackle a challenge. 

In our solution swap sessions, attendees will get the chance to say how they’d tackle a common issue and compare their ideas with how other leaders would confront the same problem. Our coaches will give direct feedback about the possible consequences (both positive and negative) of the ideas – and will ask the key question – if you were to do this, and then this happened – what would you do next?

  • FEATURING
    Alia Rose Connor
    Co-founder, Coach & FacilitatorFrank & Eddy Leadership

    Alia is the cofounder of Frank & Eddy Leadership and is passionate about building collaborative cross-functional product development teams. She is a coach and facilitator, and has been a founder and engineer. Prior to founding Frank & Eddy, she coached at Spotify during 7 years of explosive growth, where she supported product and engineering leaders (Sr, Director, VP) to lead through continual change.

    View Alia’s profile
15:15

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fabian Camargo

+ More

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

This session is suitable for:

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fabian Camargo.

  • FEATURING
    Fabian Camargo
    Owner, Leadership & Management CoachCamargo Consulting LLC

    Fabian Camargo is a leadership and management coach with a background in Software Engineering. He loves the craft of coaching and helping people achieve their goals while becoming their best selves. He has been coaching full-time since 2019. He has coached leaders from entry-level managers to SVP and every level in between. Prior to this, he had a 22 year career as a software engineer, making his way from entry-level engineer to Director.

    He has a Certificate in Leadership Coaching for Organizational Well-Being from George Mason University, a B.S. and M.Eng. in Computer Science from Cornell University, and is an ICF-certified coach (PCC).

    View Fabian’s profile
15:30
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?

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Eppo by Datadog LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Himanshu Gupta
    Staff Software EngineerMeta
    View Himanshu’s profile
  • Kavitha Govindarajulu
    Principal Software EngineerMicrosoft

    Kavitha Govindarajulu is a Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft. As a hands-on technology leader, she has led full-stack teams of varying sizes, delivering innovative software solutions with a focus on cloud-native SaaS product engineering. She seamlessly transitions between management and individual contributor roles. Kavitha is passionate about diversity and inclusion, empowering women in tech through various initiatives.

    View Kavitha ‘s profile
  • Aaron Silverman
    Staff Engineering ManagerEppo by Datadog

    Aaron Silverman is a Staff Engineering Manager at Datadog, following its recent acquisition of Eppo. He leads the feature flagging team, which helps top software companies around the world safely deploy, test, and learn from features. Prior to Datadog and Eppo, he scaled engineering teams from three to forty engineers and contributed to successful outcomes at multiple growth-stage startups, including three exits. With deep experience in automation, data tooling, and developer productivity, Aaron brings a pragmatic approach to building high-performing teams. He is also an active advisor to rural startups in Colorado, where he lives with his family and occasionally runs mountain trails.

    View Aaron’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?

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Harness LeadDev

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

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Martin Reynolds
    Field CTOHarness

    With 30 years working in software, Martin has done a lot of things. Over that time working to deliver software at scale, to multiple platforms, with multiple technologies. He is now working with Harness, the modern software delivery platform to enable organizations and teams to deliver their software faster, more reliably, and more securely.

    View Martin’s profile
  • Jon Thornton
    Principal EngineerSquarespace

     

    Jon is a Principle Engineer at Squarespace in New York City, where supports the Squarespace Scheduling product. Previously he led product engineering teams at Blink Health and Knewton, and cofounded Arrive. Jon likes public transit, rock concerts, and NYC’s beaches.

    View Jon ‘s profile
  • Allison McHenry
    CTODaily Kos

    Allison McHenry is the CTO at Daily Kos. She has been a technical people leader at companies such as The Daily Beast, Meta, and The New York Times over the last ten years.

    View Allison’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

Staff+

How do you influence decisions effectively as a staff+ leader?

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

+ More

Table Talks

How do you influence decisions effectively as a staff+ leader?

This session is suitable for:

Staff+

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

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Stacey Watro
    Staff Software EngineerSquarespace

    Stacey Watro is a versatile software engineer with a passion for building teams, test-driven development, and paired programming. She is an experienced Spring Boot and Gradle practitioner, enthusiastic about leveraging open-source solutions to solve complex problems.

    View Stacey’s profile
  • James Socol
    Senior Staff Engineer

    James is a senior staff engineer, currently on sabbatical, who has been building high-performance teams for over a decade. As both a manager and a technical leader, he has led the adoption of practices like CI/CD, feature flagging, inner source, shifting quality and security left while shifting human testing right. James works to align teams that can move autonomously and safely.

     

    View James ‘s profile
16:05

Office Hours

Meet the speakers

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

+ More

Office Hours

Meet the speakers – Day 1, 16:05

This session is suitable for:

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
    Reuben Ogbonna
    Executive DirectorThe Marcy Lab School
    View Reuben’s profile
  • Pooja Varshneya
    Senior Engineering ManagerLyft
    View Pooja’s profile
  • Alessandra Moreira
    Director of Engineering BrainPOP
    View Alessandra’s profile
  • Justin Reock
    Deputy CTODX
    View Justin’s profile
  • Angie Jones
    VP Engineering, AI Tools & EnablementBlock, Inc

    Angie Jones is the VP of Engineering, AI Tools & Enablement at Block, Inc.

    An award-winning educator and international keynote speaker, Angie shares her extensive knowledge with software companies and conference audiences worldwide.

    As a Master Inventor, Angie is recognized for her innovative, out-of-the-box thinking, which has led to 27 patented inventions in virtual worlds, collaboration software, social networking, smarter planet initiatives, and software development processes.

    View Angie’s profile
16:15
12:00

Table Talks

Director+

How can you deliver commercial value as a senior engineering leader?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

+ More

Table Talks

How can you deliver commercial value as a senior engineering leader?

This session is suitable for:

Director+

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Lisa Ferrante-Walsh
    Senior VP of EngineeringNative Instruments

    Lisa Ferrante-Walsh is the Senior VP of Engineering at Native Instruments.

    View Lisa’s profile
  • Alexandra Batchelor
    Founder & CEOPebble

    Alexandra Batchelor is the Founder & CEO of Pebble.

    View Alexandra’s profile
  • Sebastiano Armeli
    Engineering LeaderMeta

    Sebastiano Armeli is an engineering leader currently at Meta. He has previously served as a Director of Engineering at Upwork and held leadership roles at companies such as Pinterest, PayPal, Snap, and Spotify. His work has spanned diverse domains including shopping, crypto, messaging, video creation, and ads.


    Sebastiano is passionate about building healthy engineering cultures, mentoring the next generation of leaders, and supporting teams through periods of growth and change. He mentors engineering managers and senior engineers, enjoys speaking at conferences, and shares his perspectives on leadership in his Substack, The Healthy Engineering Leader. He also serves on the board of a community-owned grocery store.


    In all his work, Sebastiano takes a pragmatic, people-first approach to leadership, focusing on clarity, continuous improvement, and long-term impact.

    View Sebastiano’s profile
12:00

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

This session is suitable for:

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

Moderated by Jessica Tai, Career Coach & Former Engineering Manager.

  • FEATURING
    Prianna Ahsan
    Software Engineering ArchitectSalesforce

    Prianna is a Software Architect at Salesforce, where she collaborates across organizations to design scalable distributed infrastructure used to power SaaS applications. Previously, she worked on Oracle Kubernetes Engine for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Prianna is passionate about distributed systems, diversity, and the intersection of the two.

    View Prianna’s profile
  • Mike Adler
    Principal Systems ArchitectEtsy

    Mike Adler is a Principal Systems Architect at Etsy, where he works on architecture reviews, incident response, engineering culture and bot management. He likes working at Etsy because they let him announce the annual winner of Etsy’s Three Armed Sweater Award— an award which celebrates the engineer who uncovered the most surprising and spectacular system behavior. Mike has been on-call for a variety of high profile and unglamorous systems and has spent decades devoted the craft of reliability. He even has a lucite plaque that proves he invented a patented system to improve website availability.

    View Mike’s profile
  • Luis Flores Martinez
    Principal EngineerFastly

    Born in Mexico City, living in San Francisco for over a decade. Currently working at Fastly, where he enjoys collaborating with incredible co-workers making the Internet a fast, reliable, and secure place.

    View Luis Flores’s profile
  • Jessica Tai
    Career Coach & Former Engineering ManagerJessicamtai.com

    After 11 years as an engineering manager and leader at Airbnb, Jessica has switched to being a career coach. Most recently she managed the GraphQL unified data access layer product infra team. She has given talks around the world about Service-Oriented Architecture migrations and Managing Remote Engineering Teams. She holds a Masters in CS from Stanford and a Bachelors from UCLA.

    View Jessica’s profile
  • Mihir Vora
    Senior Distinguished EngineerCapital One

    Mihir Vora is a Senior Distinguished Engineer at Capital One with a passion for empowering teams and driving innovation. A firm believer in “leading without authority,” Mihir has successfully balanced technical contributions with strategic leadership. With over 15 years of experience in cloud engineering, DevOps, and full-stack development, he has been instrumental in transforming the banking at Capital One through technology. His expertise in optimizing developer experience and accelerating software delivery has led to significant improvements in productivity and efficiency. He enjoys complex problem-solving and passionate about mentoring and continuous learning. When not immersed in the world of technology, Mihir enjoys the outdoors, exploring National Parks with his family, and finding hiking and running therapeutic.

    View Mihir ‘s profile
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

This session is suitable for:

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but folks who are underrepresented in tech often face their own unique set of challenges. And that can lead to people feeling isolated in their experiences. 

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

  • FEATURING
    Fellipy Ferreira
    IT Engineer LeadSantander Bank

    Fellipy Ferreira is an IT Engineer Lead at Santander Bank.

    View Fellipy’s profile
  • Anya Glowa-Kollisch
    Senior Engineering ManagerEtsy

    Anya is a seasoned engineering strategist dedicated to organizational effectiveness and outcome-minded leadership. They design programs that strengthen culture and align teams to shared goals. At Etsy, Anya has led major modernization projects on legacy customer-facing mobile apps, launched an initiative that streamlined hiring at scale in a new market, and pioneered an annual innovation event that shapes engineering roadmaps. They also coach engineers and managers, cultivating technical excellence, influence, and sustainable growth. As a Squad Advisory Board member for Lesbians Who Tech, Anya champions LGBTQ+ advancement through advocacy and community building.

    View Anya’s profile
  • Liz Hustedt
    Senior Engineering ManagerImagine Pediatrics

    Liz Hustedt fell in love with computers as soon as her hands could reach the keyboard. Her first foray into tech was a false-start, as she navigated discriminatory behavior during college. Switching majors, Liz graduated with her RN-BSN and worked as a Neuro ICU nurse for 5 years, before finally switching back into software development and fulfilling her long-time dream. She has worked in big corps, seed-stage start-ups, and mid-sized companies. Currently, she finds herself at Imagine Pediatrics as a Senior Engineering Manager.

    View Liz’s profile
18:10

Office Hours

Meet the speakers

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

+ More

Office Hours

Meet the speakers – Day 1, 18:10

This session is suitable for:

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
    Anil Dash
    Entrepreneur and writerIndependent

    Anil Dash is an entrepreneur, writer, and activist known for his advocacy for more humane, inclusive, and ethical technology. Honored by the Webby Awards with its lifetime achievement award in 2022, he previously led developer experience at Fastly, which he joined through its acquisition of Glitch, the developer community startup he led as CEO. Dash has served on the boards of organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Stack Overflow, was a digital strategy advisor to the Obama White House, and was a contributing editor to Wired, and has written for Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, and New York Magazine.

    View Anil’s profile
  • George Mandis
    Software Engineering ManagerRecidiviz

    George has been many things in his 20 years career— software engineer, consultant, engineering manager, creative technologist, conference speaker, mentor and more. He enjoys helping teams build interesting things with computers and has a verifiable track record of leaving people, projects and software better than he found it. Currently he is the Senior Engineering Manager at Recidiviz. You may have also seen him previously presenting about JavaScript art projects at Microsoft Build, writing about music hardware protocols in the browser on CSS Tricks or accidentally cheating at marathons in North Korea.

    View George’s profile
  • Kevin Goldsmith
    CTODistroKid

    Kevin Goldsmith is the Chief Technology Officer at DistroKid with over 28 years of experience as a developer, software architect, technology manager, and senior technology executive.

    View Kevin’s profile
WORKSHOP TRACK
11:45
12:00

Workshop

Beyond the hype: Measuring the real impact of AI-assisted engineering

Learn how to move beyond surface-level AI metrics to measure its true impact on engineering performance. In this hands-on workshop, you’ll apply a practical AI Measurement Framework, uncover meaningful insights on developer experience, team effectiveness, and business results, and leave with actionable strategies for maximizing AI’s value.

+ More

Workshop

Beyond the hype: Measuring the real impact of AI-assisted engineering

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

DX x LeadDev

How do we move beyond tracking surface-level AI metrics to truly understanding its impact on engineering performance?
High adoption rates and code completion percentages may look impressive on a dashboard—but do they really translate into better business outcomes?

In this immersive, hands-on workshop, you’ll go past the hype and into the reality of AI-assisted engineering. Blending cutting-edge research with practical tools you can use the very next day, the session is built for engineering leaders and DevProd teams tasked with measuring and maximizing the value of AI tools in engineering.

Through interactive exercises and simulated scenarios, you’ll apply the AI Measurement Framework to capture the full picture of AI’s effect on developer experience, team effectiveness, and business results. Participants will leave with concrete, actionable techniques: specific metrics to rethink, questions to ask their teams, and a framework for making smarter AI tool investments that truly drive developer productivity and organizational performance.
12:00

Workshop

Leadership competencies for Directors & beyond

A practical workshop for Director+ leaders to understand key competencies, assess strengths and gaps, and design a personalized leadership growth plan.

+ More

Workshop

Leadership competencies for Directors & beyond

This session is suitable for:

You’ve made it to Director or beyond – congratulations! But now what? The career ladder gets fuzzy, expectations aren’t clear, and you’re left wondering: “Am I actually doing this right?” You’ve moved further away from managing the day-to-day work to developing other leaders, influencing strategy, and navigating complex organizational dynamics. The stakes feel higher, but the roadmap for success isn’t obvious. This workshop gives you a framework to answer that question and more. We’ll walk through the core competencies that define effective senior engineering leaders. You’ll assess yourself against these competencies, identify your strengths and gaps, and create your own customized development plan to chart your continued growth as a leader.

In this workshop, you’ll:

  • Understand the key competencies that define successful Director+ leaders
  • Assess your current strengths and development areas across 7 core competencies
  • Build a personalized action plan for your continued growth

Who should attend

Directors, VPs and CTOs who want clarity on expectations, feedback on their performance, and a roadmap for continued development.

  • FEATURING
    Suzan Bond
    Founder & CEOConstellary

    Suzan Bond is the founder and CEO of Constellary. With nearly two decades in tech, Suzan has worked with hundreds of engineering leaders and leadership teams to help them navigate change and meet the challenges of organizational leadership. Her work these days includes preparing new directors for the role, coaching senior engineering leaders and creating cohesive leadership teams.

    View Suzan’s profile
14:30
12:00

Workshop

Staff+

Making your Staff+ impact visible

Practical workshop equipping Staff+ engineers with tools to showcase achievements, amplify influence, strengthen reputation, and gain recognition across organizations.

+ More

Workshop

Making your Staff+ impact visible

This session is suitable for:

Staff+

Practical strategies to amplify your  influence and get your leadership, expertise, and impact recognized across your organization and beyond, 

You’ve just landed a new Staff+ position — congratulations! But here’s the catch: the bar for your impact has just skyrocketed. You’re now expected to influence entire teams and shape the organization’s direction — yet much of that work is invisible, hard to measure, and might feel undervalued.

If your contributions feel underestimated or invisible—slowing your growth—you’re not alone. As a Staff+ engineer, the challenge isn’t just doing the work—it’s ensuring that work is seen and recognized.

The workshop “Building Visibility as a Staff+ Engineer” will help senior individual contributors develop actionable strategies to increase recognition for their leadership, expertise, and impact within and beyond their organizations. 

Attendees will practice hands-on tools to articulate their achievements and foster recognition from peers, stakeholders, and the broader industry.

In this workshop you’ll learn how to:

  • Map your visibility gaps and opportunities with a practical perception worksheet
  • Turn everyday artifacts into multipliers (use design docs, updates, and PRs) to communicate impact effectively
  • Leverage recognition tools like kudos, interviews, and initiatives to strengthen your internal reputation
  • Apply key communication skills to position your work

  • FEATURING
    Krys Flores
    Staff Software EngineerCrunchyroll

    Krys Flores is a Staff Software Engineer at Crunchyroll on the Partner Engineering team. She has previously held Staff Software Engineer roles at Carta and Lob, and earlier in her career worked at Simple Habit and Nordstromrack.com | HauteLook.

    A self-taught engineer, Krys found her path into tech through persistence and curiosity and has built a career she loves. She is passionate about empowering underrepresented communities through mentoring, sponsoring, and speaking. She also shares resources to support those transitioning into tech.

    View Krys’s profile
12:00

Workshop

Team building in the age of AI

AI is transforming how engineering teams work—and how leaders lead. In this interactive workshop, you’ll build your team’s AI charter, rethink your role as a leader, and learn how to grow the high-value human skills your team needs to thrive in an AI-powered world.

+ More

Workshop

Team building in the age of AI

This session is suitable for:

The integration of AI into engineering teams isn’t just changing how work gets done—it’s fundamentally shifting team dynamics, individual roles, and the emotional landscape of leadership.

In this interactive workshop, you’ll tackle the real challenges: creating clear agreements about AI use on your team, evolving your leadership approach in the age of AI, and identifying the skills your team needs to succeed in this new reality. You’ll leave with practical tools including a framework for building your team’s AI charter, strategies for navigating your evolving leadership role, and a clear approach for developing the human skills that become more valuable as AI handles routine work.

In this workshop you’ll learn how to:

  • Create your team AI charter
    • Establish clear, shared agreements about how your team will use AI tools, what standards you’ll maintain, and where human judgment remains essential.
  • Navigate your evolving role
    • Shift from managing tasks to developing capabilities, balancing team members at different AI adoption levels, and leading effectively in the new landscape.
  • Develop the skills your team needs most
    • Identify and intentionally build the critical capabilities like complex problem framing, systems thinking, and cross-functional communication that become more valuable when AI handles routine work.

  • FEATURING
    Suzan Bond
    Founder & CEOConstellary

    Suzan Bond is the founder and CEO of Constellary. With nearly two decades in tech, Suzan has worked with hundreds of engineering leaders and leadership teams to help them navigate change and meet the challenges of organizational leadership. Her work these days includes preparing new directors for the role, coaching senior engineering leaders and creating cohesive leadership teams.

    View Suzan’s profile
16:45
12:00

Workshop

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

Learn to “read your systems” by analyzing code, PRs, and feedback flows to uncover bottlenecks, optimize teams, and accelerate delivery.

+ More

Workshop

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

This session is suitable for:

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
    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
  • Shelly Stuart
    Director of EngineeringCircleCI

    Shelly is an experienced engineering leader who is passionate about building a strong and supportive engineering culture that fosters diversity and growth. She is currently the Director of Engineering at CircleCI.

    View Shelly’s profile
12:00

Workshop

Building a metrics-driven team

Drawing on insights from Accelerate, Jez Humble explores how to use data to drive improvement across your engineering teams. You’ll learn the key metrics that predict success, the principles behind them, and how to create a transparent, aligned, and high-performing organisation.

+ More

Workshop

Building a metrics-driven team

This session is suitable for:

As described in Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps, organisations adopting principles and practices from the Lean Software and DevOps movements are seeing payoffs in terms of higher quality, better reliability, faster delivery, and reduced costs.

Leaders wanting to achieve these results will need to understand how to build a transparent, aligned metrics-driven team in order to successfully navigate their improvement journey.

Using material from Accelerate, Jez Humble will discuss:

  • Important concepts in measurement
  • Known predictors of success that any team can use
  • A tool to apply them
  • FEATURING
    Jez Humble
    Site Reliability EngineerGoogle

    Jez Humble is co-author of several books on software: Jolt Award winner Continuous Delivery, Lean Enterprise, The DevOps Handbook, and Shingo Publication Award winner Accelerate. He has spent his career working on code, infrastructure, and product development in companies of varying sizes across three continents, from startups to the US Federal Government, and taught classes in software engineering and product development at UC Berkeley. He was co-founder and CTO of DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment), which was acquired by Google in 2018. He currently serves as the technical lead of the SRE team for Google Cloud’s Serverless products (Cloud Run and App Engine).

    View Jez’s profile
SOLUTIONS TRACK
11:00

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

This session is suitable for:

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
    Jim Crowley
    Solutions ArchitectCircleCI

    Jim Crowley is a Solutions Architect at CircleCI, where he guides Fortune 500 companies through their CI/CD transformations. He partners with enterprises across tech, government, and financial sectors to build automation solutions that actually work. Previously at IBM, Jim brings battle-tested experience to his mission of making deployment pipelines less painful. Outside of automating everything, Jim can be found hiking local trails or in his garage, where ambitious DIY projects test the limits of his YouTube University education.

    View Jim’s profile
11:15

Demo stage

Live demo: Incident

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo stage

Live demo: Incident

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Incident io logo

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.
11:30

Demo stage

Live demo: Tailscale – How to connect to anything, anywhere with Tailscale

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo stage

Live demo: Tailscale – How to connect to anything, anywhere with Tailscale

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Tailscale x LeadDev

Sick of network headaches? Magically connect your devices anywhere—no confusing firewall rules needed. It creates a secure private network that just works, whether you’re at home, the office, or traveling. Think VPN, but without the pain. One click setup and you’re done. Connect everything, everywhere, instantly

  • FEATURING
    Kabir Sikand
    Product Manager: Networking, Services, ClientsTailscale

    Kabir Sikand is a Product Manager at Tailscale.

    View Kabir’s profile
13:05

Demo stage

Live demo: DX – How to measure AI’s impact on developer productivity with DX

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo stage

Live demo: DX – How to measure AI’s impact on developer productivity with DX

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

DX x LeadDev

To thrive in the AI era, engineering leaders need clear metrics on the effectiveness of AI coding tools and agents. In this session, we’ll demo how organizations like Adyen, Block, and Booking.com use DX to measure AI’s impact on developer productivity. See how they’re answering questions such as: Which tools are driving the most value? How is AI affecting quality and delivery? Are our enablement efforts working?

  • FEATURING
    John Weil
    Enterprise Sales ExecutiveDX

    John Weil is an Enterprise Sales Executive at DX.

    View John’s profile
13:20

Demo stage

Live demo: Harness – From toil to triumph: Real-world journeys to platform-driven software delivery

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo stage

Live demo: Harness – From toil to triumph: Real-world journeys to platform-driven software delivery

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Harness LeadDev

Discover how leading enterprises overcame DevOps complexity and manual toil by adopting a Software Delivery Platform. Through engaging real-world stories—like those of United Airlines and Experian—you’ll learn how teams scaled platform engineering, implemented intelligent automation, and achieved governance without slowing innovation.

Attendees will leave with actionable strategies to:

  • Eliminate repetitive DevOps toil and accelerate release cycles
  • Adopt platform engineering for repeatable, resilient software delivery
  • Integrate automated governance and AI-powered security into the delivery workflow
  • Optimize engineering processes for agility and sustainable cloud cost management

A unified, modular platform has helped organizations unlock faster innovation, higher software quality, and tangible business impact. Get inspired by what’s possible—and ready to take practical next steps on your own modernization journey.

  • FEATURING
    Martin Reynolds
    Field CTOHarness

    With 30 years working in software, Martin has done a lot of things. Over that time working to deliver software at scale, to multiple platforms, with multiple technologies. He is now working with Harness, the modern software delivery platform to enable organizations and teams to deliver their software faster, more reliably, and more securely.

    View Martin’s profile
13:35

Demo stage

Live demo: Postman

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo stage

Live demo: Postman

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Postman 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.
13:50

Demo stage

Live demo: Sonar – How SonarQube fuels AI-enabled development and builds trust into every line of code

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo stage

Live demo: Sonar – How SonarQube fuels AI-enabled development and builds trust into every line of code

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Sonar 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.
14:05

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

This session is suitable for:

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.
14:20

Demo stage

Live demo: Outsystems – Generate enterprise apps in minutes with AI-powered mentor and agent workbench

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

+ More

Demo stage

Live demo: Outsystems – Generate enterprise apps in minutes with AI-powered mentor and agent workbench

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

OutSystems 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
    Mike Burgio
    Manager Solutions ArchitectureOutsystems

    Mike Burgio is a Manager Solutions Architecture at Outsytems.

    View Mike’s profile
16:10

Engineering in Action

Engineering in Action with Revelo

Learn how real engineering teams turn ideas into practice.

+ More

Engineering in Action

Engineering in Action with Revelo

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Revelo LeadDev

Learn how real engineering teams turn ideas into practice.

  • FEATURING
    Lucas Mendes
    Founder and CEORevelo

    Lucas Mendes is the founder and CEO of Revelo, the leading platform that helps US companies find, hire and pay full-time remote software engineers in Latin America. Revelo boasts a network of 400,000 pre-vetted engineers, and has placed developers from 15 LatAm countries in hundreds of US companies. Holding a Computer Engineering degree from Ecole Polytechnique (Paris), Lucas previously worked at Goldman Sachs and Bain & Company. He holds an MBA from Stanford University.

    View Lucas’s profile
MAIN TRACK
08:00–09:20

Arrival & Coffee

09:20

Talk

Welcome to LeadDev New York 2025

A welcome from the host

+ More

Talk

Welcome to LeadDev New York 2025

This session is suitable for:

A welcome to LeadDev London 2025 from the host, David Yee.

  • FEATURING
    David Yee
    VP of EngineeringThe New York Times

    David Yee is VP of Engineering at the New York Times. As an engineering leader, he’s built and scaled teams at both small and enormous companies in the worlds of journalism, music, and art—with an emphasis on product-oriented engineering and humane management.

    His career has included roles as Chief Architect and co-founder at 20×200, co-founder and CTO at Editorially, and Engineering Director of Chorus at Vox Media

    View David’s profile
09:30

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

A reality check on AI’s impact on business transformation

Discover how AI unlocks high-value opportunities beyond code generation, transforming businesses and maximizing the impact of engineering time.

+ More

Talk

A reality check on AI’s impact on business transformation

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Drawing on his experience working on internal engineering projects and with large clients, Dilip Krishna will help identify the best opportunities for AI to make an impact on your business beyond code generation and the implications this has on the way we value engineering time.

  • FEATURING
    Dilip Krishna
    Managing Director and Global CTO for SustainabilityDeloitte

    Dilip Krishna is a Managing Director and Global CTO for Sustainability, responsible for setting Deloitte’s technology vision as well as engineering and operating software solutions using the latest Gen AI, automation and cloud technology to serve clients with their sustainability initiatives. Dilip also leads Greenspace Tech, an AI-enabled climate-tech advisory that Deloitte uses to help clients execute climate strategies.

    In these roles, he brings his 30 years of technology, analytics, consulting and industry experience to helping clients effectively apply new and disruptive technology to effect transformative business changes using AI/analytics/big data, cloud and cyber security. Prior to Deloitte, Dilip served as a partner at Teradata Corporation where he oversaw the Professional Services practice in financial services, working closely with large banking clients to implement
    some of its largest analytics systems. He has worked with government agencies in regulation and transparency, including being called upon to offer expert testimony to the Financial Services Subcommittee of the US House of Representatives.

    In addition, Dilip has been widely published and quoted in the areas of sustainability technology, AI and automation. He is a senior editor and contributing author of the Handbook of Financial Data and Risk Information (Cambridge University Press).

    View Dilip’s profile
10:00

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Predictable is better than fast

Explore how prioritizing predictability over speed leads to more sustainable progress, stronger teams, and faster outcomes in the long run.

+ More

Talk

Predictable is better than fast

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Prioritizing predictability over speed leads to faster, more sustainable software development. Learn how stable workflows, better planning, and reliable systems drive long-term efficiency and team success.

In the relentless pursuit of speed, many software teams sacrifice predictability – leading to brittle systems, frustrated developers, and tighter delivery timelines. But what if prioritizing predictability actually leads to faster outcomes in the long run?

In this talk, we’ll explore why predictability is a fundamental pillar of effective software development. We’ll discuss how predictable systems reduce cognitive load, enhance collaboration, and improve decision-making. Using real-world examples from engineering teams, we’ll contrast the hidden costs of “move fast and break things” with the long-term benefits of steady, reliable progress.

Attendees will leave with actionable insights on fostering predictability through better processes, tooling, and team culture – ultimately enabling them to deliver software that’s both stable and sustainably fast.

Key takeaways

  • Why predictability leads to more efficient development cycles
  • How to implement strategies for making teams and systems more predictable
  • Real-world examples of teams that have benefited from prioritizing predictability
  • FEATURING
    Chris Bigelow
    Engineering ManagerLovevery

    Chris is the Engineering Manager at Lovevery, where he leads a team dedicated to helping toddlers and parents around the globe find joy and learning through play. His previous roles include leading frontend and backend teams to launch and enhance financial investing apps at Stash and deliver predictive machine learning tools for e-commerce at Black Crow AI.

    A well-traveled nerd, Chris has pet a baby whale in Mexico, ridden inside a giant mechanical elephant in France, rafted to glow worms in New Zealand, and kicked a deflated kickball in an abandoned Soviet mining town in the Arctic Circle.

    View Chris’s profile
10:10

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Finding the spark: Unlocking growth potential on your team

Learn a practical framework to spot different growth needs on your team and support each person’s development effectively.

+ More

Talk

Finding the spark: Unlocking growth potential on your team

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Not everyone on your team is chasing a promotion, and that’s okay. This talk gives you a practical framework for spotting what kind of growth each person needs and how to help them get there.

Every team is made up of individuals with different motivations, strengths, and growth trajectories. Some are hungry for the next big challenge. Others are steady, consistent, and quietly keeping things running. And then there are the folks who might be stuck or even holding your team back.

In this 25-minute talk, we’ll walk through a simple but powerful framework to help you identify who’s ready for more, who needs a different kind of challenge, and who may need direct support to improve. We’ll explore the differences between rock stars and superstars, how to recognize medium and low performers, and how to tailor your development conversations accordingly.

And because we don’t all have an unlimited budget for promotions, raises, or new roles, we’ll also cover creative, cost-effective ways to offer meaningful growth opportunities – like stretch assignments, mentorship, and skill-building projects—that help your team grow without breaking the budget.

You’ll leave with a clear lens to evaluate performance beyond just outputs and learn how to create growth plans that actually stick.

Key takeaways

  • A framework for identifying performance and growth profiles across your team
  • How to differentiate between rock stars and superstars (and why that matters)
  • Approaches to keep steady contributors engaged without burning them out
  • Tactics for coaching low and medium performers toward improvement
  • Why personalized development is the key to long-term team health and retention

  • FEATURING
    Kelly Vaughn
    Sr. Engineering ManagerZapier

    Kelly Vaughn is an engineering leader, entrepreneur, and side project aficionado. She is currently Sr. Engineering Manager at Zapier and is passionate about coaching individual contributors into leadership roles and mentoring engineering managers to be impactful, empowering leaders. When she’s not working, you’ll probably find her running, traveling to a new country, or spending time at a coffee shop to make a tiny dent in her never-ending book collection.

    View Kelly’s profile
10:40

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Pay your (conflict) debts on time

Learn how unresolved conflict quietly erodes teams and how to tackle it early with clear and constructive leadership practices.

+ More

Talk

Pay your (conflict) debts on time

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

We’ve all worked at that place where the air felt thick. Or so-and-so wouldn’t talk to so-and-so. How does that environment come to be, and how do we influence our organization to embrace a culture of feedback?

Unspoken tension. Silent resentment. That decision you let slide, even though it was the wrong one. These aren’t just interpersonal hiccups—they’re conflict debt, and over time, they accrue interest in the form of bottlenecks, misalignment, and team dysfunction.

In this talk, I’ll make the case for addressing conflict early and often – not as a side skill, but as a core leadership competency. Drawing from Liane Davey’s concept of conflict debt and years of firsthand engineering leadership experience, I’ll explore how avoiding hard conversations quietly erodes team trust and productivity. More importantly, I’ll offer frameworks and practical language for navigating conflict directly, constructively, and without fear.

If you’ve ever walked out of a meeting thinking, “We didn’t really agree on that,” or let silence pass as consensus – this talk is for you.

Key takeaways

  • What is conflict debt, and how does it show up in technical and cross-functional teams?
  • How does unresolved conflict silently slow down delivery, trust, and morale over time?
  • What stops us from addressing conflict directly—and how can we move through that discomfort?
  • How can we create a culture that normalizes healthy conflict without descending into dysfunction?

  • FEATURING
    Liz Hustedt
    Senior Engineering ManagerImagine Pediatrics

    Liz Hustedt fell in love with computers as soon as her hands could reach the keyboard. Her first foray into tech was a false-start, as she navigated discriminatory behavior during college. Switching majors, Liz graduated with her RN-BSN and worked as a Neuro ICU nurse for 5 years, before finally switching back into software development and fulfilling her long-time dream. She has worked in big corps, seed-stage start-ups, and mid-sized companies. Currently, she finds herself at Imagine Pediatrics as a Senior Engineering Manager.

    View Liz’s profile
11:10–11:50

Morning Break

11:50

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Building ethical AI: Transparency, bias mitigation, and trust

Explore how to build trustworthy, human-centered AI by prioritizing transparency and effectively mitigating bias, discrimination, and ethical risks.

+ More

Talk

Building ethical AI: Transparency, bias mitigation, and trust

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

As AI use grows, so does the need for transparency and interpretability to mitigate bias, racism, and discrimination. This talk covers building trustworthy, human-oriented AI.

The need for interpretable artificial intelligence systems grows along with the prevalence of artificial intelligence applications in everyday life. Despite the successes, these systems have their limitations and drawbacks. The most significant ones are the lack of transparency and interpretability behind their behaviors, which leaves users with little understanding of how particular decisions are made by these models. Every day, new cases of bias, racism, and discrimination are reported by users of these systems. In this talk, I discuss bias in AI, how to mitigate them to build trustworthy AI products using a human-oriented and critical approach.

Key takeaways

  • Importance of Transparency: Understand the critical need for transparent AI systems to build user trust and ensure accountability in decision-making processes.
  • Mitigating Bias: Learn strategies to identify and mitigate bias in AI models to prevent discrimination and promote fairness.
  • Human-Centered Approach: Emphasize the importance of a human-oriented approach in AI development, ensuring that ethical considerations are prioritized.
  • Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Recognize the role of various tech professionals, including software engineers, data engineers, and data scientists, in creating ethical AI.
  • Real-World Impact: Reflect on the real-world implications of AI products and the responsibility of tech professionals to create systems that positively impact society.
  • FEATURING
    Carla Vieira
    Senior Data Engineer QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey
    View Carla’s profile
12:20

Talk

From prompt to production: Making AI work in your development flow

Discover how to move beyond prompt experiments and design AI-first workflows that boost developer productivity and collaboration.

+ More

Talk

From prompt to production: Making AI work in your development flow

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Warp LeadDev

AI is changing the way software gets built, but real productivity boosts require more than experimenting with a few prompts. This talk will explore how development is changing with AI and how to set up your engineering team for success with AI-first development.

While most developers have dabbled with AI coding tools, few teams have truly reimagined their workflows around them. This talk will review what development workflows look like when AI becomes a first-class collaborator, enabling engineers to focus on higher-level problem solving.

The average developer who integrates AI into their workflows saves 5 hours a week. We’ll break this down and share practical tips for using AI effectively, like how to structure prompts for clarity, set guardrails that protect code quality, and decide when to keep humans in the loop. Beyond individual use, you’ll learn strategies for getting buy-in for AI products across your team: starting small, encouraging experimentation, and building a culture of trust.

Finally, we’ll take a forward look at how development will continue to evolve as AI grows smarter, more independent, and becomes an ambient tool in your toolkit. Whether you’re a leader looking to leverage AI yourself or whether you’re trying to guide your team, you’ll walk away with a clear vision of how to embrace AI in your workflows today while preparing for what’s next.

Key takeaways

  • What AI-driven dev flows look like today and where they’re heading in the coming months
  • Tips for effective AI use – prompt structure, guardrails, and staying in control
  • Concrete ways to start integrating AI into your development practice now
12:30

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

From hallucinations to hard truths: Real lessons in production AI

Learn crucial lessons from a year of scaling AI in FinTech: what broke, what burned, and what we’d do differently.

+ More

Talk

From hallucinations to hard truths: Real lessons in production AI

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Building AI products sounds exciting, until reality hits. I’ll share honest lessons from a year of scaling AI at a FinTech startup: what broke, what burned, and what we would absolutely do differently next time.

When I set out to build an AI engineering org at GoodLeap, a high-growth FinTech startup, I thought it would be straightforward: hire smart engineers, pick good models, set clear goals. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Turns out, AI isn’t just another layer you slap onto a tech stack. It changes everything: how you hire, how you build, and how you operationalize and support production systems. If you underestimate those shifts (we did), you’ll pay for it later (we did).

This talk is a field guide to the real, messy work of building AI systems in a fast-growing company. I’ll share:

  • Hiring AI talent: How hiring brilliant ML specialists without strong engineering instincts led to major gaps, and what an ideal hiring framework should have looked like. You’ll leave with practical frameworks you can use to hire AI engineers who can build and own systems, not just models.
  • Operationalizing Proofs of Concept (POCs): How launching a promising POC without real production planning caused model drift, hallucinations, and a lot of late-night firefighting. You’ll learn how to operationalize POCs the right way, and when to say “not yet” to production.
  • Integrating AI as infrastructure: Why treating AI like a “feature” instead of an infrastructure change set us back, and what engineering leaders should do instead. This includes how to prep your engineering org for AI ops challenges before they hit.
  • Driving AI adoption: How our best AI tech demos failed to win buy-in until we embedded AI inside real product teams (and stopped trying to “sell” AI separately). You’ll discover how to create AI adoption by solving real user and business problems first.

If you’re leading teams through AI adoption or thinking about it, this is the talk I wish someone had given me a year ago.

Key takeaways

  • AI initiatives need different hiring strategies: Focus on systems builders over pure researchers.
  • Moving POCs into production demands discipline, not just technical optimism.
  • Operational resilience matters more than flashy model performance.
  • Winning business buy-in requires embedding AI inside real workflows, not running it as a parallel innovation track.
  • Mistakes are inevitable, but they can become the engine for faster, more sustainable AI scaling if you learn deliberately.
12:40

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

All of this has happened before

A mother-daughter conversation revealing how past tech trends mirror today’s AI hype and what we can learn.

+ More

Talk

All of this has happened before

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

An inter-generational (mother-daughter) conversation about the history of repeating trends in the tech and software industry and how they have surfaced once more in our modern AI climate.

“AI will mean no one needs software engineers anymore!”

“We can just write the spec and the LLM will do all the coding!”

“What happens if we hire software engineers who turn out not to be able to code?”

We’ve all heard versions of these statements (and others) as AI trends seize the industry. What many of us don’t know is that none of these are actually new claims or new fears. As a child I was privileged to hear about trends, blind alleys, failures, and successes in the software industry at large from my mother, who worked as an engineer for 50 years (from the mid 1960s to the mid 2010s).

I’d like to invite the audience to join me for an interview with my mother about our industry’s history. We’ll discuss past trends, including COBOL and “4GL” languages, which were supposed to replace the need for skilled engineers; the industry’s earlier forays into offshoring software implementation; and some historical struggles to hire good engineers. Learning from our history can give us all significant insight into likely outcomes of current trends, and point us to the most productive ways to use new technology without getting lost in hype. Even if it’s different this time, our history can show us the traps and pitfalls to avoid in a brave new world.

Key takeaways

  • The software industry has, over and over, insisted that this new thing will mean we “don’t need programmers/SWEs”
  • This promise has never materialized, because “writing code” is not the hard part of software engineering
  • Understanding the history of the industry is incredibly valuable for predicting its future
13:10–14:35

Lunch

14:35

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Tackling tech debt

A seasoned CTO shares strategies and lessons on identifying, communicating, and effectively tackling tech debt across diverse companies.

+ More

Talk

Tackling tech debt

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Sooner or later, tech debt accumulates. Much like financial debt, it’s not universally a bad thing. After all, sometimes we need to build something fast to test & learn, or meet an external deadline, or have to accept something imperfect in order to make progress. But the problem comes when you start paying your mortgage on your credit card.

In this talk, join a seasoned CTO talking through their real-life experiences of categorizing, understanding, evangelizing about, and tackling tech debt across a range of company types and sectors.

  • FEATURING
    Meri Williams
    CTO, NED & AdvisorPleo

    Meri is an experienced CTO and leader of technology organisations. They particularly enjoy helping others to level up as technical leaders and managers of organizations by working as a CTO coach and tech advisor / NED to various companies in this capacity through micro-consultancy ChromeRose.

    They have led teams ranging in size from 30 to 300, in a range of organizations from Procter & Gamble, to the Government Digital Service, award-winning online print company MOO, mobile-first challenger bank Monzo and patient-inspired AI-driven rare disease treatment discovery company Healx, amongst others.

    Together with their wife, they run the micro-charity One Goes Up, which supports young women and non-binary folks in pursuing STEM education and careers.

    View Meri’s profile
15:05

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Leading without committing: Managing teams outside your tech stack

Learn how to lead engineering teams outside your expertise by building trust, enabling growth, and empowering without micromanaging.

+ More

Talk

Leading without committing: Managing teams outside your tech stack

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

You don’t need to be a technical expert to be a great manager – learn how to lead, support, and challenge teams working across unfamiliar tech stacks.

Drawing from experience as a former iOS engineer turned multi-stack engineering manager, the speaker explores how strong leadership isn’t about knowing every line of code but about creating an environment where engineers can thrive. Attendees will learn how to build trust and credibility without being the most technically knowledgeable person in the room – through better team processes, advocating for systems improvements, and enabling peer-driven growth.

The session also covers concrete tactics for supporting technical development: sourcing quality feedback, fostering mentorship structures, and knowing when to bring in outside expertise. With insights from both sides of the reporting line – as a manager and as an engineer reporting to non-experts – this talk highlights how leadership grounded in empowerment, not micromanagement, drives lasting team success.

Key takeaways

  • How to quickly build technical trust without being a deep expert
  • Creative strategies to support engineers’ growth beyond hands-on code reviews
  • Why effective leadership means empowering, not micromanaging
  • Lessons learned from managing – and being managed – outside the tech stack
  • FEATURING
    Robin Bonatesta
    Engineering ManagerRent the Runway

    Robin Bonatesta is a seasoned engineering leader with a passion for crafting innovative B2C subscription mobile applications. Currently serving as an Engineering Manager at Rent the Runway, she oversees a diverse team of international engineers. With a unique academic background encompassing both computer science and fashion merchandising, Robin brings a specialized focus on the retail and fashion industries, particularly in catering to millennial women. A former Venture For America fellow, she has lent her expertise to companies of all sizes, including Bark, theSkimm, and Cladwell. Her happy place is being curled up on the couch with a good book and her dachshund mix Toblerone.

    View Robin’s profile
15:45

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Interviewing in the age of AI

Rethink technical interviews for an AI-enhanced world by focusing on timeless engineering skills and real-world problem solving.

+ More

Talk

Interviewing in the age of AI

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Interviewing needs to evolve in an AI (enhanced) world. This talk explores what traditional interviews now miss, which skills matter more than ever, and how we can design pipelines that truly identify engineering potential.

In a world where AI can help candidates solve coding problems, craft “perfect” answers, and even simulate system design conversations, current interviewing practices are struggling to keep up. If your process is optimized for by-the-book answers, clever tricks, or perfect resumes, it’s likely measuring the wrong things.

In this talk, we’ll explore how AI is reshaping the landscape of technical interviewing and where it leaves critical gaps. We’ll discuss which timeless skills AI can’t replace, like debugging unexpected issues, evaluating trade-offs, or exploring ambiguous problems. We’ll look at why some traditional signals are now weaker signs of success, and share practical ideas for designing interviews that better surface the skills that matter to us.

Whether you’re responsible for hiring one engineer or scaling an entire organization, rethinking your interview process isn’t just important, it’s necessary. This talk will provide you and your team with frameworks and strategies to build a hiring process that’s resilient, fair, and aligned with the realities of 2025 and beyond.

Key takeaways

  • Understand how AI tools are impacting traditional technical interviews.
  • Identify critical engineering skills that remain and benefit of being human-driven.
  • Learn practical strategies to design AI-resilient interview processes, being closer with real-world engineering challenges.
  • Explore ideas to improve candidate experience and fairness in hiring.
15:55–16:20

Afternoon Break

16:20

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Estimation is a waste of time

Learn to replace inaccurate estimates with data-driven probabilistic forecasting, dramatically improving delivery predictability and stakeholder relationships.

  • Principal Technical Program Manager Outsystems, Agile State of Mind
+ More

Talk

Estimation is a waste of time

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Tired of inaccurate estimations that become commitments? Learn how we transitioned from spending endless hours providing (faulty) estimates to getting to probabilistic forecasting, backed by historical data and risk of failure.

Engineering leaders constantly battle inaccurate estimates that morph into rigid deadlines. We wasted countless hours trying to find the ‘perfect’ number, yet projects consistently missed targets. So we decided to try something radically different.

This talk shares our company’s transformative journey away from traditional estimation toward data-driven, probabilistic forecasting. I’ll present actual metrics and visualizations from our engineering organization that demonstrate how this shift dramatically improved our delivery predictability and stakeholder relationships. You’ll see the before-and-after comparisons, including charts contrasting our story point estimates against actual cycle times.

Our case studies reveal why focusing on individual task estimates failed to account for the inherent randomness and dependencies in our systems, factors that repeatedly derailed our carefully planned projects. I’ll share how we implemented Flow Metrics and Monte Carlo Simulations across our engineering teams, the resistance we encountered, and how we now spend 60% less time on estimation activities while delivering more reliable forecasts. Most importantly, you’ll learn how this approach empowered our Engineering Managers to communicate delivery risks effectively to stakeholders.

You will discover:

  • Why traditional estimation methods fall short in unpredictable environments – with real data showing the gap between estimates and actuals
  • Why we need to distinguish work analysis from estimation exercise
  • Our three-tiered estimation approach based on planning horizons (annual roadmap, quarterly planning, sprint commitments)
  • Simple techniques we use to visualize and communicate forecast confidence and risk
  • Leave equipped with actionable methods to move beyond guesswork and answer ‘When will it be done?’ with data-backed insights and appropriate confidence levels.

Key takeaways

  • See real data showing how our team’s estimates compared to actual cycle times and why this gap existed.
  • Learn why historical data beats (guess)estimates
  • Work analysis is not the same as a ballpark estimation
  • Discover our practical three levels of forecasting for different planning horizons (annual roadmaps, quarterly planning, sprint commitments)
  • Implement basic probabilistic forecasting techniques that engineering managers can use without specialized tools (AI can do this for you!)
  • Learn practical methods, using your existing data, to predict delivery ranges and communicate forecast confidence.
16:50

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

No one needs me (and that’s the point)

Learn how to build autonomous teams that thrive without you, so you can focus on higher-impact leadership work.

+ More

Talk

No one needs me (and that’s the point)

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Discover the power of becoming an “invisible” engineering manager – one whose team thrives independently, enabling you to step back from the weeds and focus on high-leverage work that drives growth for everyone.

In many engineering leadership roles, visibility is often mistaken for value. Managers are expected to be involved in everything: decisions, delivery, communication. But what if true impact comes from building teams that don’t need constant oversight?

In this talk, Chris Class explores the counterintuitive, high-trust approach of being an “invisible” engineering manager – someone who enables self-sufficient teams through systems, culture, and clarity rather than control. Instead of acting as the single point of decision-making, this leadership style focuses on becoming a multiplier: creating the space for teams to thrive while focusing on the bigger picture.

Drawing from real-world experience transitioning from hands-on involvement to sustainable autonomy, Chris shares how engineers can be empowered to lead initiatives, solve problems, and make decisions independently. The session will cover how to establish shared context, build psychological safety, and foster decision-making confidence.

It will also explore how this shift creates space for managers to grow and contribute more broadly across the organization. Ideal for leaders looking to scale their impact without becoming a bottleneck, this talk makes the case that the most effective leaders aren’t always front and center.

Key takeaways

  • How to create the conditions for team autonomy without stepping away entirely
  • Techniques for reducing team dependency while increasing alignment and trust
  • The hidden cost of being too hands-on, and how to break the cycle
  • Why letting go is essential for your team’s growth – and your own
  • Frameworks to help your team make decisions confidently without you
  • FEATURING
    Chris Class
    Senior Engineering ManagerEx-incident.io

    Chris has worked across engineering and leadership, from building products as an IC to shaping direction as a Director of Engineering. He enjoys solving tough problems and helping others grow.

    At incident.io, he leads the team behind their On-call product, focusing on creating a kind, inclusive, and high-trust environment. He cares about building teams where collaboration feels natural and people feel supported, challenged, and perform at their best.

    Whether coaching, unblocking, or shaping how a team works, he finds energy in the process and takes pride in seeing people do their best work.

    View Chris’s profile
17:00

Talk

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

Leading sustainably when everything is on fire

Learn how to lead effectively in chaos by building organizational capital and adapting your mindset for tough times.

+ More

Talk

Leading sustainably when everything is on fire

This session is suitable for:

Experienced Manager•New Manager•Tech Lead

The tech industry is in a period of workforce downsizing. Companies are hiring fewer and laying off more, compared with one decade ago. For many workers, it is harder than ever to “vote with your feet” and seek out a new role with better compensation, growth opportunities, and values alignment. Engineering leaders are facing the challenge of delivering more business impact while offering their teams less than ever before.

This talk is about the mechanics of leading through times of uncertainty and chaos by strategically building and spending organizational capital. I’ll share hard-won lessons learned while managing in different types of organizations, and discuss how leaders who care about their teams need to reorient their mental models for an era of surviving, not thriving.

Key takeaways

  • Learn how to navigate periods of widespread uncertainty, at the organizational or industry level
  • Understand common anti-patterns and mistakes that managers make in low-autonomy environments
  • Gain tools to engage ethically with organizational systems, in service of more authentic leadership
  • FEATURING
    Denise Yu
    Engineering ManagerHashiCorp
    View Denise’s profile
17:30

Talk

End of day wrap-up

Closing thoughts from the hosts.

+ More

Talk

End of day wrap-up

This session is suitable for:

Closing thoughts from the hosts.

  • FEATURING
    David Yee
    VP of EngineeringThe New York Times

    David Yee is VP of Engineering at the New York Times. As an engineering leader, he’s built and scaled teams at both small and enormous companies in the worlds of journalism, music, and art—with an emphasis on product-oriented engineering and humane management.

    His career has included roles as Chief Architect and co-founder at 20×200, co-founder and CTO at Editorially, and Engineering Director of Chorus at Vox Media

    View David’s profile
INTERACTIVE SESSIONS
11:00

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

This session is suitable for:

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but folks who are underrepresented in tech often face their own unique set of challenges. And that can lead to people feeling isolated in their experiences. 

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

  • FEATURING
    Shilpa Kintali
    Engineering ManagerEtsy
    View Shilpa’s profile
  • Nisarga Markandaiah
    Engineering ManagerSpotify
    View Nisarga’s profile
  • Taylor Poindexter
    Engineering Manager IISpotify

    Engineering Manager and co-founder, are both titles Taylor Poindexter holds. She is an Engineering Manager at Spotify and cofounder of Black Code Collective — an organization that strives to create a safe space for Black engineers to grow their skills and network. In her spare time, she enjoys sharing her knowledge of whiskey with anyone that will listen.

    View Taylor’s profile
11:10

Office Hours

Meet the speakers

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

+ More

Office Hours

Meet the speakers – Day 2, 11:10

This session is suitable for:

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
    Chris Bigelow
    Engineering ManagerLovevery

    Chris is the Engineering Manager at Lovevery, where he leads a team dedicated to helping toddlers and parents around the globe find joy and learning through play. His previous roles include leading frontend and backend teams to launch and enhance financial investing apps at Stash and deliver predictive machine learning tools for e-commerce at Black Crow AI.

    A well-traveled nerd, Chris has pet a baby whale in Mexico, ridden inside a giant mechanical elephant in France, rafted to glow worms in New Zealand, and kicked a deflated kickball in an abandoned Soviet mining town in the Arctic Circle.

    View Chris’s profile
  • Dilip Krishna
    Managing Director and Global CTO for SustainabilityDeloitte

    Dilip Krishna is a Managing Director and Global CTO for Sustainability, responsible for setting Deloitte’s technology vision as well as engineering and operating software solutions using the latest Gen AI, automation and cloud technology to serve clients with their sustainability initiatives. Dilip also leads Greenspace Tech, an AI-enabled climate-tech advisory that Deloitte uses to help clients execute climate strategies.

    In these roles, he brings his 30 years of technology, analytics, consulting and industry experience to helping clients effectively apply new and disruptive technology to effect transformative business changes using AI/analytics/big data, cloud and cyber security. Prior to Deloitte, Dilip served as a partner at Teradata Corporation where he oversaw the Professional Services practice in financial services, working closely with large banking clients to implement
    some of its largest analytics systems. He has worked with government agencies in regulation and transparency, including being called upon to offer expert testimony to the Financial Services Subcommittee of the US House of Representatives.

    In addition, Dilip has been widely published and quoted in the areas of sustainability technology, AI and automation. He is a senior editor and contributing author of the Handbook of Financial Data and Risk Information (Cambridge University Press).

    View Dilip’s profile
  • Kelly Vaughn
    Sr. Engineering ManagerZapier

    Kelly Vaughn is an engineering leader, entrepreneur, and side project aficionado. She is currently Sr. Engineering Manager at Zapier and is passionate about coaching individual contributors into leadership roles and mentoring engineering managers to be impactful, empowering leaders. When she’s not working, you’ll probably find her running, traveling to a new country, or spending time at a coffee shop to make a tiny dent in her never-ending book collection.

    View Kelly’s profile
  • Liz Hustedt
    Senior Engineering ManagerImagine Pediatrics

    Liz Hustedt fell in love with computers as soon as her hands could reach the keyboard. Her first foray into tech was a false-start, as she navigated discriminatory behavior during college. Switching majors, Liz graduated with her RN-BSN and worked as a Neuro ICU nurse for 5 years, before finally switching back into software development and fulfilling her long-time dream. She has worked in big corps, seed-stage start-ups, and mid-sized companies. Currently, she finds herself at Imagine Pediatrics as a Senior Engineering Manager.

    View Liz’s profile
11:45
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?

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Augment Code LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Chris Kelly
    Head of Developer ExperienceAugment Code

    Chris is the head of developer experience, working across Augment to make building software better for every developer. Chris has been making developers happier and more productive for 15 years at innovative companies like New Relic, GitHub, Salesforce, and FireHydrant.

    View Chris’s profile
  • Aleksandar Gyorev
    VP Platform Engineering ManagerTwo Sigma
    View Aleksandar’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How can I create the conditions for remote and international teams to thrive?

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

+ More

Table Talks

How can I create the conditions for remote and international teams to thrive?

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Revelo LeadDev

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

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Curtis John
    Manager, Software Development and EngineeringComcast

    Over 15+ years driving software development initiatives, with a strong track record of leading, planning, and delivering technology solutions for both customer-facing and internal applications across the financial and entertainment sectors.

    View Curtis’s profile
  • Shawn Gandhi
    Director of EngineeringShopify

    Shawn has spent the last 25 years building low-latency highly available systems across the US and Canada. Early in his career, Shawn lived in NYC building ultra-low-latency single dealer platforms for Wall Street’s biggest banks, hedge funds, and exchanges. 

    He then moved to AWS helping build the world’s largest cloud computing platform, and designing planetary-scale systems for the likes of Comcast, New York Times, and the Weather Channel.

    After moving back home to Canada and launching the first Canadian AWS Region, Shawn joined the Royal Bank of Canada as the Chief Digital Architect where he married AI with day-to-day retail banking. Building on this, Shawn rejoined AWS as the Head of AI Solutions before joining Shopify.

    View Shawn’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

Staff+

How do you impact the technical standards of your org as a staff+ leader?

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

+ More

Table Talks

How do you impact the technical standards of your org as a staff+ leader?

This session is suitable for:

Staff+

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

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Daniel Lees
    Cloud Security ArchitectGoogle

    Daniel Lees is a technology leader and Cloud Security Architect at Google, holding advanced CISSP-ISSAP and ISSMP certifications. He has extensive experience building secure, web-enabled systems across multi-cloud infrastructures , applying “design by security” and “design for failure” principles. An evangelist for immutable infrastructure and automation , Daniel maintains a sharp focus on auditability, control, and compliance. His background includes roles as a Principal Architect at both Google and HSBC.

    View Daniel’s profile
  • Beth Crane
    Staff Software EngineerFlatiron Health
    View Beth’s profile
  • James Socol
    Senior Staff Engineer

    James is a senior staff engineer, currently on sabbatical, who has been building high-performance teams for over a decade. As both a manager and a technical leader, he has led the adoption of practices like CI/CD, feature flagging, inner source, shifting quality and security left while shifting human testing right. James works to align teams that can move autonomously and safely.

     

    View James ‘s profile
12:00

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fiona Siseman

+ More

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

This session is suitable for:

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fiona Siseman.

  • FEATURING
    Fiona Siseman
    Co-founder, Coach & FacilitatorFrank & Eddy Leadership

    Fiona is the cofounder of Frank & Eddy Leadership. She is passionate about fostering authentic, self-aware, and collaborative leadership teams through coaching and facilitating. Prior to founding Frank & Eddy, she spent 7 years at Spotify supporting product and engineering leaders (Sr, Director, VP) to lead through fast-paced change, and building a high-performing senior leadership team in a large Platform Engineering organization (for a period, leading a cross-functional organization of 130 people).

    View Fiona’s profile
12:00

Solution Swap

Staff+

I am now regularly in meetings with non-engineering stakeholders – how do I communicate technical ideas and decisions effectively?

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges

+ More

Solution Swap

I am now regularly in meetings with non-engineering stakeholders – how do I communicate technical ideas and decisions effectively?

This session is suitable for:

Staff+

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges

Sometimes it can feel like every problem has only one answer – but the truth is, in leadership there’s never a single solution. But when you’re in the thick of a problem, it can be hard to get the headspace to see other ways to tackle a challenge. 

In our solution swap sessions, attendees will get the chance to say how they’d tackle a common issue and compare their ideas with how other leaders would confront the same problem. Our coaches will give direct feedback about the possible consequences (both positive and negative) of the ideas – and will ask the key question – if you were to do this, and then this happened – what would you do next?

  • FEATURING
    Alia Rose Connor
    Co-founder, Coach & FacilitatorFrank & Eddy Leadership

    Alia is the cofounder of Frank & Eddy Leadership and is passionate about building collaborative cross-functional product development teams. She is a coach and facilitator, and has been a founder and engineer. Prior to founding Frank & Eddy, she coached at Spotify during 7 years of explosive growth, where she supported product and engineering leaders (Sr, Director, VP) to lead through continual change.

    View Alia’s profile
12:30
12:00

Table Talks

How can I address automation anxiety in my engineering teams?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

+ More

Table Talks

How can I address automation anxiety in my engineering teams?

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Infobip LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Dino Bico
    Engineering DirectorInfobip

    Engineering leader with 15+ years of experience in CPaaS and SaaS. Expert in real-time voice and video communication. Director of Product and Engineering at Infobip, leading innovation on the Voice and Video platform.

    View Dino’s profile
  • Philip Lee
    Principle Engineerev.energy

    Philip Lee is a Principal Engineer at ev.energy – making the world’s electric car charging simpler, greener, and cheaper. He spends his time thinking about how to become a better senior IC – hello LeadDev! – as well as indulging in too many hobbies.

    View Philip’s profile
  • Esther Kundin
    Engineering ManagerGoogle

    Esther Kundin is a senior software engineer with 18 years of experience. She currently works as a Software Engineering Manager at Google, making backend development easy and safe.

    Previously, she has worked at Amazon AWS on the EMR product and at Bloomberg as the lead architect and data engineer for the Machine Learning in News department.

    She holds a BA in Computer Science and Mathematics from New York University and a Masters in Computer Science from Columbia University. When she is not working, Esther enjoys spending time with her husband and 4 daughters, especially when it involves building robots.

    View Esther’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How can I effectively prevent LLMs from creating hidden technical debt?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

+ More

Table Talks

How can I effectively prevent LLMs from creating hidden technical debt?

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Antithesis LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.
12:00

Table Talks

Staff+

How do you work effectively on cross-team projects as a staff+ leader?

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

+ More

Table Talks

How do you work effectively on cross-team projects as a staff+ leader?

This session is suitable for:

Staff+

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

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Hahnara Hyun
    Sr Compute Specialist Solution ArchitectAmazon Web Services

    Hahnara is a Compute Specialist Solution Architect at AWS, based in NYC where she focuses on helping customers optimize performance and cost of their compute infrastructure. Previously, she developed gamified AWS enablement platform, to drive engaging technical workshops because learning should be fun. Outside of work, she enjoys hosting whodunit parties and game nights.

    View Hahnara’s profile
  • Vlad Leyberov
    Engineering Manager (Site Reliability Engineering)Google

    Starting from a non-traditional background Vlad has had an extensive Software Engineering career across different roles, industries and continents, including at several FAANG companies. Currently focused on Site Reliability Engineering at Google, he’s passionate about building scalable and reliable solutions that bring real value. In his spare time Vlad enjoys reading and watching sci-fi, handcraft and cooking.

    View Vlad’s profile
12:00

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fiona Siseman

+ More

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

This session is suitable for:

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fiona Siseman.

  • FEATURING
    Fiona Siseman
    Co-founder, Coach & FacilitatorFrank & Eddy Leadership

    Fiona is the cofounder of Frank & Eddy Leadership. She is passionate about fostering authentic, self-aware, and collaborative leadership teams through coaching and facilitating. Prior to founding Frank & Eddy, she spent 7 years at Spotify supporting product and engineering leaders (Sr, Director, VP) to lead through fast-paced change, and building a high-performing senior leadership team in a large Platform Engineering organization (for a period, leading a cross-functional organization of 130 people).

    View Fiona’s profile
12:00

Solution Swap

Director+

People keep telling me I need an engineering strategy – how do I do this?

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges.

+ More

Solution Swap

People keep telling me I need an engineering strategy – how do I do this?

This session is suitable for:

Director+

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges

Sometimes it can feel like every problem has only one answer – but the truth is, in leadership there’s never a single solution. But when you’re in the thick of a problem, it can be hard to get the headspace to see other ways to tackle a challenge. 

In our solution swap sessions, attendees will get the chance to say how they’d tackle a common issue and compare their ideas with how other leaders would confront the same problem. Our coaches will give direct feedback about the possible consequences (both positive and negative) of the ideas – and will ask the key question – if you were to do this, and then this happened – what would you do next?

  • FEATURING
    Alia Rose Connor
    Co-founder, Coach & FacilitatorFrank & Eddy Leadership

    Alia is the cofounder of Frank & Eddy Leadership and is passionate about building collaborative cross-functional product development teams. She is a coach and facilitator, and has been a founder and engineer. Prior to founding Frank & Eddy, she coached at Spotify during 7 years of explosive growth, where she supported product and engineering leaders (Sr, Director, VP) to lead through continual change.

    View Alia’s profile
13:10

Office Hours

Meet the speakers

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

+ More

Office Hours

Meet the speakers – Day 2, 13:10

This session is suitable for:

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
    Aloke Desai
    Software EngineerWarp
    View Aloke’s profile
  • Laura de Vesine
    Senior Staff EngineerDatadog
    View Laura’s profile
  • Rashi Agrawal
    Head of AI Engineering / Senior ManagerGoodLeap
    View Rashi’s profile
  • Carla Vieira
    Senior Data Engineer QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey
    View Carla’s profile
13:15
12:00

Industry Interest Groups

Connecting engineering leaders from the Media and Entertainment domain

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 from the Media and Entertainment domain

This session is suitable for:

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

  • FEATURING
    David Simmer
    Senior Software EngineerNetflix

    David’s long and varied career in engineering and design has been driven by two desires since the start: “what we build should be beautiful, and must be pleasant for humans to use.” Currently in Productivity Engineering at Netflix, he spends his working hours making his fellow engineers’ labor less laborious.

    View David’s profile
  • Darnel Clayton
    Former Engineering ManagerSpotify
    View Darnel’s profile
  • Lesley Cordero
    Staff Software EngineerThe New York Times

    Lesley Cordero is currently a Staff Engineer at The New York Times. She has spent the majority of her career on edtech teams as an engineer, including Google for Education and edtech startups.

    She is primarily focused on platform engineering and reliability management, particularly in the observability space. Her leadership style focuses on cultivating a culture that builds with the most vulnerable employees in mind first, and she shows care for others by holding them accountable to the best versions of themselves – and by buying them the occasional bubble tea.

    View Lesley’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

This session is suitable for:

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

Moderated by Jessica Tai, Career Coach & Former Engineering Manager.

  • FEATURING
    Esther Kundin
    Engineering ManagerGoogle

    Esther Kundin is a senior software engineer with 18 years of experience. She currently works as a Software Engineering Manager at Google, making backend development easy and safe.

    Previously, she has worked at Amazon AWS on the EMR product and at Bloomberg as the lead architect and data engineer for the Machine Learning in News department.

    She holds a BA in Computer Science and Mathematics from New York University and a Masters in Computer Science from Columbia University. When she is not working, Esther enjoys spending time with her husband and 4 daughters, especially when it involves building robots.

    View Esther’s profile
  • Jimil Patel
    Engineering ManagerStash

    Jimil is an Engineering Manager at Stash, a financial platform dedicated to empowering people to invest and build better lives. He is an experienced engineering leader with a diverse background in engineering roles across tech companies of all sizes and a passion for nurturing talent and empowering individuals though mentoring and coaching, and building high performing teams.

    Jimil has previously spoken at multiple tech conferences. Outside of work, Jimil enjoys spending time with his 4 year old daughter and playing/watching cricket.

    View Jimil’s profile
  • Jessica Tai
    Career Coach & Former Engineering ManagerJessicamtai.com

    After 11 years as an engineering manager and leader at Airbnb, Jessica has switched to being a career coach. Most recently she managed the GraphQL unified data access layer product infra team. She has given talks around the world about Service-Oriented Architecture migrations and Managing Remote Engineering Teams. She holds a Masters in CS from Stanford and a Bachelors from UCLA.

    View Jessica’s profile
  • Jiovanni Rosario
    Engineering ManagerAmazon

    Jiovanni Rosario has had multiple tech industry roles. He started as a controls engineer, moved into sales engineering, and has been a software developer & instructor. Today, Jiovanni is a controls engineering manager, leveraging his unique background to support a team of engineers servicing data centers. He is passionate about coaching and mentoring and wants to help engineers learn about management.

    View Jiovanni’s profile
  • Mica Alaniz 
    Senior Engineering ManagerSlack

    Mica Alaniz is a Chicagoan, first and foremost, born and raised. She is also a Technical Leader focused on a values-based team growth, advocacy and coalition-building. All of which she brings to her role as an Engineering Manager on the Enterprise team at Slack.

    Prior to that, she spent two US election cycles – the 2018 Midterm and 2020 Presidential elections – on the Tech team as an Engineer, Tech Lead and then Engineering Manager at the Democratic National Committee; where she built tools to support Democratic candidates and campaigns and to empower data-driven organizing and voter education. She is also proud to have been an organizing leader in the drive to form the DNC Staff Union.

    She continues to be engaged in her community, whether it be through local neighborhood organizations or through being a Code2040 Fellows Program Mentor Coach. She also gives talks, teaches workshops and offers career coaching centered around underindexed individuals in tech. In her spare time, she can be found enjoying and exploring her hometown, inhaling books, collecting board games, conquering roguelike video games and having this thing with coffee where she needs it to live.

    View Mica’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

This session is suitable for:

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Building great software comes with unique challenges in every industry, and often, the best insights come from others who are in the same boat. Join our relaxed sessions where you can meet peers working in similar domains to share ideas, collaborate on challenges, and exchange solutions.

  • FEATURING
    Mary Parsons
    Engineering ManagerDefense Unicorns

    Mary Parsons is an Engineering Manager at Defense Unicorns, focused on accelerating software deployment for the DoD. The curiosity that led her to start her career as a chemist also drove her to engineering leadership, where she has over 10 years of leadership experience across government, corporate, and startup cultures. She loves people, all things STEM, and great food, and is happiest when fostering communities of innovators, creators, and problem solvers.

    View Mary’s profile
  • Dan Ubilla
    Engineering ManagerAsana

    Dan is the Engineering Lead for Development Lifecycle at Asana where he focuses on dev productivity and CI/CD tooling. With over 15 years of software experience, he is passionate about the craft of engineering management and enabling teams to do their best ork. Dan lives in Brooklyn, and when he Dan isn’t thinking about building teams or building systems, you can find him running in Prospect Park or running after his two kids with his wife.

    View Dan’s profile
  • Gargee Anjikar
    Engineering ManagerRenaissance Learning

    Gargee Anjikar is an engineering manager in educational software, leading a team focused on school roster data systems. She has expertise in cloud services, data migration, and complex service rewrites, including large-scale database transitions. Passionate about applying AI and AI agents to improve efficiency and data consistency, she combines technical leadership with a focus on team growth, productivity, and building scalable solutions.

    View Gargee’s profile
14:00
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

This session is suitable for:

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

Moderated by Jessica Tai, Career Coach & Former Engineering Manager.

  • FEATURING
    Jon Thornton
    Director of EngineeringSquarespace

    Jon is a Director of Engineering at Squarespace in New York City, where he leads the Application Platform group. Previously he led product engineering teams at Blink Health and Knewton, and cofounded Arrive. Jon likes public transit, rock concerts, and NYC’s beaches.

    View Jon’s profile
  • Hanna Feibus
    Engineering DirectorCedar

    Hanna is an Engineering Director at Cedar, where she focuses on what it takes to build and scale 0-to-1 products and the teams that support them. She’s passionate about growing technical leaders and engineering managers, having navigated that career path herself at Cedar. When she’s not building products that address the patient financial pain points of the U.S. healthcare system, she enjoys rock climbing and playing long-form board games.

    View Hanna’s profile
  • Jessica Tai
    Career Coach & Former Engineering ManagerJessicamtai.com

    After 11 years as an engineering manager and leader at Airbnb, Jessica has switched to being a career coach. Most recently she managed the GraphQL unified data access layer product infra team. She has given talks around the world about Service-Oriented Architecture migrations and Managing Remote Engineering Teams. She holds a Masters in CS from Stanford and a Bachelors from UCLA.

    View Jessica’s profile
  • Allison Malloy
    Director of EngineeringShopify

    Allison Malloy is the Director of Engineering for Shopify’s Merchandising product area which includes the search & discovery experience, products and pricing, and supporting merchants’ selling strategies. Over the course of her 4 years at Shopify, she had led a few different areas: the Inventory Management team and Shopify Fulfillment Network’s Delivery Infrastructure team focused on providing 2-day delivery through advanced inventory management and distribution. Prior to joining Shopify, Allison spent many years in the defence and aerospace sector, including leading the engineering effort at SkyDrop (prev. Flirtey), a drone delivery company; working in a variety of leadership and development roles at Kongsberg Geospatial and General Dynamics.

     

    View Allison ‘s profile
  • Jared Silver
    Senior Director of EngineeringBrilliant

    Jared has spent his career improving access to effective, equitable, engaging learning experiences. His talks and writing on career development, education technology, and engineering management have been featured in TEDx, LeadDev, Developer Week, and EdSurge. Jared serves as Senior Director of Engineering at Brilliant, where he helps shape the future of learning. Prior, he was the first employee and founding engineer at Hellosaurus, which he grew through acquisition, and built the Growth Engineering team at DataCamp. Jared lives in NYC where he advises early stage founders and engineering leaders, roots for the Yankees, and consumes an irresponsible amount of pastries.

    View Jared’s profile
12:00

Community Representation Groups

Connecting Latinx 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 Latinx leaders

This session is suitable for:

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but folks who are underrepresented in tech often face their own unique set of challenges. And that can lead to people feeling isolated in their experiences. 

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

  • FEATURING
    Davidson Fellipe
    Senior Software EngineerUpgrade

    Davidson works as a Senior Software Engineer at Upgrade, where he focuses on front-end development for banking products. He has experience as an Engineering Manager at Salesforce, leading UI components for the Commerce Search Platform, and as a Founding Engineer and later Manager at Loadsmart, where he spent nearly seven years building and scaling. Prior to relocating to the US, he developed large-scale applications at Globo.com.

    Based in Brooklyn since 2015, he blends front-end craftsmanship and user experience with hands-on leadership to help engineering teams work better together.

    View Davidson’s profile
  • Melissa Young
    SVP, EngineeringVox Media

    Melissa Young is SVP of Engineering at Vox Media, where she leads a multidisciplinary engineering organization spanning publishing platforms, infrastructure, advertising technology, data, consumer revenue, and commerce. She has over 15 years of experience working and leading in media technology enterprises ranging from small private publishers to large media conglomerates. Melissa thrives at the intersection of technical strategy, operational optimization and organizational leadership and will forever champion empowering engineers and leaders to create and support high-trust, high-performing teams.

    View Melissa’s profile
  • Francisco Trindade
    VP of EngineeringBraze

    Francisco Trindade is an engineering leader who has been around the block. He has worked as a technology consultant for ThoughtWorks, helping teams in different countries, from writing code for startups in the UK to enabling change in large enterprises in Australia. He has founded companies more than once and managed broader engineering organizations, having experience managing teams in many different environments. He is now an Engineering Director in New York, still constantly thinking about making engineers work better together.

    View Francisco’s profile
14:30
12:00

Table Talks

How can you enable collaboration across your whole developer org?

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

+ More

Table Talks

How can you enable collaboration across your whole developer org?

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Figma LeadDev

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

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Quincy Iheme
    Senior Manager, Software Development and EngineeringComcast

    Quincy has always had a passion for technology and the industry, from the time he built his own personal computer from scratch to editing his Myspace page with basic HTML and CSS. Since attending an intensive program to learn web development, Quincy began his career at Comcast as an engineer and continues as an Engineering Manager today.

    View Quincy’s profile
  • Carlos Rymer
    Sr. Engineering ManagerLinkedin

    Carlos Rymer is a Senior Engineering Manager at LinkedIn. He is responsible for building technology that empowers marketers to reach and engage audiences that can benefit from LinkedIn’s products. He has a background in building content publishing systems, big data analytics, and cloud computing. As an engineering leader, he invests in growing talent in and out of work, driving focus on mission, and nurturing a culture that promotes transparency, engineering excellence, and doing good.

    View Carlos’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How do you effectively evaluate what LLMs to use in your SDLC?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

+ More

Table Talks

How do you effectively evaluate what LLMs to use in your SDLC?

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Sonar LeadDev

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Manish Kapur
    Senior Director, Product and Solutions MarketingSonar
    View Manish’s profile
  • Aleksandar Gyorev
    VP Platform Engineering ManagerTwo Sigma
    View Aleksandar’s profile
  • Ishita Jain
    Senior Software EngineerBloomberg

    Ishita is a software engineering team lead at Bloomberg, building multimedia workflows with her team that make photos, videos, and documents seamless to access across the Terminal and Bloomberg.com.

    Known for fostering inclusive, high-performing teams, she blends technical expertise with a global perspective shaped by living and working across APAC, EMEA, and the Americas.

    With empathy, adaptability, and a drive to turn ideas into impact, Ishita brings energy to every challenge. Outside work, she finds inspiration sketching portraits or chasing panoramic views.

    View Ishita’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?

This session is suitable for:

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

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Zeel Patel
    Engineering ManagerAmazon

    Zeel is results-driven Engineering Manager with 8+ years of experience driving cloud innovation, improving operational efficiency, and driving customer success. Currently spearheading a dynamic team of 23+ engineers at Amazon Web Services, overseeing critical big data services including EMR, Bedrock, Sagemaker, and DynamoDB. She has deep technical proficiency in AWS ecosystem including Devops, Bigdata, Compute, Storage, Database, Machine learning, and Serverless technologies. She has proven track record of transforming low-performing teams into high-impact engineering groups through strategic leadership, technical mentorship, and data-driven decision making. She is passionate about developing next-generation tech talent through strategic academic partnerships and creating robust early-career development programs.

    View Zeel’s profile
  • Pavel Ivanov
    Software EngineerAirtable

    Pavel is a software engineer and engineering manager with over a decade of experience building infrastructure, automation, and applications at companies including Airtable, Apple, and The New York Times. He has alternated between individual contributor and leadership roles, giving him a well-rounded perspective on scaling products and teams. Outside of work, Pavel is an active angel investor, supporting early-stage founders in Nevada and beyond through several angel groups. He also enjoys creating side projects, having shipped mobile and web apps used by thousands of people.

    View Pavel’s profile
  • Mallika Rao
    Engineering ManagerNetflix

    Mallika Rao is an engineering leader with deep experience in designing and operating large-scale distributed systems, including search infrastructure. She brings a systems-thinking approach to problem-solving and is passionate about building resilient, transparent platforms that empower teams to move fast without compromising stability. Outside of work, she’s equally inspired by the structures of mathematics and the improvisation of music. She also mentors early-career engineers and leaders navigating growth in high-performance environments.

    View Mallika’s profile
  • Julien Veneziano
    Senior Engineering ManagerSquarespace

    Julien is a Senior Engineering Manager at Squarespace on the Commerce Transactions Group with 10 years of experience helping organizations with launching and scaling organizations. Specializing in payments and mobile, Julien uses that experience to lead the teams that enable millions of people to transact on the squarespace platform. He enjoys a good cup of espresso, designed processes and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu; not always in that order.

    View Julien’s profile
12:00

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fabian Camargo

+ More

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

This session is suitable for:

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fabian Camargo.

  • FEATURING
    Fabian Camargo
    Owner, Leadership & Management CoachCamargo Consulting LLC

    Fabian Camargo is a leadership and management coach with a background in Software Engineering. He loves the craft of coaching and helping people achieve their goals while becoming their best selves. He has been coaching full-time since 2019. He has coached leaders from entry-level managers to SVP and every level in between. Prior to this, he had a 22 year career as a software engineer, making his way from entry-level engineer to Director.

    He has a Certificate in Leadership Coaching for Organizational Well-Being from George Mason University, a B.S. and M.Eng. in Computer Science from Cornell University, and is an ICF-certified coach (PCC).

    View Fabian’s profile
15:00

Solution Swap

Director+

My company lives in ambiguity with frequently changing direction – how do I lead effectively through this?

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges.

+ More

Solution Swap

My company lives in ambiguity with frequently changing direction – how do I lead effectively through this?

This session is suitable for:

Director+

Trade tactics for tackling everyday challenges

Sometimes it can feel like every problem has only one answer – but the truth is, in leadership there’s never a single solution. But when you’re in the thick of a problem, it can be hard to get the headspace to see other ways to tackle a challenge. 

In our solution swap sessions, attendees will get the chance to say how they’d tackle a common issue and compare their ideas with how other leaders would confront the same problem. Our coaches will give direct feedback about the possible consequences (both positive and negative) of the ideas – and will ask the key question – if you were to do this, and then this happened – what would you do next?

  • FEATURING
    Alia Rose Connor
    Co-founder, Coach & FacilitatorFrank & Eddy Leadership

    Alia is the cofounder of Frank & Eddy Leadership and is passionate about building collaborative cross-functional product development teams. She is a coach and facilitator, and has been a founder and engineer. Prior to founding Frank & Eddy, she coached at Spotify during 7 years of explosive growth, where she supported product and engineering leaders (Sr, Director, VP) to lead through continual change.

    View Alia’s profile
15:15
12:00

Table Talks

How do you assess and measure the true health of your engineering organization?

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

+ More

Table Talks

How do you assess and measure the true health of your engineering organization?

This session is suitable for:

Join facilitated conversations and dive into key issues facing engineering teams

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Caroline Lacoste
    Director of EngineeringNative Instruments

    Caroline Lacoste is a Director of Engineering at Native Instruments, where she leads the engineering teams responsible for the development of iZotope products. These AI-powered audio software products for Audio Restoration, Mixing, and Mastering provide high-quality tools for professionals in major film and TV studios, music producers, and mixing engineers. Prior to her work in the audio industry, she spent 13 years in the travel industry, including four years as a Software Engineering Manager at Amadeus Boston. In this capacity, she spearheaded a team to design and deliver solutions for airlines and travel agencies in the Americas. With a strong academic background, she holds a Ph.D. in Image Processing.

    View Caroline’s profile
  • Francisco Trindade
    VP of EngineeringBraze

    Francisco Trindade is an engineering leader who has been around the block. He has worked as a technology consultant for ThoughtWorks, helping teams in different countries, from writing code for startups in the UK to enabling change in large enterprises in Australia. He has founded companies more than once and managed broader engineering organizations, having experience managing teams in many different environments. He is now an Engineering Director in New York, still constantly thinking about making engineers work better together.

    View Francisco’s profile
  • Alex Hidalgo
    Field CTONobl9

    Alex Hidalgo is the Field CTO at Nobl9 and author of Implementing Service Level Objectives. During his career he has developed a deep love for sustainable operations, proper observability, and using SLO data to drive discussions and make decisions. Alex’s previous jobs have included IT support, network security, restaurant work, t-shirt design, and hosting game shows at bars. When not sharing his passion for technology with others, you can find him scuba diving or watching Premier League football. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner Jen and a rescue dog named Taco.

    View Alex’s profile
12:00

Table Talks

How can I make developers more efficient without adding more pressure?

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

+ More

Table Talks

How can I make developers more efficient without adding more pressure?

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Warp LeadDev

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

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.
12:00

Table Talks

Staff+

How do you make technical decisions that balance benefits and tradeoffs?

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

+ More

Table Talks

How do you make technical decisions that balance benefits and tradeoffs?

This session is suitable for:

Staff+

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

There’s never a single silver bullet for any problem and often you’ll need to combine the ideas of multiple people to find the perfect solution for your team. We’ll be discussing some core issues in the Table Talk sessions, hosted by a group of engineering leaders who are on hand to provide their perspectives and help guide the conversation. You can dip in and out of discussions depending on what interests you the most.

  • FEATURING
    Eric Rafalovsky
    Group Technical LeadAsana
    View Eric’s profile
  • James Brookbank
    Cloud Solutions Architect ManagerGoogle

    James Brookbank is a cloud solutions architect manager at Google based in NYC. Solution architects help make cloud easier for Google’s customers by solving complex technical problems and providing expert architectural guidance. Before joining Google, James worked at a number of large enterprises with a focus on IT infrastructure and financial services.

    View James’s profile
  • Zeel Patel
    Engineering ManagerAmazon

    Zeel is results-driven Engineering Manager with 8+ years of experience driving cloud innovation, improving operational efficiency, and driving customer success. Currently spearheading a dynamic team of 23+ engineers at Amazon Web Services, overseeing critical big data services including EMR, Bedrock, Sagemaker, and DynamoDB. She has deep technical proficiency in AWS ecosystem including Devops, Bigdata, Compute, Storage, Database, Machine learning, and Serverless technologies. She has proven track record of transforming low-performing teams into high-impact engineering groups through strategic leadership, technical mentorship, and data-driven decision making. She is passionate about developing next-generation tech talent through strategic academic partnerships and creating robust early-career development programs.

    View Zeel’s profile
  • Boomie Odumade
    Senior Engineering LeaderTechBees

    Boomie Odumade is a dynamic senior software engineering leader with over 20 years of experience in technology, including building teams, scaling systems, and growing organizations. She also provides career coaching. She was most recently Senior Director of Engineering at a small company. Previously, she led engineering teams at NPR, Capital One, and Accenture, and co-founded Nexercise, a mobile fitness startup. Boomie is passionate about mentoring youth and supporting future STEM leaders. She holds a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering, a Master’s in Computer Science, and an MBA from Wharton.

    View Boomie’s profile
12:00

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fabian Camargo

+ More

Speed Coaching

Speed coaching

This session is suitable for:

Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching with Fabian Camargo.

  • FEATURING
    Fabian Camargo
    Owner, Leadership & Management CoachCamargo Consulting LLC

    Fabian Camargo is a leadership and management coach with a background in Software Engineering. He loves the craft of coaching and helping people achieve their goals while becoming their best selves. He has been coaching full-time since 2019. He has coached leaders from entry-level managers to SVP and every level in between. Prior to this, he had a 22 year career as a software engineer, making his way from entry-level engineer to Director.

    He has a Certificate in Leadership Coaching for Organizational Well-Being from George Mason University, a B.S. and M.Eng. in Computer Science from Cornell University, and is an ICF-certified coach (PCC).

    View Fabian’s profile
15:45

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

This session is suitable for:

Connect with folks over shared experiences

Everyone’s journey into leadership is tough, but folks who are underrepresented in tech often face their own unique set of challenges. And that can lead to people feeling isolated in their experiences. 

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

  • FEATURING
    Tosha Ottey
    Technical Program ManagerNerdFrame

    Tosha is a Technical Program Manager and founder of NerdFrame, a consultancy specializing in fractional PMO and engineering operations. She helps teams bridge the gap between strategy and execution, addressing gaps in expertise, outcomes, or processes. Tosha brings over 14 years of experience from leading organizations including NASA, Visa, GE, and LinkedIn, where she has delivered impactful technical initiatives and driven organizational success. Through NerdFrame, she partners with organizations to strengthen their delivery capabilities and align technical execution with business objectives. When not driving innovation in the tech space, she enjoys spending time with her rescue dog, traveling, reading, and connecting with friends.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

    View Tosha’s profile
  • Ben Parisot
    Engineering ManagerPlanet Argon

    Ben Parisot is the Engineering Manager at Planet Argon, where he leads efforts to improve development processes, support engineer growth, and boost team morale. He builds internal tools with JavaScript, React, and TypeScript, and champions inclusive hiring and LGBTQ+ representation in tech. At Planet Argon, he has revamped hiring workflows, restructured onboarding documentation, created role advancement systems, launched an internship program, improved developer satisfaction metrics, enforced TDD and Rails best practices, and managed internal security protocols and contractor relationships. His work consistently saves time and money while strengthening both the developer experience and overall team performance.

    View Ben’s profile
  • Michelle Brenner
    Senior Software EngineerNetflix

    Michelle is a Senior Software Engineer with 16 years of professional experience. Art school graduate, from engineering support to Netflix through self-study. She thrives in technical leadership positions, solving unique business challenges with diverse teams. This includes platform infrastructure for fellow engineers, pipelines for VFX artists, and ordering systems for restaurateurs. Michelle is deeply passionate about contributing to the broader tech community, having spoken at over 35 conferences worldwide, coaching engineers, founders, and VCs, and offering thought leadership through an upcoming book, podcasts, articles, classes, and videos to inspire, educate, and provide a warm welcome into a flourishing community.

    View Michelle’s profile
15:55

Office Hours

Meet the speakers

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

+ More

Office Hours

Meet the speakers – Day 2, 15:55

This session is suitable for:

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
    Ángel Paredes Barato
    Engineering Manager Datadog
    View Ángel’s profile
  • Maria Chec
    Principal Technical Program ManagerOutsystems, Agile State of Mind
    View Maria’s profile
  • Robin Bonatesta
    Engineering ManagerRent the Runway

    Robin Bonatesta is a seasoned engineering leader with a passion for crafting innovative B2C subscription mobile applications. Currently serving as an Engineering Manager at Rent the Runway, she oversees a diverse team of international engineers. With a unique academic background encompassing both computer science and fashion merchandising, Robin brings a specialized focus on the retail and fashion industries, particularly in catering to millennial women. A former Venture For America fellow, she has lent her expertise to companies of all sizes, including Bark, theSkimm, and Cladwell. Her happy place is being curled up on the couch with a good book and her dachshund mix Toblerone.

    View Robin’s profile
  • Chris Class
    Senior Engineering ManagerEx-incident.io

    Chris has worked across engineering and leadership, from building products as an IC to shaping direction as a Director of Engineering. He enjoys solving tough problems and helping others grow.

    At incident.io, he leads the team behind their On-call product, focusing on creating a kind, inclusive, and high-trust environment. He cares about building teams where collaboration feels natural and people feel supported, challenged, and perform at their best.

    Whether coaching, unblocking, or shaping how a team works, he finds energy in the process and takes pride in seeing people do their best work.

    View Chris’s profile
  • Denise Yu
    Engineering ManagerHashiCorp
    View Denise’s profile
  • Meri Williams
    CTO, NED & AdvisorPleo

    Meri is an experienced CTO and leader of technology organisations. They particularly enjoy helping others to level up as technical leaders and managers of organizations by working as a CTO coach and tech advisor / NED to various companies in this capacity through micro-consultancy ChromeRose.

    They have led teams ranging in size from 30 to 300, in a range of organizations from Procter & Gamble, to the Government Digital Service, award-winning online print company MOO, mobile-first challenger bank Monzo and patient-inspired AI-driven rare disease treatment discovery company Healx, amongst others.

    Together with their wife, they run the micro-charity One Goes Up, which supports young women and non-binary folks in pursuing STEM education and careers.

    View Meri’s profile
16:00

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

This session is suitable for:

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

Moderated by Jessica Tai, Career Coach & Former Engineering Manager.

  • FEATURING
    Iswarya Parupudi
    VP of EngineeeingVoxy

    As an engineering leader in the EdTech space, Iswarya combines technical expertise with empathy and over a decade of experience to deliver innovative solutions, scale engineering teams, and drive product strategy. She is committed to continuous learning, mentoring the next generation, and fostering inclusive environments where everyone can thrive. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling, exploring new cultures, and life as a mom of two.

    View Iswarya’s profile
  • Alina Oganesova
    VP of Software EngineeringIntelligent Medical Objects
    View Alina’s profile
  • Jessica Tai
    Career Coach & Former Engineering ManagerJessicamtai.com

    After 11 years as an engineering manager and leader at Airbnb, Jessica has switched to being a career coach. Most recently she managed the GraphQL unified data access layer product infra team. She has given talks around the world about Service-Oriented Architecture migrations and Managing Remote Engineering Teams. She holds a Masters in CS from Stanford and a Bachelors from UCLA.

    View Jessica’s profile
  • Adam Berman
    VP of Engineering Semgrep

    Adam Berman is the VP of Engineering at Semgrep, building static analysis tools to improve software security. He enjoys the pendulum between IC and Manager, and has built multiple teams and products at Semgrep and Meraki. Adam is a bay area local, a proud holder of a US National Parks pass, and an ultimate frisbee player.

    View Adam’s profile
  • Neha Batra
    VP of EngineeringGitHub

    Neha Batra is a VP of Engineering at GitHub, where she leads the Core Productivity org that focuses on the tools in developer’s daily workflows like Repos, Projects, Issues, Pull Requests, Desktop, CLI, and Mobile. Her passion lies in making the tech industry easier and more inclusive to work in, which is why she focuses her talks and blogs on tactical tips and tricks, like Facilitation 202, Managing your Mentorship, and Delegation.

    She holds a bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and enjoys foodie adventures, planning trips, and collecting national park magnets. If you want to hear her ramble on a topic, ask her about experimenting with manager processes and playbooks or how much she misses Miami and its cafecitos.

    View Neha’s profile
WORKSHOP TRACK
09:30

Workshop

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

Learn to “read your systems” by analyzing code, PRs, and feedback flows to uncover bottlenecks, optimize teams, and accelerate delivery.

+ More

Workshop

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

This session is suitable for:

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
    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
  • Shelly Stuart
    Director of EngineeringCircleCI

    Shelly is an experienced engineering leader who is passionate about building a strong and supportive engineering culture that fosters diversity and growth. She is currently the Director of Engineering at CircleCI.

    View Shelly’s profile
12:00

Workshop

Beyond the hype: Measuring the real impact of AI-assisted engineering

Learn how to move beyond surface-level AI metrics to measure its true impact on engineering performance. In this hands-on workshop, you’ll apply a practical AI Measurement Framework, uncover meaningful insights on developer experience, team effectiveness, and business results, and leave with actionable strategies for maximizing AI’s value.

+ More

Workshop

Beyond the hype: Measuring the real impact of AI-assisted engineering

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

DX x LeadDev

How do we move beyond tracking surface-level AI metrics to truly understanding its impact on engineering performance?
High adoption rates and code completion percentages may look impressive on a dashboard—but do they really translate into better business outcomes?

In this immersive, hands-on workshop, you’ll go past the hype and into the reality of AI-assisted engineering. Blending cutting-edge research with practical tools you can use the very next day, the session is built for engineering leaders and DevProd teams tasked with measuring and maximizing the value of AI tools in engineering.

Through interactive exercises and simulated scenarios, you’ll apply the AI Measurement Framework to capture the full picture of AI’s effect on developer experience, team effectiveness, and business results. Participants will leave with concrete, actionable techniques: specific metrics to rethink, questions to ask their teams, and a framework for making smarter AI tool investments that truly drive developer productivity and organizational performance.
14:30
12:00

Workshop

Team building in the age of AI

AI is transforming how engineering teams work—and how leaders lead. In this interactive workshop, you’ll build your team’s AI charter, rethink your role as a leader, and learn how to grow the high-value human skills your team needs to thrive in an AI-powered world.

+ More

Workshop

Team building in the age of AI

This session is suitable for:

The integration of AI into engineering teams isn’t just changing how work gets done—it’s fundamentally shifting team dynamics, individual roles, and the emotional landscape of leadership.

In this interactive workshop, you’ll tackle the real challenges: creating clear agreements about AI use on your team, evolving your leadership approach in the age of AI, and identifying the skills your team needs to succeed in this new reality. You’ll leave with practical tools including a framework for building your team’s AI charter, strategies for navigating your evolving leadership role, and a clear approach for developing the human skills that become more valuable as AI handles routine work.

In this workshop you’ll learn how to:

  • Create your team AI charter
    • Establish clear, shared agreements about how your team will use AI tools, what standards you’ll maintain, and where human judgment remains essential.
  • Navigate your evolving role
    • Shift from managing tasks to developing capabilities, balancing team members at different AI adoption levels, and leading effectively in the new landscape.
  • Develop the skills your team needs most
    • Identify and intentionally build the critical capabilities like complex problem framing, systems thinking, and cross-functional communication that become more valuable when AI handles routine work.

  • FEATURING
    Suzan Bond
    Founder & CEOConstellary

    Suzan Bond is the founder and CEO of Constellary. With nearly two decades in tech, Suzan has worked with hundreds of engineering leaders and leadership teams to help them navigate change and meet the challenges of organizational leadership. Her work these days includes preparing new directors for the role, coaching senior engineering leaders and creating cohesive leadership teams.

    View Suzan’s profile
12:00

Workshop

Building a metrics-driven team

Drawing on insights from Accelerate, Jez Humble explores how to use data to drive improvement across your engineering teams. You’ll learn the key metrics that predict success, the principles behind them, and how to create a transparent, aligned, and high-performing organisation.

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Workshop

Building a metrics-driven team

This session is suitable for:

As described in Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps, organisations adopting principles and practices from the Lean Software and DevOps movements are seeing payoffs in terms of higher quality, better reliability, faster delivery, and reduced costs.

Leaders wanting to achieve these results will need to understand how to build a transparent, aligned metrics-driven team in order to successfully navigate their improvement journey.

Using material from Accelerate, Jez Humble will discuss:

  • Important concepts in measurement
  • Known predictors of success that any team can use
  • A tool to apply them
  • FEATURING
    Jez Humble
    Site Reliability EngineerGoogle

    Jez Humble is co-author of several books on software: Jolt Award winner Continuous Delivery, Lean Enterprise, The DevOps Handbook, and Shingo Publication Award winner Accelerate. He has spent his career working on code, infrastructure, and product development in companies of varying sizes across three continents, from startups to the US Federal Government, and taught classes in software engineering and product development at UC Berkeley. He was co-founder and CTO of DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment), which was acquired by Google in 2018. He currently serves as the technical lead of the SRE team for Google Cloud’s Serverless products (Cloud Run and App Engine).

    View Jez’s profile
SOLUTIONS TRACK
11:10

Demo stage

Live demo: Infobip – APIs that talk back

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

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Demo stage

Live demo: Infobip – APIs that talk back

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Infobip LeadDev

Voice is evolving fast—and developers have more power than ever to shape how it’s used. In this session, Infobip’s Connor Runnels will showcase how simple it can be to build and scale modern voice experiences, from customer support flows to real-time engagement.

You’ll see a live demo of what’s possible when voice APIs meet a global network, and walk away with practical ideas for integrating voice into your own applications. Whether you’re new to voice or looking to expand beyond messaging, this talk will inspire you to think differently about one of the world’s oldest communication channels—and how it can be reimagined for today’s digital era.

  • FEATURING
    Connor Runnels
    Product ManagerInfobip

    Connor Runnels is a Product Manager at Infobip.

    View Connor’s profile
11:25

Demo stage

Live demo: Retool – Stop rebuilding, start compounding

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

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Demo stage

Live demo: Retool – Stop rebuilding, start compounding

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Retool LeadDev

You never want to hold your team back, but watching junior devs copy-paste their own API keys (or the wrong one) while building production tools keeps you up at night.

By spending your limited engineering time setting up the right building blocks for your team, you can make sure everyone has the access and capabilities they need without any unnecessary security risks. 

In practice, this looks like:

  • Well-governed data resources configured with granular permissions
  • Your entire team building apps and workflows with the help of AI, without the traditional pitfalls of vibe coding
  • Creating autonomous AI agents that connect to your data and leverage domain-specific tools—with the guardrails you need to deploy them with confidence.
  • All of these reusable components turning every project into building blocks for future work

And that’s exactly what you get with the Retool platform. Join us to see how to get your entire team using the same resources and building together.

  • FEATURING
    Keanan Koppenhaver
    Developer Relations LeadRetool

    Keanan Koppenhaver leads the Developer Relations team at Retool, where he focuses on reaching tomorrow’s developers through hands-on demonstrations, real-world builds and the occasional ambitious AI experiment. His work focuses on showing developers and engineering leaders what’s possible with modern application development platforms, particularly as AI transforms how business software gets built.

    View Keanan’s profile
11:40

Demo stage

Live demo: Stytch

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

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Demo stage

Live demo: Stytch

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Stytch 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.
13:15

Engineering in Action

Engineering in Action with Augment Code

Learn how real engineering teams turn ideas into practice.

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Engineering in Action

Engineering in Action with Augment Code

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Augment Code LeadDev

Learn how real engineering teams turn ideas into practice.
14:15

Demo stage

Live demo: Unblocked – Instantly find answers from code, docs, discussions and more

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

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Demo stage

Live demo: Unblocked – Instantly find answers from code, docs, discussions and more

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Unblocked x LeadDev

Unblocked turns scattered knowledge from GitHub, Slack, Jira, and Confluence into clear answers your team can trust. The result: faster onboarding, fewer interruptions, and autonomous teams that stay focused.
14:30

Demo stage

Live demo: Draftt – Manage software end-of-life before it manages you

Explore solutions for your technical issues.

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Demo stage

Live demo: Draftt – Manage software end-of-life before it manages you

This session is suitable for:

Sponsored by

Draftt LeadDev

Change is inevitable, and unmanaged change creates chaos. Draftt is the AI-powered platform that gives enterprises complete visibility and governance across their technology stack. By automatically detecting upcoming end-of-life risks across infrastructure, source code, and images, Draftt enables proactive management, contextual prioritization, and agentic workflows. In this live demo, we’ll show how Draftt helps engineering organizations prevent outages, eliminate hidden costs, and free teams to focus on innovation

  • FEATURING
    Tal Kimhi
    Co-founder & CEODraftt

    Tal Kimhi is the Co-founder & CEO of Draftt.

    View Tal’s profile