AI Rewrote Leadership.
Refactor Your Playbook.
Refactor Your Playbook.
Tap into the collective intelligence of top engineering leaders —debug, optimize, and open-source your new leadership toolkit for the AI-first era.
Bill Coughran
Founder's Coach and Partner @ Sequoia Capital, Former SVP Engineering @ Google
Sulman Choudhry
Head of Engineering, ChatGPT @ OpenAI
Natalie Glance
Chief Engineering Officer @ Duolingo
Malte Ubl
CTO @ Vercel
Melody Meckfessel
CTO at Stealth, xVPE Google
Arvind Jain
Founder & CEO @ Glean
Craig McLuckie
CEO & Co-founder @ stacklok, Co-Creator of Kubernetes
Farnaz Azmoodeh
CTO @ Linktree
Jyoti Bansal
CEO & Co-Founder @ Harness
Wade Chambers
Chief Engineering Officer @ Amplitude
Rukmini Reddy
SVP of Engineering @ PagerDuty
Brian Balfour
Founder and CEO @ Reforge
Jim Palmer
Chief AI Officer @ Dialpad
Lin Qiao
CEO & Co-founder @ Fireworks AI
Loïc Houssier
CTO @ Superhuman
Zachary Lipton
Co-founder and CTO @ Abridge
Ben Liebald
VP of Engineering @ Harvey
Maria Zhang
CEO and Co-founder @ Palona AI
Lake Dai
Founder, Managing Partner @ Sancus Ventures
Nissim Lehyani
VP of Product Management @ Life360
John Amaral
Co-Founder and CTO @ Root.io
Jill Wetzler
Fractional VPE, Executive Coach, and Consultant
Rong Yan
CTO @ Heygen
James Birchler
Technical Advisor and Executive Leadership Coach
Jaime Lien
Founder, Head of Machine Perception & Hardware @ Archetype
Vinay Perneti
VP of Engineering @ Augment
Ram Sriharsha
CTO @ Pinecone
Jan Chong
Vice President Of Engineering @ Tilt (formerly Empower)
Ruslan Belkin
Head of Platform Engineering @ Inflection.ai
Dave Richardson
Senior Vice President of Software and Services Engineering @ General Motors
Dan Lines
Co-founder and COO @ LinearB
Krishna Kannan
Head of Product @ Jellyfish
Justin Reock
Deputy CTO @ DX
Randall Tombaugh
Engineering Leadership @ WorkOS
Lucas Mendes
Founder and CEO @ Revelo
Tim Lee
Co-Founder and Chief Learning Officer @ CodePath
Dhruv Parthasarathy
CTO @ Commure
Samir Ahmed
Technical Lead @ OpenAI
Tony Dong
Founder & CEO @ Propel
Guillermo Manzo
Director of Developer Enablement @ Expedia Group
Ankush Gola
Co-Founder @ LangChain
Rashi Agrawal
Head of AI Engineering @ Goodleap
James Everingham
Co-founder & SVP of Engineering @ Lightspark
We’re bringing together top engineering leaders from today’s most innovative companies—alongside experts from product, design, operations, and other key disciplines they work with closely.
Topic Themes
Redefining Tech Leadership
Technology moves fast. Humans don't. Build the vision-setting, storytelling, and emotional-intelligence superpowers that help you lead through ambiguity, drive behavior change, align teams & foster environments of innovation. Gain the skills that turn uncertainty into alignment and change into sustained innovation.
Building AI-Enabled Teams
Innovating in the AI Era
Business & Product
Redefining Tech Leadership
Technology moves fast. Humans don't. Build the vision-setting, storytelling, and emotional-intelligence superpowers that help you lead through ambiguity, drive behavior change, align teams & foster environments of innovation. Gain the skills that turn uncertainty into alignment and change into sustained innovation.
Building AI-Enabled Teams
AI-enabled, fast-moving, and empowered teams are your next competitive advantage. We’ll share how to attract and cultivate talent with AI skills, structure teams and organizations to effectively integrate AI tools, and scale leadership practices to drive innovation, speed, and meaningful business impact in the AI era.
Innovating in the AI Era
AI is accelerating innovation cycles, redefining "value", and collapsing the time from idea to impact. Discover how to redesign your innovation engine and rethink the very nature of how and what you build. Sessions explore the tactical and strategic shifts reshaping product lifecycles and the playbook for building truly intelligent products.
Business & Product
The lines between engineering, product and the business have blurred. Your ability to drive business outcomes is your greatest new lever for impact. We'll focus on the essential product and business skills to act as a true strategic partner—shaping roadmaps, justifying investments, and tying your team's work directly to the bottom line.
Topics
Roundtables
September 10
September 11
ROUNDTABLE SESSIONS
TABLE
1
TABLE
2
TABLE
3
TABLE
4
TABLE
5
TABLE
6
TABLE
7
10:00 - 10:45 AM PDT
11:00 - 11:45 AM PDT
12:00-1:00 PM PDT
1:00 - 1:45 PM PDT
2:00 - 2:45 PM PDT
3:00 - 3:45 PM PDT
4:00 - 4:45 PM PDT
Break
Lunch
Measuring AI Engineering: Performance Review Edition
Host
Lindsey Simon
VP of Engineering @ Vercel
What Every Eng Leader Should Know About LLMs
Host
Nikrad Mahdi
Startup Advisor / Fractional VPE @ Various Startups
The AI-Ready Leader: What to Unlearn and Rebuild
Host
Rashi Agrawal
Head of AI Engineering @ Goodleap
The AI Applicant Flood: Separating Signal from Noise in Hiring
Host
Scott Swedberg
Founder & CEO @ The Job Sauce
Lightning Pods: AI-Accelerated Cross-Functional Teams
Host
Dhara Patel
Senior Vice President Of Engineering @ Kinesso
Growth Beyond the Ladder
Host
Jill Wetzler
Fractional VPE, Executive Coach, and Consultant @ Jill Wetzler, LLC
From CTO to Visionary: Redefining the Engineering Executive Role
Host
Dmytro Savchenko
VP of Engineering @ Kinesso
Developing AI Fluency for Non-AI Leaders
Host
Kent Wills
Director of Engineering @ Yelp
Driving Practical AI Adoption in Engineering Organizations
Host
David Harrington
Director of Software Engineering
Building Executive Trust Through Transparency and Influence
Host
Manju Abraham
Former Vice President of Engineering, Primary Storage @ ex-HPE
Practical Frameworks and Metrics for AI Adoption
Host
Manoj Pahuja
Director of Software Engineering @ Handshake
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Fractional Engineering Leadership & Portfolio Careers: Redefining Success Beyond the Full-Time Role
Host
Jossie Haines
CEO/Founder @ Jossie Haines Consulting
Build and Fly in Parallel: Staying Agile without Waterfalling into Chaos
Host
Alan Wong
Engineering Manager @ Change.org
Platform Transformation to Power Internal AI Tools
Host
Shae Wang
Engineering Manager @ Ripple
Next-Gen Testing: AI-Driven Approaches
Host
Vani Kumar
Director Of Engineering @ Pinterest
Coming Soon
Customer Centricity and Connection - Beyond the Backlog: Connecting Engineers to the Human Impact of Their Work
Host
Eli Snell
Head of Product Engineering @ Roche
Cutting Through the Noise: Smarter AI Investment Decisions
Host
Casey Caster
Senior Director of Engineering @ SingleStore
Observability and Incident Response in LLM Systems
Host
Manish Tuteja
Senior Director of Engineering @ Bill.com
Rewiring Org Structure for Speed and Focus: An AI-Native Executive Playbook
Host
Shridhar Nayak
Director of Engineering, Platform Services @ JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Measuring the ROI of AI Infrastructure
Host
Sridhar Ramakrishnan
Director of Software Engineering, Developer Experience & Productivity @ Slack
Coming Soon
Designing Self-Sustaining Engineering Orgs
Host
Dan Hobbs
Director, Software Engineering @ Stealth
Coming Soon
Building Self-Trust in the Age of AI: Leading with Curiosity, Clarity, and Connection
Host
Wen Hsu
Founder, Chief Transformation Officer @ Wen Coaching
Navigating Difficult 1:1s: Turning Tough Conversations into Opportunities
Host
Nono Guimbi
Engineering Manager @ Airbnb
Where Should You Focus - Strengths or Weaknesses?
Host
Hale Yaman
Leadership & Executive Coach @ Minerva Coaching
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Making Sense of Open Source AI Models
Host
Erik Hermansen
Director of Engineering @ Bayer
Board-Level Communication for Technical Leaders
Host
Han-Shen Yuan
Former Chief Technology Officer @ Outdoorsy
Coming Soon
Playbooks for Decentralized AI Strategy
Host
Bala Muthiah
Director of Engineering @ Lyft
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Roundtables
September 10
September 11
SEE MORE
Discover the ultimate engineering leadership experience
Discover
The Ultimate
Engineering Leadership Experience
where you can engage with industry experts, forge
meaningful connections, gain actionable insights
through peer coaching, and acquire practical
skills to elevate your career and drive your
leadership growth.
Memories Recap
Previous Speakers
Two days of keynotes, fireside chats, panels, workshops, and roundtables centered on empowering engineering leaders to grow and adapt in today’s dynamic tech landscape.
Lead with peers,
not alone
AI disruption,
real strategies
Future orgs,
built here
Engineering talks,
no fluff
Hard questions,
honest answers
Frameworks that actually scale
Real leaders.
Real stories.
Why
should you attend?
Connect with a Dynamic Community
Grow your network, deeply
Pause.
Reflect.
Recharge
Lead with peers,
not alone
AI disruption,
real strategies
Future orgs,
built here
Engineering talks,
no fluff
Hard questions,
honest answers
Past Attendees
Gainoutside perspectives from across the industry
VENUE
Fort Mason Center
- Gateway Pavilion
- Brand-new venue
- Main stage & breakout tracks
- Buffet-style breakfast & lunch
- Redesigned experience
2 Marina Blvd,
San Francisco, CA 94109
San Francisco, CA 94109
After a few years at Festival Pavilion, ELC Annual will move to Gateway Pavilion—the newer building on the left—in 2025
Tickets
Standard Ticket
$645
Price will increase $250 on Aug 29
2 day pass
Curated 1:1 meetings
Access to all roundtable sessions
Access to 50+ speaking sessions
Access to Connect Lounge
Group Ticket
$548.25
Price will increase $250 on Aug 29
Same access as Standard tickets
Subtotal
$2,580
Discount
- 15% ($387)
Total
$2,193
What Attendees Are Saying
We asked attendees why they’re excited to join us at ELC Annual with their peer engineering leaders for two days of connecting, learning, and growing and this is what they had to say:
“It's been fun because sometimes when you're in the trenches, you think you're the only one that's going through the same problems: layoffs, how do you manage the team? How do you motivate them? How do you deliver value to the business? How do you partner with different functions within the organizations?
It's been amazing to actually see different people from different companies going through the same thing and also picking up a few nuggets from each individual and what they do similarly and differently in order to help the business and the company grow.”
Alpha Bah
Senior Software Engineering Manager @ Linkedin
“I think the biggest impact is that you feel very supported, right? There are other industry leaders and also it gives you the feeling that you are not alone in this journey. Everyone goes through the same challenges and there are solutions that you might not have thought about but others have gained.
Everybody is just willing to talk to each other. Even when I was in the line during lunch I was just standing there alone, but all the people next to me just simply started introducing and talking and there were interesting topics that came up and it's just amazing.”
Dhara Patel
Senior Vice President Of Engineering @ Kinesso
“It is just so cool to hear about other people's experiences, which I think a lot of the engineering leaders here appreciate. We can talk about concepts and ideas and frameworks, and I love that stuff but there's also hearing specific people talking about specific situations at specific companies where you either get to learn something new or you hear somebody else who had similar struggles to you. And I think that can be very empowering and relatable as well.”
Maria Kazandjieva
Engineering Leader @ Figma
“After the talks, I was able to have continued conversation with the speakers and I really appreciated that opportunity. It's not really easy to access the speakers in many of these events, in my experience, but here it was a totally different game.
It is reassuring, right? I'm not alone in this path. The same challenges and the same struggles are happening. Talking to people who had been through these kinds of challenges and had some tools under their belt, was really invaluable.”
Mehmet Sencer Karadayi
Former CTO @ Dexter Energy Services
“It was refreshing in many ways to know that I'm not alone and it also gave me a new perspective. That's really what I'm looking for is to just think and rethink in different ways. I've got so many things I want to take back with the team and try out.”
Sarah Boaz-Shelley
Sr. Engineering Manager @ Salesforce
Our Partners
Platinum
Diamond
Gold
Silver
Bronze
Special Partners
Want to sponsor us? Reach out to us [email protected]
- 13,000+Members
- 5,000+Companies
- 18Local chapters
- 13,000+Members
- 5,000+Companies
Our Community
13,000+ Members|18 Local Chapters|5000+ Companies
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Who should attend ELC Annual?
ELC Annual is designed for engineering leaders. Whether you’re a first time manager or a seasoned executive, this conference is optimized for you to connect with others industry to grow your skills as a leader.
Do you have a justification letter to get approval from my manager?
Yes, you can access our template here.
I’d like my team to attend ELC Annual. Do you offer discounts for groups?
Yes! Groups of three or more are eligible for a discount.
- Groups of 4 - 9 people: 15% discount
- Groups of 10 people or more: 25% discount
To receive your discount code, email [email protected] with your company name and the names of the team members you’re hoping to register. This discount cannot be combined with other discounts or applied retroactively.
I work at a startup. Is there a reduced registration rate for me?
Yes, startups that are less than three years old and have raised less than $3 million may qualify for a reduced registration rate on any ticket type. All registrations for the startup rate are subject to approval by ELC. This discount cannot be combined with other discounts or applied retroactively.
Startups must apply to receive the reduced startup rate. To get started, email [email protected] with the company name and website.
Are there single-day or single-session tickets available?
Registration and attendance is encouraged for the entire ELC Annual schedule. At this time, there are no single-session or single-day tickets available.
Can I make changes to an existing registration or transfer a registration to someone else?
If you need to make changes to an existing registration, contact us by emailing [email protected]. Be sure to include your name, company, and the information you’d like to update in the email.
Tickets are transferable to qualified attendees. Email [email protected] to request a transfer and get support.
How will I receive my tickets for ELC Annual?
Your confirmation and ticket will be sent by email once you’ve completed your registration and paid in full. If you can’t find the confirmation email in your inbox, please check your spam folder and then email [email protected]. Be sure to include your name and company in the email.
Where can I find a receipt for my registration?
Your receipt is included in your event confirmation email. If you can’t find it, please email [email protected] to request your receipt. Be sure to include your name and company in the email.
How do I access ELC’s virtual community?
You can access our community here or through your registration confirmation. To have the best event experience, be sure to complete your entire profile.
Will ELC sell attendee lists?
No, we will not share or sell attendee information.
My application was marked as “pending.” What do I do?
Our team will email you with the status of your application once it’s been reviewed by the ELC. If it is accepted, we will send you the necessary information to pay and receive confirmation of your attendance. If you have any questions, please email [email protected].
Still have questions?
Can’t find the answer you’re looking for? For group purchase, please contact [email protected].
Sign up for updates and exclusive offers
on ELC Annual 2025
on ELC Annual 2025
© 2025 ELC All Rights Reserved