Summary
AI has created a paradox for engineering leaders: executives expect you to ship more products and features, take on more concurrent projects, and move faster, all with the same workforce. While your team can execute more with AI, leadership doesn't understand that AI only reduces the cost of execution, not the cost of judgment. Troubleshooting, technical intuition, tech-debt management and cross-system decision-making still can't be delegated or automated. So how do you scale without hiring? This roundtable explores strategies that expand resources without adding headcount: domain ownership over task assignment, embedding AI into SDLC to reclaim focus time for higher-order thinking, and creating standards and expectations without stifling. We'll explore what leaders should be thinking ahead to chart the domains within your team(s), develop standards and expectations for specialized roles within the team, and where to deploy AI to automate areas in your SDLC. You'll leave with working examples for creating resources without necessarily increasing headcount through developing high autonomy and high agency T-shaped individuals, working examples of where to deploy AI to maintain standards, reduce friction, and toil to increase capacity for high-impact work.
Host
Julian Gan
Director of Engineering @ Kargo
Julian Gan is the Director of Engineering at Kargo, where he leads a distributed team of engineers that builds and operates an ad exchange handling over 15 billion daily requests, generating 90% of the company's gross revenue. Julian is an experienced incident commander, leads critical publisher and campaign escalations, and ultimately serves as the connector between business teams and engineering, translating GTM team expectations and requirements into production. Julian is passionate about Developer Productivity and growing individuals into high autonomy and high agency roles that can multiply impact across organisations.
Sign up to receive news and updates on ELC Annual 2026
