Oct 13-14, 2026 · San Francisco

ELC ANNUAL

26
Stay Ahead. Lead Change.Grow Yourself and Your Team.
Exclusively for Engineering Leaders.
Hosted by the World's Largest Engineering Leadership Community.

Speakers

Expect 60+ SpeakersSee All

Across engineering executives, AI builders, platform leaders, and hands-on practitioners

We’ll bring together engineering executives and senior leaders closest to the decisions behind AI adoption - how teams choose tools, redesign workflows, measure impact, and turn experimentation into real organizational change.

Discover What's Shaping

the Future of Engineering

Leadership

Discover What's Shaping

the Future of Engineering

Leadership

Discover What's Shaping

the Future of Engineering

Leadership

Discover What's Shaping

the Future of Engineering

Leadership

Discover What's Shaping

the Future of Engineering

Leadership

Come compare notes with engineering leaders and practitioners navigating the same questions: how far teams have gotten with AI, what tools and workflows are working, where adoption gets stuck, and what your next steps should be.

[01]

Strategic Leadership & Personal Growth

Focuses on the evolving responsibilities of engineering leaders and the personal qualities required to lead through uncertainty. Sessions explore vision setting, ethical decision‑making, resilience, storytelling, mentoring and role transitions from manager to VP.

[03]

Talent Development & Performance

Covers the end‑to‑end people lifecycle—hiring, upskilling, managing and retaining talent—while ensuring equitable compensation and performance management. It reflects transcript discussions on building talent pipelines and measuring developer success.

[05]

Emerging Technologies & Responsible AI

Concentrates on AI adoption and other tech trends, with an emphasis on responsible use, ethical considerations, scaling, cost, and regulatory compliance. Sessions also address AI‑driven leadership and practical guidance on moving from experiments to production.

[07]

Leadership Pathways & Career Transitions

Provides role‑specific guidance for managers, directors and executives and helps attendees navigate career moves. The sessions are grouped by leadership level to address their unique challenges while aligning with the broader themes above.

[02]

Organizational Design & Culture

Emphasizes how to structure, scale and sustain engineering organizations. Topics address team autonomy, matrix vs. functional structures, culture shifts, organizational debt, psychological safety and inclusivity.

[04]

Collaboration & Business Alignment

Brings together sessions on customer‑centric engineering, cross‑functional collaboration, product‑led culture and negotiation. The focus is on aligning engineering with product, design, sales, marketing and customers to drive business impact.

[06]

Engineering Excellence & Developer Productivity

Highlights practices and tools for achieving operational excellence and sustained productivity. Topics include balancing innovation and operations, prototyping vs. PRDs, observability and incident response, AI‑powered testing, and metrics to assess the impact of AI on velocity and quality.

[01]

Strategic Leadership & Personal Growth

Focuses on the evolving responsibilities of engineering leaders and the personal qualities required to lead through uncertainty. Sessions explore vision setting, ethical decision‑making, resilience, storytelling, mentoring and role transitions from manager to VP.

[02]

Organizational Design & Culture

Emphasizes how to structure, scale and sustain engineering organizations. Topics address team autonomy, matrix vs. functional structures, culture shifts, organizational debt, psychological safety and inclusivity.

[03]

Talent Development & Performance

Covers the end‑to‑end people lifecycle—hiring, upskilling, managing and retaining talent—while ensuring equitable compensation and performance management. It reflects transcript discussions on building talent pipelines and measuring developer success.

[04]

Collaboration & Business Alignment

Brings together sessions on customer‑centric engineering, cross‑functional collaboration, product‑led culture and negotiation. The focus is on aligning engineering with product, design, sales, marketing and customers to drive business impact.

[05]

Emerging Technologies & Responsible AI

Concentrates on AI adoption and other tech trends, with an emphasis on responsible use, ethical considerations, scaling, cost, and regulatory compliance. Sessions also address AI‑driven leadership and practical guidance on moving from experiments to production.

[06]

Engineering Excellence & Developer Productivity

Highlights practices and tools for achieving operational excellence and sustained productivity. Topics include balancing innovation and operations, prototyping vs. PRDs, observability and incident response, AI‑powered testing, and metrics to assess the impact of AI on velocity and quality.

[07]

Leadership Pathways & Career Transitions

Provides role‑specific guidance for managers, directors and executives and helps attendees navigate career moves. The sessions are grouped by leadership level to address their unique challenges while aligning with the broader themes above.

CategoryTopicSpeaker
Emerging Technologies & Responsible AI

Autonomy Is the Wrong Goal: How Agents Earn Authority

Nancy WangChief Technology Officer @ 1Password

Collaboration & Business Alignment

AI ROI Is Not a Productivity Metric: Defense, Dollars, and Delivery

Nancy WangChief Technology Officer @ 1Password

Emerging Technologies & Responsible AI

Future AI success hinges on infrastructure adaptability

Ben KusCTO @ Box

Emerging Technologies & Responsible AI

[Q&A] Future AI success hinges on infrastructure adaptability

Ben KusCTO @ Box

Emerging Technologies & Responsible AI

Building AI that fits your business

Benny ChenCo-founder @ Fireworks AI

Leadership Pathways & Career Transitions

Uncommon lessons learned on the journey from Eng leader -> CTO -> CEO

Scott WoodyCEO and Co-founder @ Metronome

Engineering Excellence & Developer Productivity

Prompt to Prod: Engineering an Autonomous SDLC at Scale

Andrew SwerdlowSr. Director of Software @ Roblox

Strategic Leadership & Personal Growth

Leading Through Uncertainty: Decision‑Making in Volatile Times

Chris LyonSVP of Engineering @ Twilio

Roundtables

October 13
October 14
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
bento
pizza
taco
champagne
burger
coffee
Platform vs. Product Investments: How Leaders Decide Where to Spend
Host
Amanda Reilly
Senior Director of Engineering @ Art of Problem Solving
Operating AI in Production: Reliability, Risk, and Observability
Host
Utsav Kanani
Director of Engineering @ Across AI
How Do Great Engineering Leaders Protect Time for Deep Thinking?
Host
Kashyap Tumkur
Engineering Director @ Verily (Google Life Sciences)
What Guardrails Are Needed to Safely Ship LLM Features to Production?
Host
Nirmal Jingar
Senior Engineering Leader | Enterprise AI & Supply Chain @ Wayfair
AI and the Org Chart: How Engineering Leaders Are Rethinking Team Structure
Host
Matteo Palvarini
Forward Deployed CTO @ Tribe AI
How Engineering Leaders Decide Which Problems Are Worth Solving with AI
Host
Andrew Swerdlow
Senior Director of Software Engineering @ Roblox
Coaching Engineers Who Resist New Tools or Ways of Working
Host
Cole Bennett
Senior Director of Engineering @ Chime
How Career Ladders Change When Individual Engineer Leverage Increases
Host
Pavan Patibandla
Director Of Engineering @ Amplitude
How Do Engineering Leaders Stay Relevant When the Skill Stack Keeps Changing?
Host
Karthik Gopalakrishnan
Senior Director of Enterprise Engineering @ Snowflake
What AI Is Making Invisible
Host
Dhara Patel
Senior Vice President Of Engineering @ Kinesso
Maintaining Engineering Craftsmanship When Speed Is the Primary Business Pressure
Host
Anmol Nagpal
Software Engineering Manager @ Sony Interactive Entertainment
Coming Soon
Scaling Engineering Output Without Simply Hiring More People
Host
Julian Gan
Director of Engineering @ Kargo
Leading Without Outsourcing Your Discernment
Host
Wen Hsu
Founder, Chief Transformation Officer @ Wen Coaching
Short‑Term Delivery vs. Long‑Term Architecture: How Leaders Actually Balance the Two
Host
Anjali Anagol-Subbarao
Board Director @ JobTrain
Scaling Engineering Without Losing Speed, Culture, or Accountability
Host
Abraham Velazquez
Director of Engineering @ Dropbox
How Leaders Build Psychological Safety While Introducing Disruptive Technologies
Host
Prateek Mehrotra
Senior Engineering Manager @ Aledade
Embedding Continuous Improvement into Engineering Team Culture
Host
Paige Scott
Former Senior Engineering Manager, Build/Release & Developer Tooling @ Former Riot Games
Evaluating AI Tools Before Rolling Them Out Across the Entire Organization
Host
Michael Lu
Chief Technology Officer @ UrgentIQ
The Hidden Debt: Preventing AI‑Generated Code from Becoming Long‑Term Liability
Host
Peter Edworthy
Director of Engineering - Web Platform @ BitSight
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Pushing Back on Product Without Damaging the Relationship
Host
Michael Stephens
Director of Engineering @ Yelp
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
The Wiring Underneath: On Diagnosing the System, Not the Symptom
Host
Nathan Broslawsky
Chief Product & Technology Officer @ ClearOne Advantage
Coming Soon
Technical Debt as a Leadership Problem — Not Just an Engineering One
Host
Dmitry Moiseev
Senior Director of Engineering @ Cambium Networks
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Production-Ready Agents: Identity, Trust, and Control in the Real World
Host
Ankit Agarwal
Chief Technology Officer @ Skyfire
Bringing Customer Context Back into Engineering Decisions
Host
Marcus Ericsson
Director of Engineering @ Twilio
When AI Creates New Forms of Technical Debt — and How Teams Manage It
Host
Daria Starostina
Solutions Architect @ iTechArt
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Holding the Line: Maintaining Code Quality When Speed Is the Business Priority
Host
Dharmesh Thakkar
Senior Software Development Manager, Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) @ Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Coming Soon

Roundtables

October 13
October 14
SEE MORE
2025

Memories Recap

Watch Short Video

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

Attendees

By Job Level

25%
CTO, VP, Head of Engineering
15%
Tech Lead, Sr. IC
60%
Manager to Sr. Director

Venue

Fort Mason CenterGateway Pavilion
  • Main stage & breakout tracks
  • Buffet-style breakfast & lunch
  • Redesigned experience
2 Marina Blvd, San Francisco, CA 941092 Marina Blvd San Francisco, CA 94109

Ticket

Early Bird Ticket

$695Early Bird
2 day pass
Curated 1:1 meetings
Curated peer group
Access to all roundtable sessions
Access to 50+ speaking sessions
Access to networking lounge
REGISTER

Group Ticket

$695Early Bird
Everything included in Standard tickets
Subtotal$2,780
Discount(15%off) - $417
Total$2,363
REGISTER

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:

Dhara Patel

Dhara Patel

Senior Vice President Of Engineering @ Kinesso

"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."

Alpha Bah

Alpha Bah

Senior Software Engineering Manager @ Linkedin

1/5

"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."

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