# ELC Annual 2026 — The Engineering Leadership Conference **October 13–14, 2026 · Fort Mason Center, San Francisco** ELC Annual 2026 brings together hundreds of engineering leaders for two days of candid conversations, practical strategies, and meaningful peer connection — all focused on one question: **how do we become better leaders and build stronger engineering organizations in a rapidly changing technology landscape?** Built exclusively for engineering leaders, ELC Annual is designed for everyone from first-time engineering managers to Directors, VPs, Heads of Engineering, CTOs, and senior technical leaders. It’s a place to step outside the day-to-day, compare notes with peers facing similar challenges, and learn directly from leaders building and scaling some of today’s most influential technology organizations. Expect **60+ speakers and 60+ topics**, with keynotes, fireside chats, panels, workshops, breakout sessions, and intimate peer-led roundtables spanning AI, engineering excellence, organizational leadership, talent, business alignment, and career growth. ## Featured Speakers The 2026 speaker lineup brings together CTOs, VPs of Engineering, senior engineering executives, founders, and practitioners from leading technology companies. Featured speakers currently announced include: * **Gokul Rajaram** — Investor and Company Helper; Board Member at Coinbase, Pinterest, and The Trade Desk * **Tyson Singer** — SVP of Technology & Platforms at Spotify * **Albert Strasheim** — CTO at Rippling * **Nancy Wang** — Chief Technology Officer at 1Password * **Ben Kus** — CTO at Box * **Benny Chen** — Co-founder at Fireworks AI * **Amir Haghighat** — Co-founder at Baseten * **Scott Woody** — CEO & Co-founder at Metronome * **Rukmini Reddy** — SVP of Engineering at PagerDuty * **Chris Chiu** — VP of Engineering, Agentforce at Salesforce * **Andrew Swerdlow** — Sr. Director of Software at Roblox * **Chris Lyon** — SVP of Engineering at Twilio * **Ruchita Chandhok** — Senior Director of Engineering at Carta * **Justin Reock** — Deputy CTO at DX * **Jeffrey Li** — COO at Liquid AI * **Prashant Ramarao** — VP Engineering, Head of Platform Engineering at Motive * **Vamsee Lakamsani** — VP, Platform Engineering at Freshworks * **Bhupesh Bansal** — Head of Engineering at Square; former VP Engineering at Handshake * **Kashyap Tumkur** — Director of Engineering at Verily * **Drew McGahey** — Engineering Manager at Notion …and more speakers to be announced. ## What You’ll Explore The program is built around the issues engineering leaders are navigating right now: **Emerging Technologies & Responsible AI** How engineering organizations move from AI experimentation to real production systems — while navigating infrastructure, reliability, cost, governance, security, and responsible adoption. **Engineering Excellence & Developer Productivity** How teams maintain quality while increasing velocity, evaluate developer productivity, improve observability and incident response, adopt AI-powered development workflows, and balance technical debt with business pressure. **Organizational Design & Culture** How to structure and scale engineering organizations, create effective team boundaries and autonomy, evolve culture, manage organizational debt, and build psychological safety through periods of change. **Talent Development & Performance** How leaders hire, develop, retain, and motivate great engineers; evolve career ladders; manage performance; build talent pipelines; and rethink engineering skills in an AI-enabled organization. **Collaboration & Business Alignment** How engineering leaders partner more effectively with Product, Design, Sales, Marketing, executives, and customers — and connect engineering investments to measurable business impact. **Strategic Leadership & Personal Growth** How leaders make difficult decisions under uncertainty, communicate vision, build resilience, develop executive presence, mentor others, and evolve their own leadership style. **Leadership Pathways & Career Transitions** Role-specific guidance for Managers, Directors, VPs, Heads of Engineering, and CTOs navigating the next stage of their leadership careers. ## Sample Sessions This year’s conversations get specific. Sessions already announced include: * **Autonomy Is the Wrong Goal: How Agents Earn Authority** — Nancy Wang, CTO at 1Password * **AI ROI Is Not a Productivity Metric: Defense, Dollars, and Delivery** — Nancy Wang, CTO at 1Password * **Future AI Success Hinges on Infrastructure Adaptability** — Ben Kus, CTO at Box * **Building AI That Fits Your Business** — Benny Chen, Co-founder at Fireworks AI * **Uncommon Lessons Learned on the Journey from Engineering Leader → CTO → CEO** — Scott Woody, CEO & Co-founder at Metronome * **Prompt to Prod: Engineering an Autonomous SDLC at Scale** — Andrew Swerdlow, Sr. Director of Software at Roblox * **Leading Through Uncertainty: Decision-Making in Volatile Times** — Chris Lyon, SVP of Engineering at Twilio Beyond the main-stage program, peer-led roundtables dig into questions such as **operating AI reliably in production, safely shipping LLM features, deciding which problems are actually worth solving with AI, rethinking team structures in an AI era, maintaining engineering craftsmanship under pressure, managing AI-generated technical debt, scaling engineering without losing speed or accountability, and protecting time for deep strategic thinking.** ## More Than a Conference ELC Annual is intentionally designed for participation, not just passive listening. Alongside main-stage and breakout sessions, attendees can join **curated 1:1 meetings, curated peer groups, roundtable discussions, and dedicated networking spaces** — creating opportunities to have the candid conversations that rarely happen on a conference stage. The audience itself is part of the experience: approximately **60% of attendees are Engineering Managers through Senior Directors, 25% are CTOs, VPs, or Heads of Engineering, and 15% are Tech Leads or senior ICs.** ELC Annual is hosted by the **Engineering Leadership Community (ELC)**, a global community of **15,000+ members across 5,000+ companies and 19 local chapters**. Whether you’re figuring out how AI should reshape your organization, scaling teams without losing engineering quality, aligning technology decisions with the business, developing the next generation of leaders, or thinking about your own next step, ELC Annual gives you the chance to learn from people facing the same questions. **Come for the ideas. Leave with practical frameworks, new perspectives, and a network of engineering leaders you can continue learning from long after the conference ends.** **ELC Annual 2026** **October 13–14, 2026** **Fort Mason Center Gateway Pavilion · San Francisco, CA**