AI DevSummit 2025 + DeveloperWeek Leadership 2025: Full Schedule

2:00pm PDT

PRO Session: Cracking the Engineering Leadership Code: How to Transition from Intern to Senior Engineer

Wednesday May 28, 2025 2:00pm - 2:25pm PDT

Manasa Hari, Adobe, SDE III

The leap from individual contributor (IC) to engineering manager is one of the most challenging transitions in a technical career. This session explores the skills, mindset shifts, and strategies needed to become an effective engineering leader.

Key Takeaways:

How to develop leadership skills while still being hands-on technically.

Common pitfalls when moving from IC to manager and how to avoid them.

Strategies for managing former peers and establishing credibility.

Balancing technical excellence with people management responsibilities.

Speakers

Manasa Hari

SDE III, Adobe

Manasa Hari is a Software Development Engineer III (SDE III) with 12 years of experience in designing and scaling cloud-native systems. Currently at Adobe, she has also held key roles at Splunk, Selector AI, Taulia, and RingCentral. Known for her expertise in Kubernetes, event-driven... Read More →

Wednesday May 28, 2025 2:00pm - 2:25pm PDT
DeveloperWeek Leadership Main Stage

DeveloperWeek Leadership

Additional Topics Product Management and Engineering Alignment, Change Management, Leadership Career Paths
Session Type PRO Session
Tracks DeveloperWeek Leadership, Technical Leadership / Management & Teams (Managing People) (DeveloperWeek Leadership), Technical Career Development (DeveloperWeek Leadership)
In-Person/Virtual In Person

10:30am PDT

PRO Session: So You Want to Hire for Platform Engineering?

Thursday May 29, 2025 10:30am - 10:55am PDT

DeveloperWeek Leadership Main Stage

Hazel Weakly, Nivenly Foundation, Fellow

I see you want to hire a developer to work on platform engineering, internal developer tooling, developer experience, and the overall generally intangible but admirable goal of "making life better for devs". That’s awesome; you've got one hell of a challenge ahead of you. This role is extremely difficult to hire for. In my opinion, and in my experience, it’s been the most difficult role in the company outside of senior leadership, and the most likely to fail; if there ever was a role that burns people out, it’s this one.

Come with Hazel as we draw on her experiences building platform teams and organizations in order to talk about making this platform engineering thing a reality. In doing so, we'll end up discussing topics such as

- The hiring pipeline and interview loop
- Timing, politics, and the meta strategies
- Getting to zero from negative
- Avoiding pitfalls

Speakers

Hazel Weakly

Fellow, Nivenly Foundation

Hazel spends her days working on building out teams of humans as well as the infrastructure, systems, and tooling to make life better for others. She’s worked at a variety of companies and knows that the hardest problems to solve are the social ones. One of her favorite things is... Read More →

Thursday May 29, 2025 10:30am - 10:55am PDT
DeveloperWeek Leadership Main Stage

DeveloperWeek Leadership

Additional Topics Learning and Development, Strategic Technical Hiring, Technical Decision Making, Change Management, Leadership Career Paths
Session Type PRO Session
Tracks Technical Leadership / Management & Teams (Managing People) (DeveloperWeek Leadership), Technical Career Development (DeveloperWeek Leadership)
In-Person/Virtual In Person

2:00pm PDT

PRO Session: From 0 to 70: How to Scale Product & Engineering Teams

Thursday May 29, 2025 2:00pm - 2:25pm PDT

DeveloperWeek Leadership Main Stage

Ken Weiner, GumGum, Chief Technology Officer

From 0 to 70: How to Scale Product & Engineering Teams: A product is only as strong as the team behind it—without the right leadership and guidance, even the best ideas can fall flat. To foster growth and innovation, it's essential to have a clear strategy for scaling operations and aligning resources. Ken, who's grown GumGum’s technology team from 0 to 70+ employees, will share tactics to scale your teams, operations, and product for the long term. He’ll discuss strategies such as establishing career ladders, minimizing dependencies between teams, and leading with an innovative mindset. Additionally, he’ll highlight the importance of fostering diversity within your team to drive growth and creativity.

Speakers

Ken Weiner

Chief Technology Officer, GumGum

Ken Weiner is the Chief Technology Officer of GumGum, where he has led engineering and product teams in developing a blend of cutting-edge contextual, creative, and attention technologies. Ken, as GumGum's first employee, has driven the company's technological innovation for over... Read More →

Thursday May 29, 2025 2:00pm - 2:25pm PDT
DeveloperWeek Leadership Main Stage

DeveloperWeek Leadership