London

June 28–29, 2027

New York

September 15–16, 2026

Berlin

November 9–10, 2026

Leadership

Leadership

Leading high-performing engineering organizations

  • AI-native development: How to actually get the most out of your agents

    This talk covers spec-driven development as a way to give agents better constraints, large language model (LLM) gateway and routing strategies for managing which model handles which task, test-driven development adapted for an agent-first workflow, and verification practices built for the volume and pace of AI-generated code.

4 mental models for more effective engineering leadership

Add these to your leadership tooklit.

How to lead individuals with advanced technical expertise

If you’re a manager of individual contributor’s who have more years of experience on you, you may be confused on how best to lead them.

How can I rebuild a struggling team’s confidence and trust?

When there’s friction in the team you’re managing, morale, performance, and trust all take a hit. How can you rectify the situation?

How to lead senior engineers as a new manager

If you’ve just entered a management role, cultivating your relationship with the senior engineers on your team may be a daunting prospect. Here are a few ways to get that relationship off to a good start.

LeadDev Berlin promo

Reasons to step into a leadership role (and the reasons not to)

Thinking of becoming an engineering leader? Let Pat Kua help you with the first step of the journey.

On our Leadership playlist

What we talk about when we talk about leadership

Exploring key leadership themes from years in tech, this talk offers guidance and practical strategies to help engineers become the leaders they want to be.

From engineer to executive: Leading the shift and inspiring business-minded tech teams

Explore the journey from engineering leader to CTO, with insights on bridging technology and business strategy, leading with influence, and fostering business-minded tech teams.

In partnership with Apollo

Elevating your leadership skills during tough times

What skills do you need to be a great leader during economic uncertainty?

Hywel carver

AI and tech leadership

Hywel Carver talks AI and tech leadership.

In partnership with Swarmia

Post-ZIRP engineering leadership

This talk explores the evolution of the engineering leadership role from the growth-focused 2010s to today’s environment of increased scrutiny and accountability.

The festival for modern engineering leadership

New York • September 15 & 16, 2026

More about Engineering Management

Top Leadership videos

  • Scaling yourself by helping your colleagues grow

    In this talk, I will share different techniques that help you grow your colleagues to a level where they can do a part of your job. I will explain the difference between delegating, mentoring, and teaching, and demonstrate with examples how little effort it takes to turn your everyday tasks into teaching moments, improving your understanding of your own skills in the process.

  • Scaling leadership: Insights from the first Staff Technical Program Manager in the room

    This talk offers the perspective of a Staff Technical Program manager as the first one hired in a company, deconstructing the evolutionary journey that paved the way for hiring more of them.

  • Tips on scaling your leadership outside of your comfort zone

    In this talk Michael will talk through lessons and tips he’s learnt when working on a project that pushed him outside of his comfort zone, and how you can effectively utilise the skills and knowledge of those around you to build alignment when leading across a broad set of teams who are often using very different technologies.

  • Letting the Best Ideas Win

    In my talk I will explain that this is generally a pretty bad idea; it won’t surface the best ideas and it doesn’t let more junior engineers develop their skills. Instead, I introduce some steps you can take to make sure that the idea adopted to solve a problem is the best idea available, even if you aren’t the one who came up with it. Perhaps counter-intuitively I will show how this increases your influence in your organisation and sets everyone up for success.

  • Doing “the most important thing” is a trap.

    This talk is little about why you need to say No to people more, and how things can go wrong when you don’t learn to do it enough. 

  • Filling the Void: Operating as a Staff Engineer in a Leaderless Scope

    In this talk, we will detail our experiences as Staff Engineers functioning as Tech Leads, Glues and Facilitators in a leaderless role. We’ll discuss the real-world problems we faced, our solutions, and the lessons learned that allowed us to grow as leaders and as an organisation.

  • In anticipation of change: Strategies for engineering leaders to stay current and effective

    One of the toughest challenges you face as an engineering leader is staying current while preparing yourself and your teams for change.

  • Friends don’t let friends debug their leadership skills in production

    In this talk, Hywel will discuss the skills needed as engineers progress on different career paths (both technical leadership and people management), and how they can be learned outside the ‘production environment’ of the team.