IN-PERSON

8:00 AM PDT

(Event time zone)

Oct 13 – Oct 14, 2026

ELC Annual 2026

Name: ELC%20Annual%202026
Start: 2026-10-13T15:00:00.735Z
End: 2026-10-14T23:00:00.735Z
Location: Gateway Pavilion, Fort Mason Center

# ELC Annual 2026

# Leadership

# Roundtable

# Public Speaking

# Career

# Collaboration

# Org Design

The ELC Annual is built around a simple belief: the most valuable learning happens in conversation - with peers who are navigating the same pressures, making the same hard calls, and building through the same uncertainty.

This year, we're going deeper on the questions that don't have easy answers.

What does it mean to lead well when the ground keeps shifting? How do you build teams that are resilient, high-trust, and genuinely high-performing, not just on paper? What does great engineering leadership look like beyond the technical, in the moments that require judgment, integrity, and clarity of purpose?

Across roundtable discussions, intimate speaking sessions, and 1:1 conversations, you'll engage with engineering leaders who are thinking seriously about these questions — and willing to share what they've actually learned.

—

What you'll explore

Leadership & Strategy

Leading through uncertainty and volatile decision-making environments. The evolving CTO/VP role — from roadmap owner to visionary strategist. Ethical decision-making, leadership integrity, and purpose-driven organizations. Storytelling and influence: communicating complex ideas to executives and boards.

Teams & Culture

Building high-trust teams and psychological safety at scale. Navigating culture shifts in growing organizations. Scaling hybrid and remote work — the practices and rituals that actually stick. Building inclusive engineering cultures and diverse talent pipelines.

Talent & People Development

Developing next-generation leaders through mentoring and succession planning. Continuous performance management and feedback systems. Retention, engagement, and creating environments where people genuinely thrive. Hiring for potential: assessing soft skills and growth mindset.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Aligning engineering, product, and design around shared outcomes. Breaking down silos with tools and practices that work. Customer-centric engineering: building products users truly love. Cross-functional OKRs and collaborative planning across roadmaps and backlogs.

AI in Practice

Building AI-enabled teams — what it looks like beyond the theory. AI in software development: coding assistants, prompt engineering, and human-AI collaboration. Translating AI trends into actionable engineering strategy. Architecting AI systems that make it to production and stay there.

Engineering Excellence

Measuring developer productivity, satisfaction, and team health. Observability and incident response in AI-enabled systems. Balancing innovation with operational priorities. Coaching teams through change without losing momentum.

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What to expect

Roundtable Discussions

Small-group sessions facilitated by experienced practitioners — designed for active participation, not passive listening. These are the conversations where people say what they actually think.

Speaking Sessions

Close-up conversations with engineering leaders who are actively shaping what the role looks like today. Past speakers have included leaders from OpenAI, Stripe, Google, Dropbox, Atlassian, and Slack, as well as Reid Hoffman, Max Levchin, and Adam Grant.

1:1 Meetings

Structured time to connect directly with peers, mentors, and industry veterans. Some of the most valuable relationships in ELC have started here.

—

Leave with a clearer sense of what kind of leader you want to be - and a network of people who are working toward the same thing.

Speakers

Gokul Rajaram

Investor and Company Helper, Board Member @ Coinbase and Pinterest

Rob Witoff

CTO @ Coinbase

Nancy Wang

Chief Technology Officer @ 1Password

Sagnik Nandy

CTO @ Docusign

James Everingham

CEO @ Guild.ai

Ali Dasdan

CTO @ Dropbox

Ben Kus

CTO @ Box

Monica Bajaj

CTO & SVP @ Okta

Katelyn Lesse

Head of Platform Engineering @ Anthropic

Benny Chen

Co-founder @ Fireworks AI

Amir Haghighat

Co-founder @ Baseten

Tom Adams

CTO @ Adyen

Rukmini Reddy

SVP of Engineering @ PagerDuty

Hari Lingamagunta

VP and Head of Dev Infra @ Atlassian

Scott Woody

CEO and Co-founder @ Metronome

Michael Grinich

CEO & Founder @ WorkOS

Chris Chiu

VP of Engineering, Agentforce @ Salesforce

Andrew Swerdlow

VP of Software Engineering @ Roblox

Ruchita Chandhok

Senior Director of Engineering @ Carta

Chris Lyon

SVP of Engineering @ Twilio

Justin Reock

Deputy CTO @ DX

Aparna Dhinakaran

Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer @ Arize AI

Amit Gupta

Partner @ SNR Ventures

Anastasia Zamyshlyaeva

VP Engineering @ GitKraken

Ameya Bhatawdekar

VP & Field CTO @ Braintrust

Martin Reynolds

Field CTO @ Harness

Stephen Poletto

Field CTO @ Span

Nataliya Anon

Founder and CEO @ Svitla Systems

Matt Greenberg

CTO @ Handshake

Jill Wetzler

Fractional VPE, Executive Coach & Consultant @ Jill Wetzler, LLC

Prashant Ramarao

VP Engineering, Head of Platform Engineering @ Motive

Vamsee Lakamsani

VP, Platform Engineering @ Freshworks

Nono Guimbi

Executive Coach & Engineering Leader @ Formerly Airbnb, Slack

Bhupesh Bansal

Head of Eng @ Square, former VPE @ Handshake

Prerna Goel

Engineering Leader @ Abridge

Lizzie Matusov

Co-Founder & CEO @ Quotient

Brandon Waselnuk

Developer Relations @ Unblocked

Andrew Churchill

Co-founder & CTO @ Weave

Greg Sabo

Engineering Manager @ WorkOS

Jon Chu

Partner @ Khosla Ventures

Johann Beukes

Fractional CTO & Chief AI Officer @ Svitla Systems

Ben Jordan

Head of Engineering @ Quilter

Corinne Riley

Partner @ Greylock

Kashyap Tumkur

Director of Engineering @ Verily

Caleb Albers

Engineering Manager @ LinkedIn

Drew McGahey

Engineering Manager @ Notion

Louis Topper

Head of Product Management @ Metronome

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ELC Annual 2026

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