# AI Engineer Sydney 2026

> AI Engineer Sydney is a two-day conference for people building and leading production AI systems, with an additional workshop day and an online streaming option.

Canonical website: https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/
Last data update: 2026-10-09T09:57:50.346Z

## Essential facts

- Dates: 2026-12-07 to 2026-12-08
- Timezone: Australia/Sydney
- Venue: Hilton Sydney, 488 George Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000
- Attendance: mixed
- Program status: speakers-published-schedule-pending
- Program note: The speaker lineup and talk descriptions are public. Session days, times, rooms and the full timetable have not yet been published.
- Published speakers: 57
- Published sessions: 55

## Who it is for

- AI engineers and machine learning engineers
- Software engineers using AI-assisted development tools
- CTOs, VPs of AI, architects and senior technical leaders
- Product and infrastructure teams shipping AI-native products

## Current ticket options

Prices are generated from the same catalogue used by the registration cards. Check the linked registration page before purchasing.

- **Conference**: AUD $1195 through 2026-10-09. Keynotes; Two dedicated tracks; Networking Reception; Videos post-conference, on-demand; Fully catered. [Register](https://register.webdirections.org/ai-engineer-sydney-2026?tickets=conference:1)
- **Conference + Workshop Day**: AUD $1695 through 2026-10-09. Keynotes; Two dedicated tracks; Networking Reception; Videos post-conference, on-demand; Fully catered; Plus the Workshop Day — 9 December. [Register](https://register.webdirections.org/ai-engineer-sydney-2026?tickets=conference-workshop:1)
- **Leadership**: AUD $1795 through 2026-10-09. Exclusive Leadership track; VIP Keynote seating; Access to all other tracks; Speaker Dinner; Networking Reception; Videos post-conference, on-demand; Fully catered. [Register](https://register.webdirections.org/ai-engineer-sydney-2026?tickets=leadership:1)
- **Leadership + Workshop Day**: AUD $2195 through 2026-10-09. Exclusive Leadership track; VIP Keynote seating; Access to all other tracks; Speaker Dinner; Networking Reception; Videos post-conference, on-demand; Fully catered; Plus the Workshop Day — 9 December. [Register](https://register.webdirections.org/ai-engineer-sydney-2026?tickets=leadership-workshop:1)
- **Workshop Day only**: AUD $795 through 2026-10-09. Workshop Day — 9 December; A full day of hands-on, practical workshops; Fully catered. [Register](https://register.webdirections.org/ai-engineer-sydney-2026?tickets=workshop:1)
- **Streaming**: AUD $495 through 2026-10-09. Live stream — all sessions; Live chat and Q&A; Videos post-conference, on-demand. [Register](https://register.webdirections.org/ai-engineer-sydney-2026?tickets=streaming:1)

## Published talks

Talk URLs intentionally use the established speaker/profile permalinks already shared by speakers.

- [Half our handoffs are the bot's idea](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/adeline-yaw/) — Adeline Yaw
- [Autonomous agents need autonomous protection](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/adesh-gairola-2/) — Adesh Gairola
- [Your spaghetti code has an invoice now: what complexity does to coding agents](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/artem-yakimenko/) — Artem Yakimenko
- [209 ports in six days, in a language the model barely knew](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/burin-choomnuan/) — Burin Choomnuan
- [Lessons from Economics for the Human / Agent Software Workforce](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/daniel-nadasi/) — Daniel Nadasi
- [AI Janitor: Making Architecture Review Executable for Coding Agents](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/dave-currie/) — Dave Currie
- [The Elephant and the Goldfish: Architecture Patterns for Cutting 70% of Agent Token Costs in Production](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/tanya-dixit/) — Tanya Dixit
- [Building AI for students who can't tell you when it's wrong](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/ez-herrmann/) — Ez Herrmann
- [Dependency hell is back. This time it's your agent's config.](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/jack-rudenko/) — Jack Rudenko
- [From Prompt Rules to Structural Guarantees: The Harness Behind a Production Analytics Agent](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/jiggy-kakkad/) — Jiggy Kakkad & Tinus Willemse
- [Oops I Hacked It Again: Six Months of Red Teaming Our AI Agents](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/jon-shen/) — Jon Shen
- [Deliberate Holes Only](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/karla-burnett/) — Karla Burnett
- [How we introduced LLMs into credit decisioning](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/kevin-nguyen/) — Kevin Nguyen
- [The guess never becomes a fact - provenance-governed, model-free memory for LLMs](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/kexuan-xin/) — Jade Xin
- [Sovereignty Is an Inference Problem](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/leo-borges/) — Leo Borges
- [Office-Brain and the Night Shift: What Happens When You Turn Off the Meter](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/mark-pesce/) — Mark Pesce
- [Building Agentic Memory for an AI SOC: Why Our Semantic Cache Was the Wrong Answer](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/mukesh-singh/) — Mukesh Singh
- [From Documents to Defensible Evidence: Rethinking RAG for Audits](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/sharat-madanapalli/) — Sharat Madanapalli
- [Your Coding Agent Is Fast. Your Codebase Is the Bottleneck.](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/shrey-somaiya/) — Shrey Somaiya
- [Building a Security Agent: Model choice, Harnesses and Evals](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/simon-harloff/) — Simon Harloff
- [The Model Wasn't the MOAT: How 10 Design System Engineers Turned Platform Knowledge into Enterprise AI](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/sudharsanam-narasimhan/) — Sudharsanam Narasimhan
- [Classifiers are dead. Long live classifiers!](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/charli-posner/) — Charli Posner
- [Tools Before Autonomy: What 200,000 Tool Calls Taught Us About Agentic Evals](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/dean-soste/) — Dean Soste
- [Query before mutation: guardrail patterns for agents that touch production infrastructure](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/jeffrey-aven/) — Jeffrey Aven
- [Give Every Agent a Flight Recorder](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/rahul-trikha/) — Rahul Trikha
- [How to Change an LLM System Without Guessing](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/yulia-kuchina/) — Yulia Kuchina
- [Don't Fight Hallucinations. Make Them Impossible](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/nadia-makarevich/) — Nadia Makarevich
- [Why software factories can't be trusted (and how the Systems Engineering V-model helps)](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/mark-johnson/) — Mark Johnson
- [Running 100K+ Concurrent Agents: It's Never the Prompt](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/harry-nguyen/) — Harry Nguyen
- [Regulated Doesn't Mean On Rails: what compliance actually asks of your engineers](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/stephen-sennett/) — Stephen Sennett
- [Adaptive Learning: Encoding Clinician Edits as Memory](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/vlad-gavrilov/) — Vlad Gavrilov
- [Ontologies: AI’s Operating Manual For Your Business](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/gareth-williams/) — Gareth Williams
- [Should You Build a Software Factory? Tales from an Open-Source Maintainer](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/harlan-wilton/) — Harlan Wilton
- [Trust is engineered, not granted: why we focus on verifying before background coding agents](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/vivek-katial/) — Vivek Katial
- [It's time for a new kind of software](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/rupert-manfredi/) — Rupert Manfredi
- [Don't stop, won't stop. Automated verification of long-running agentic loops](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/aj-fisher/) — AJ Fisher
- [Token usage is the new lines of code (and it's just as useless)](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/fawaz-ahmad/) — Fawaz Ahmad
- [The CLI is dead, long live the CLI](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/jan-peer-stocklmair/) — Jan Peer Stöcklmair
- [Assert Chaos](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/chris-lienert/) — Chris Lienert
- [The agents went rogue at 2%](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/james-peter/) — James Peter
- [Where Should the Dice Roll? Placing Non-Determinism Deliberately in Enterprise AI](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/vighnesh-deshpande/) — Vighnesh Deshpande
- [The Benchmark Ends. The World Doesn’t: Building Persistent Engineering Environments for Continual Learning](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/theodoros-galanos/) — Theodoros Galanos
- [The five stages of losing our craft](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/andrew-murphy/) — Andrew Murphy
- [Management Is Dead, Leadership Is Not](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/inga-pflaumer/) — Inga Pflaumer
- [From REST to Agentic: Trusted APIs in the age of AI](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/leigh-whiting/) — Leigh Whiting
- [How to Count to One Hundred](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/hugo-oconnor/) — Hugo O'Connor
- [Extracting Tacit Knowledge for Production Agents](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/khali-kalpa-young/) — Khali Kalpa-Young
- [My Agents broke APIs - Fixing Multi-Agent Systems with MCP](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/anannya-roy-chowdhury/) — Anannya Roy Chowdhury
- [We Deleted Most of Our Agents. Everything Got Faster](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/khang-nguyen-hoang/) — Khang Nguyen Hoang
- [Your website is a terrible API: serving agents a different page at the edge](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/jack-bear/) — Jack Bear
- [From vibes to a systematic eval flywheel: evals for high stakes AI agents](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/donna-zhou/) — Donna Zhou
- [AI Sandboxes: Running Coding Agents Safely in Production-Grade Environments](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/shivay-lamba/) — Shivay Lamba
- [Shipping together in an AI native team](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/sandra-arato/) — Sandra Arato
- [The AI year: how we work, hire and grow now](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/fiona-chan/) — Fiona Chan
- [Does This Agent Make My Context Look Big? Right-Sizing AI Architectures for Production](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/hamish-songsmith/) — Hamish Songsmith

## Published speakers

- [Adeline Yaw](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/adeline-yaw/) — AI Integration Specialist, Automattic
- [Adesh Gairola](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/adesh-gairola-2/) — Founder and CEO, raxIT Labs
- [AJ Fisher](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/aj-fisher/) — VP Digital Science, Tetratherix
- [Anannya Roy Chowdhury](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/anannya-roy-chowdhury/) — GenAI Developer Advocate, AWS
- [Andrew Murphy](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/andrew-murphy/) — CEO, Prudixa
- [Artem Yakimenko](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/artem-yakimenko/) — Engineering Director, Site Reliability, Culture Amp
- [Burin Choomnuan](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/burin-choomnuan/) — Principal Engineer/Team Lead/AI Engineer, NewsCorp Australia
- [Charli Posner](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/charli-posner/) — Builder, Stile Education
- [Chris Lienert](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/chris-lienert/) — Senior Principal Engineer, Smart AI Connect
- [Daniel Nadasi](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/daniel-nadasi/) — Principal Engineer, Google
- [Dave Currie](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/dave-currie/) — AI Engineer, Square Peg
- [Dean Soste](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/dean-soste/) — Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Canva
- [Donna Zhou](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/donna-zhou/) — Software engineer, Lorikeet
- [Ez Herrmann](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/ez-herrmann/) — Technical Solution Architect, Sitback Solutions
- [Fawaz Ahmad](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/fawaz-ahmad/) — Senior Engineering Director, Canva
- [Fiona Chan](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/fiona-chan/) — Partner & Technical Recruiter, Lookahead
- [Gareth Williams](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/gareth-williams/) — Principal Engineer, Wesfarmers
- [Hamish Songsmith](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/hamish-songsmith/) — Head of Applied AI, Silicon Quantum Computing
- [Harlan Wilton](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/harlan-wilton/) — Open-source developer, Self Employed
- [Harry Nguyen](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/harry-nguyen/) — AI engineer, insightfactory.ai
- [Hugo O'Connor](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/hugo-oconnor/) — R&D Engineer, Anuna Research
- [Inga Pflaumer](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/inga-pflaumer/) — Consulting CTO
- [Jack Bear](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/jack-bear/) — CEO Founder, Norg AI
- [Jack Rudenko](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/jack-rudenko/) — Chief AI Officer (CAIO), 10X Labs
- [Jade Xin](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/kexuan-xin/) — Principal Research Scientist, TensorPRO
- [James Peter](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/james-peter/) — Co-Founder, JustEvery
- [Jan Peer Stöcklmair](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/jan-peer-stocklmair/) — Senior Software Engineer, Sentry
- [Jeffrey Aven](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/jeffrey-aven/) — Maintainer, StackQL Studios
- [Jiggy Kakkad](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/jiggy-kakkad/) — Staff AI Engineer, Quantium
- [Jon Shen](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/jon-shen/) — AI Practice Executive - Strategy and Governance, Suncorp
- [Karla Burnett](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/karla-burnett/) — Security Engineer, Lorikeet
- [Kevin Nguyen](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/kevin-nguyen/) — Senior Product Engineer, Skip
- [Khali Kalpa-Young](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/khali-kalpa-young/) — Founder, Alchymie
- [Khang Nguyen Hoang](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/khang-nguyen-hoang/) — Data Scientist, Hello Clever
- [Lee Simpson](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/lee-simpson/) — Engineering Partner, Deloitte Australia
- [Leigh Whiting](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/leigh-whiting/) — Principal Engineer, Atlassian
- [Leo Borges](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/leo-borges/) — Chief Engineer - GenAI, Commbank
- [Mark Johnson](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/mark-johnson/) — CEO, Cardiobase
- [Mark Pesce](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/mark-pesce/) — Co-Founder, Noops
- [Mukesh Singh](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/mukesh-singh/) — Principal Detection and Response Engineer, Atlassian
- [Nadia Makarevich](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/nadia-makarevich/) — Principal Engineer, Heatseeker
- [Rahul Trikha](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/rahul-trikha/) — Principal AI Engineer, Zendesk
- [Rupert Manfredi](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/rupert-manfredi/) — Head of Design, Telepath
- [Sandra Arato](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/sandra-arato/) — Senior Software Engineer, Canva
- [Sharat Madanapalli](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/sharat-madanapalli/) — Founder, InTune AI
- [Shivay Lamba](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/shivay-lamba/) — Lead Machine Learning | Developer Experience Engineer, Qualcomm
- [Shrey Somaiya](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/shrey-somaiya/) — Principal Engineer - Jira Frontend Platform, Atlassian
- [Simon Harloff](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/simon-harloff/) — CTO, Dam Secure
- [Stephen Sennett](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/stephen-sennett/) — Principal Forward-Deployed Engineer - Applied AI, V2 AI
- [Sudharsanam Narasimhan](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/sudharsanam-narasimhan/) — Senior engineering manager, Design Systems & AI Developer Platforms, Atlassian
- [Tanya Dixit](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/tanya-dixit/) — Forward Deployed Engineer, Google
- [Theodoros Galanos](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/theodoros-galanos/) — FDE @ APAC, Nomic
- [Tinus Willemse](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/tinus-willemse/) — Executive Manager, AI & Data Science, Quantium
- [Vighnesh Deshpande](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/vighnesh-deshpande/) — AI Engineer, Vivanti Consulting
- [Vivek Katial](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/vivek-katial/) — Engineering Lead, Applied AI, Heidi Health
- [Vlad Gavrilov](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/vlad-gavrilov/) — Senior AI Engineer, Heidi
- [Yulia Kuchina](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/yulia-kuchina/) — Staff AI Engineer, Software at Scale

## Other formats

- [Public conference JSON](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/conference.json)
- [Published sessions JSON](https://data.webdirections.org/ai-engineer-sydney/sessions.json)
- [Published speakers JSON](https://data.webdirections.org/ai-engineer-sydney/speakers.json)
- [Agent and developer guide](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/for-agents/)
- [llms.txt](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/llms.txt)
- MCP endpoint: https://data.webdirections.org/ai-engineer-sydney/mcp