A Seattle AI Week community event, hosted by Chapter 2 Consulting

AI has made it astonishingly easy to build something. But what does it take to make that ‘something’ secure, tested, integrated, observable, scalable, and trusted at scale?

Join engineering and technology leaders who have led and worked in both startups and enterprise-class engineering teams. This will be a candid conversation about what happens after the prototype, by startup engineering leaders who have also worked in extreme scale and complexity. From AI-generated code and autonomous agents to architecture, verification, infrastructure, and reliability, we'll explore how software engineering is changing—and what it takes to build systems with AI tooling that businesses can actually trust.

Agenda

  • 9:00 AM — Panel discussion

  • Audience Q&A

  • Networking with panelists and Seattle's engineering community

Who should attend: Software engineers, engineering managers, CTOs, technical founders, product leaders, and anyone building or operating AI-powered software.

Featuring

Ward Vuillemot — CTO & Founding Engineer, Lium AI

AI startup technology leader and hands-on engineer, consulting with multiple non-technical founders on AI & vibe-coded codebases. Former CTO at Lium.ai, RealSelf and Varsity Tutors, earlier engineering and product roles at Microsoft (Xbox) and Amazon.

Heather Gearreald — Head of Infrastructure Engineering

Engineering leader focused on building AI platform infrastructure and leading engineering organizations, with a focus on AI. Former engineering  leadership at Wizards of the Coast, Microsoft and Nintendo

Hatem Ayad — CTO, Clarvos

AI startup engineering leader and technology exec. Former SVP of AI Engineering & Data Science at WebMD, SVP of Data Science & Engineering at Verizon Media, VP of Engineering at GoDaddy, and engineering leader at Microsoft.

Robert Neer — Founder, Goods Ventures (Moderator)

Product and technology executive and current EIR at UW’s Product Management Leadership Accelerator. Former VP of Product at Walgreens, VP of Product & Engineering at Best Buy, and Principal Product Manager at Amazon

Details

Wednesday, October 28, 2026 · 9:00 AM PDT

SURF Incubator999 3rd Ave, Suite 700Seattle, WA 98104

Generating code is getting increasingly easier. Trust is increasingly valuable.

A Seattle AI Week community event, hosted by Chapter 2 Consulting