About the event
A peer-led Engineering Leadership roundtable exploring AI ROI, evolving leadership roles and leading engineering teams through change.
On Wednesday 23rd September, Burns Sheehan brought together Engineering Managers, Heads of Engineering, Engineering Directors, VPs and CTOs for an interactive Engineering Leadership Roundtable in London, moderated by Rahat Khan, Engineering Leader @ DeepL.
What came out of the room?
Measuring the value of AI
The group questioned whether it was too early to make confident claims about AI’s return on investment. For many teams, the more useful starting point was understanding total spend, including AI built into existing tools, and establishing what to measure.
Attendees discussed looking beyond coding speed. Examples shared in the room showed some technical debt work moving faster, while feature work, pull request reviews and rework could take longer. More output did not automatically mean more value.
The changing shape of leadership
As AI changes how engineering work gets done, leaders need to stay close enough to the technical detail to set sensible expectations and maintain accountability.
The discussion also raised questions about progression. If newer engineers can produce code with AI, how do teams check that they understand the systems behind it? Attendees suggested testing whether engineers could explain a repository, run its tests and fix a failure, rather than judging contribution by code output alone.
Leading teams through change
Leaders shared different approaches to experimentation, team structure and resistance to AI adoption. A recurring concern was the growing volume of code and documentation that others must review and maintain.
The group came back to a practical guardrail: engineers should be able to explain, review and take ownership of AI-assisted work, especially when something breaks in production.
Continuing the conversation
Our Engineering Leadership roundtables give leaders space to compare approaches and work through challenges with peers facing similar decisions.
If you’d like to join a future session or get involved with our Engineering community, reach out to Principal Consultant, Grace Duffy to hear more.
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