Wellington AI Engineering Meetup

Welcome to another Wellington AI Engineering Meetup! As AI moves from a novel autocomplete tool to an active participant in our development pipelines, the role of the engineer is fundamentally shifting. This month, we have three technical lightning talks diving past the hype to look at the real-world engineering realities of building at scale. Read on below for the full speaker lineup and talk details. Skye Simpson - Senior Full Stack Developer, Trade MeEngineering at 8 Million Requests/Day: Hard-Won Lessons in AI-Assisted MigrationLLMs dramatically changed our engineering workflow, shifting effort away from writing code and toward decision-making, hypothesis formation, and system observation. But in a large-scale legacy migration, AI introduced new challenges around edge-case reliability and confidently wrong solutions. I’ll share where AI tools excelled, where engineering judgment remained essential, and the practical guardrails that helped us maintain reliability at scale. Expect failure stories and lessons learned about what engineering expertise looks like when AI can write most of the code.Nick Webster - Senior Full Stack Developer, Trade MeProgramming language design to AI more and worry lessLLMs have changed the way that many of us build computer programs. However, LLMs exacerbate challenges like defending from supply-chain attacks and ensuring modularity in our programs. I will discuss how the design of our programming languages can help us address these challenges.Gisela de la Villa - Engineering Manager, Trade MeThe AI-First SDLC: Scaling Delivery Without Eroding QualityIntegrating AI across the development lifecycle promises incredible speed, but faster code generation quickly pushes bottlenecks onto quality verification. To prevent this from eroding standards, we must shift quality practices earlier into the cycle and transform how developers and testers collaborate. I will share how Trade Me reviews our end-to-end pipeline to identify exactly where AI can actively participate, focusing on our shared "skills marketplace" and an automated test companion tool. Expect concrete techniques to help you accelerate software delivery while maintaining reliability.