Leopard.FYI Presents: AI Role Models ⭐ 💜 ⭐ Lessons from Engineering Leaders
Hi everyone!
When we hosted our AI Engineering panel in April, it was clear that many of us are trying to understand how other engineers are actually using AI in their day-to-day work 🤷♀️
I'm excited to bring you the second event in our AI Role Model ⭐️ series. The goal of this series is simple: bring in great mentors from the Leopard community to share what's working for them, what they're learning, and get their advice 🙏
For this conversation, I wanted to mix things up and bring in Engineering Leaders ⛰️ from our broader community of hiring partners. We have an amazing group of engineering leaders from startups, growth-stage companies, public companies, and private-equity-backed companies who have volunteered to share their perspectives and answer our questions 🙋🏽♀️
My hope is that this chat helps us all better understand how:
Engineering teams at different stages are evolving
What skills are becoming more valuable, and
What companies are looking for as AI becomes part of everyday engineering
Here’s a bit about each of our panelists:
Kathleen Yanolatos, VP of Engineering @ Bubble 🫧
Kathleen Yanolatos is the VP of Engineering at Bubble, a venture-backed no-code and AI application development platform used by millions of builders worldwide (and a Leopard hiring partner !). Previously, she held engineering leadership roles at Exos, a health and performance company serving major employers and professional sports organizations; Aaptiv, a venture-backed digital fitness company; WW (Weight Watchers), a public consumer health company; and Betterment, one of the largest digital wealth management platforms in the U.S.
Bala Arjunan Muthiah, Director of Engineering @ Lyft 🚙
Bala Arjunan Muthiah is a Director of Engineering at Lyft, where he leads teams across Healthcare, Enterprise, and Advertising. Over the past several years at Lyft, he has helped scale products and infrastructure supporting millions of riders, drivers, vehicles, and business customers across the platform. Earlier in his career, he worked at SAP, building enterprise software used by some of the world's largest companies. Outside of Lyft, he is active in mentorship and startup advising through organizations such as GrowthMentor.
Alyssa Foxx, VP of Engineering @ Auxilius 🧬
Alyssa Foxx leads engineering at Auxilius, a Series A healthcare software company (and Leopard hiring partner) serving biotech and pharmaceutical organizations. Previously, she led Engineering at Panther, a Series C cybersecurity startup that was acquired by CrowdStrike, and held engineering leadership roles at Better, a growth-stage fintech company, and CipherHealth, a healthcare technology company.
Rohail Altaf, Senior Software Engineering Manager @ Raptive 📊
Rohail Altaf leads multiple engineering teams at Raptive, a private-equity-backed adtech publisher monetization company that handles billions of ad impressions per month. Previously, he was VP of Engineering at Fondue, a venture-backed commerce startup, and has spent his career across startup and growth-stage companies building developer platforms, internal tools, and large-scale consumer-facing systems.
We'll also ask our panelists the following:
Can you tell us a bit about your engineering career and what led you to your current role? What does your day-to-day look like today? 👋
What are you exceptionally good at as an engineer or engineering leader? 🏆
What are you not good at an engineer or engineering leader? 🙃
Share engineering hot take 👀
Can you walk us through at the high level how your teams are using AI? 🤖
What is something unique / particularly awesome that your team has figured out how to do with AI? 🎨
Has AI changed how you think about team structure, hiring & engineering career growth? ⛰️
What advice would you give Leopard members who are trying to grow their careers in the age of AI? 🚀
About Leopard.FYI: We connect women and non-binary engineers to vetted companies with great cultures. Leopard gathers intel on company culture, compensation, gender diversity, interview processes, and more! We also run a free slack community for women/nb engineers to share, connect, backchannel, mentor and prepare for interviews together.
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Is your company hiring? Email [email protected] or grab time with Leopard's CEO Lexi: https://calendly.com/lexilewtan/30min