"For twenty years, QCon has tracked the industry's major inflections. As the conference marks its 20th anniversary with its 2026 events, the editorial stance remains consistent: sessions are curated by senior engineers, focusing on what has actually worked (and failed) in production. The upcoming programs for QCon London (March 16-19) and QCon San Francisco (November 16-20) apply this lens to a new set of compounding decisions: moving AI from experiment to reliable production and validating the ROI of platform engineering."
"Senior engineers are now tasked with handling non-determinism, observability, and security in critical paths. Tracks such as AI Engineering and Architecture in the Age of AI are designed to address these constraints. For example, Hien Luu, Sr. Engineering Manager at Zoox, hosts the London track on AI Engineering, which moves beyond hype to discuss the rigorous testing and validation required when probabilistic models enter production traffic."
"QCon is where you hear what failed, not just what worked. That kind of judgment is what separates senior developers from Staff-level engineers."
QCon continues a twenty-year practice of curating sessions by senior engineers that emphasize production-proven lessons, including failures. The 2026 programs in London and San Francisco target operationalizing AI, shifting from experimental LLM use to agentic systems that combine models, tools, and workflows. Senior engineers must manage non-determinism, observability, and security as probabilistic models enter production. The agenda prioritizes survivability through patterns like cellular isolation and fault containment to limit blast radius rather than chasing perfect uptime. Tracks also address the human and organizational scope of senior roles and the need to validate platform engineering ROI.
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