About us
***[IMPORTANT] ***
SFELC has migrated from Meetup to its own website (https://sfelc.com/). Please register on the website instead of here. All future events will be announced there. Through the website, you can see videos and photos of past events, as well as other resources, such as book lists, etc.
ABOUT US
SFELC is a curated community of engineering leaders with 2000+ leaders from over 800 companies. Although we started in San Francisco, we are here to serve all engineering leaders.
OUR MISSION
To connect world's engineering leaders and help evolve the way leadership is implemented in the tech industry.
OUR BELIEFS
• Most problems we face have been solved by others in the community. What's missing is the connection.
• Everyone (even the least experienced) has learnings valuable to others.
• Our challenges are often nuanced and context-dependent, so having dialogs is critical.
RESOURCES
• YouTube channel for some of our past events: http://bit.ly/2ySKaRD ;
• Slides from our past speakers: http://bit.ly/2JZetrj ;
• Photos from recent events: http://bit.ly/2wh9kch
PAST SPEAKERS
• Tim Correia, SVP and General Manager @ Trulia
• Jason Fennell, Former SVP of Engineering @ Yelp
• Samantha Stoller, Sr. Staff Engineer @ Slack
• Kimber Lockhart, CTO @ One Medical Group
• Tomas Barreto, VP, Product & Engineering @ Checkr
• Deep Varma, VP of Engineering @ Trulia
• Dan Portillo, Former Talent Partner @ Greylock
• Wade Chambers, CTO & SVP of Engineering @ Grand Rounds
• Li Fan, Head of Engineering @ Lime
• Andy Fang, Co-founder & CTO @ DoorDash
• Jerry Krikheli, VP of Engineering @ Houzz
• Adam Wolff, VP of Engineering @ Robinhood
• Jean Hsu, Co-Founder @ Co Leadership
• Ming Hua, Engineering Director @ Facebook
• Jessica McKellar, Founder & CTO @ Pilot
• Erika Reinhardt, Engineering Manager @ Stripe
• Joanne Pons, VP of Engineering @ MyVest
• Allen Cheung, Senior Director of Engineering @ Affirm
• Rolf Jensen, SVP Engineering @ Tradeshift
• Maria Latushkin, SVP Engineering @ Omada Health
• Souvik Das, SVP Engineering @ Zenefits
• Dan Pupius, Co-Founder & CEO @ Range Labs
• Lei Yang, VP & Head of Engineering, Quora
• Jocelyn Goldfein, Managing Director @ Zetta Venture Partners
• Raylene Yung, Head of Payments, Stripe
• Mike Riccio, Director of Engineering, Google
• Krishna Bhagavan, GM, Alexa Reminders, Amazon
• Michael White, Head of Engineering, Caviar, Square
• Jason Warner, SVP of Technology, GitHub
• Dave Camp, VP of Engineering, Firefox at Mozilla
• Wade Foster, CEO & Co-founder @ Zapier
• Dana Lawson (moderator), VP of Engineering @ InVision
• Tim Olshansky, CTO @ Aconex
• John Thimsen, VP of Engineering @ Qualtrics
• Edward Kim, Co-founder & CTO @ Gusto
• Andy Chen, Partner @ Kleiner Perkins
• Naveen Gavini, Head of Product Engineering @ Pinterest
• David Silverman, former Navy SEALs Officer, Author of "Team of Teams", Founder & CEO @ CrossLead
• James Birchler, VP of Engineering @ SmugMug
• Wade Chambers, CTO & SVP of Engineering @ Grand Rounds
• Daniel Portillo, Talent Partner @ Greylock
• Scott Shumaker, VP of Engineering @ Credit Karma
• Jessica McKellar, Founder & CTO @ Pilot
• Soren Harner, VP of Engineering @ Mulesoft
• Nik Koblov, VP of Engineering @ Affirm
• Adrian McDermott, President of Products @ Zendesk
• Soren Abildgaard, Senior VP of Engineering @ Zendesk
• Mark Rabkin, VP of Engineering @ Facebook
• Deborah Liu, VP of Product, Marketplace @ Facebook
• Rob Mee, CEO @ Pivotal
• Steve Herrod, Managing Director @ General Catalyst, Former CTO & SVP of R&D @ VMware
• Jason Warner, SVP Technology @ GitHub
• Raylene Yung, Senior Engineering Leader @ Stripe
• Joe Binney, VP of Engineering @ Robinhood
• Lee Edwards, CTO @ Teespring
• Bill Portelli, Managing Partner @ CEO Quest, Co-founder and former CEO @ CollabNet
• Nick Caldwell, VP of Engineering @ Reddit
• Tim Correia, VP of Engineering & Product @ Zillow Group
• Wade Chambers, VP of Engineering @ Twitter
• Ron Lichty, Author of Manage the Unmanageable
• Simon Perryman, Director of Engineering @ Twitch
• Matt Greenberg, Sr. Director of Engineering @ Credit Karma
• Dan Pupius, former Head of Engineering @ Medium
OUR SPONSOR:
We are proudly partnering with Greylock Partners as our sponsor, who has been helping us tremendously since our early days.
From Greylock Partners:
"Greylock Partners backs entrepreneurs who are building disruptive, market-transforming consumer and enterprise software companies. We invest early in companies that define new markets, including Airbnb, AppDynamics, Arista Networks (NYSE: ANET), Cloudera (NYSE: CLDR), Docker, Dropbox, Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD), Medium, Nextdoor, Okta (NASDAQ: OKTA), Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: PANW), Pandora (NYSE: P), Pure Storage (NYSE: PSTG, Redfin (NASDAQ: RDFN) and Workday (NYSE: WDAY)."
Upcoming events
1
ELC Annual 2026: 2-Day Conference for Eng Leaders to Reconnect in San Francisco
2 Marina Blvd, San Francisco, Ca, USThe ELC Annual is built around a simple belief: the most valuable learning happens in conversation - with peers who are navigating the same pressures, making the same hard calls, and building through the same uncertainty.
This year, we're going deeper on the questions that don't have easy answers.
What does it mean to lead well when the ground keeps shifting? How do you build teams that are resilient, high-trust, and genuinely high-performing, not just on paper? What does great engineering leadership look like beyond the technical, in the moments that require judgment, integrity, and clarity of purpose?
Across roundtable discussions, intimate speaking sessions, and 1:1 conversations, you'll engage with engineering leaders who are thinking seriously about these questions — and willing to share what they've actually learned.
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What you'll explore- Leadership & Strategy
Leading through uncertainty and volatile decision-making environments. The evolving CTO/VP role — from roadmap owner to visionary strategist. Ethical decision-making, leadership integrity, and purpose-driven organizations. Storytelling and influence: communicating complex ideas to executives and boards.
- Teams & Culture
Building high-trust teams and psychological safety at scale. Navigating culture shifts in growing organizations. Scaling hybrid and remote work — the practices and rituals that actually stick. Building inclusive engineering cultures and diverse talent pipelines.
- Talent & People Development
Developing next-generation leaders through mentoring and succession planning. Continuous performance management and feedback systems. Retention, engagement, and creating environments where people genuinely thrive. Hiring for potential: assessing soft skills and growth mindset.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration
Aligning engineering, product, and design around shared outcomes. Breaking down silos with tools and practices that work. Customer-centric engineering: building products users truly love. Cross-functional OKRs and collaborative planning across roadmaps and backlogs.
- AI in Practice
Building AI-enabled teams — what it looks like beyond the theory. AI in software development: coding assistants, prompt engineering, and human-AI collaboration. Translating AI trends into actionable engineering strategy. Architecting AI systems that make it to production and stay there.
- Engineering Excellence
Measuring developer productivity, satisfaction, and team health. Observability and incident response in AI-enabled systems. Balancing innovation with operational priorities. Coaching teams through change without losing momentum.
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What to expect
Roundtable Discussions
Small-group sessions facilitated by experienced practitioners — designed for active participation, not passive listening. These are the conversations where people say what they actually think.
Speaking Sessions
Close-up conversations with engineering leaders who are actively shaping what the role looks like today. Past speakers have included leaders from OpenAI, Stripe, Google, Dropbox, Atlassian, and Slack, as well as Reid Hoffman, Max Levchin, and Adam Grant.
1:1 Meetings
Structured time to connect directly with peers, mentors, and industry veterans. Some of the most valuable relationships in ELC have started here.
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Leave with a clearer sense of what kind of leader you want to be - and a network of people who are working toward the same thing.Register here.
4 attendees
Past events
72
