Data & AI Leaders #2 Scaling AI Teams & Reducing Toil in Security - Incident.io

Hello and welcome to our next Data & AI Leaders event.

This session brings together Heads of Data, AI, and Analytics; senior technology and engineering leaders; Principal and Staff Data/ML Engineers; Platform and Capability Leads; and strategic decision-makers responsible for shaping data and AI strategy, governance, and value delivery within their organisations.

Our meetups are friendly, thoughtful, and discussion-driven, designed to create a space where leaders can share real-world experience, reflect on complex challenges, and learn from peers who are building and scaling Data and AI capabilities in the real world.

This session will include leadership talks, guided discussion, Q&A, and time for networking with fellow data and AI leaders.

We run:
• Bi-monthly in-person leadership meetups and roundtables in London
• Bi-monthly online sessions for our wider leadership community

Please keep an eye on our Meetup page for future events. Food and refreshments will be provided for in-person events where a host venue is supporting.

We are delighted to host this security-focused meetup in London on the 22nd of January, in partnership with [Incident.io](https://incident.io/).

Speakers and Sessions:

Speaker: Dylan Ratcliffe, Founder at Overmind
Session Title: How We Detected Toil among 36,000 Changes
Description: How much precious engineering time are you spending on changes that don’t really need it? In this talk, we’ll reveal how we analysed nearly 37,000 infrastructure modifications to rigorously quantify "toil"; the work that slows teams down without adding real value. We’ll share the statistical techniques and practical models we developed to find the best opportunities for safe auto-approval, and show how you can use similar methods to identify (and eliminate) wasted effort in your own workflows. We’ll also discuss pitfalls, trade-offs, and how AI can take your approval process even further. Whether you’re a platform engineer or an SRE, you’ll learn how to free up your team to focus on what really matters while keeping your systems safe and reliable.

Speaker: Rory Malcolm, Product Engineer at Incident.io
Session Title: My first year as an AI engineer
Description: Join Rory, Product Engineer at Incident.io, as he walks through everything the team learned in their first year building an AI capability.
This session focuses on how they scaled both technically and socially, growing from early work into an engineering team able to make meaningful progress against real AI goals. Expect practical insight into team growth, collaboration, and what actually enabled progress.

Agenda (GMT / UK):
18:00 — Welcome and refreshments
18:30 — Introduction — Ethan Sumner
18:35 — Speaker 1
19:10 — Break
19:20 — Speaker 2
19:55 — Close and networking

We are always keen to hear from:
• Speakers — leadership case studies, transformation journeys and strategic insights
• Hosts — organisations able to support executive-style roundtables and meetups
• Sponsors — support with venue access, refreshments, recording or accessibility

If you would like to speak, sponsor, or host a future session, please get in touch with Ethan Sumner via LinkedIn.

You can find our YouTube channel via our community pages, where we publish selected talks and highlights.

This community forms part of the Community Stack ecosystem and follows the Community Stack Code of Conduct, ensuring a respectful, inclusive and welcoming environment where leaders can share openly and learn from one another.