Sydney Data Eng meetup, August Edition

Hey all, please join us for our August Sydney Data Eng meetup. Join us for an engaging session filled with exciting discussions and networking opportunities.

Don't miss out—RSVP to secure your spot. Join us at Stone & Chalk Tech Central for talks and networking from 5:30–7:30pm.

🏠 Location: Stone & Chalk Tech Central
Level 1, 477 Pitt St, Haymarket NSW 2000
🍕 Catering: Cloud Shuttle
📬 Join the community (newsletter + Discord): https://dataengbytes.com/community

Schedule:
- 5.30pm: Doors Open
- 5.45pm: Announcements and Welcome
- 5.55pm: Rosanna Xu — Agent vs Human: The Trust Gap
- 6.25pm: Stephen Mc Gowan — AI-Enabled SDLC: From Startup to Global Enterprise
- 6.55pm: Networking
- 7.30pm: Doors Close

Speakers:
🎤 Rosanna Xu, Data Engineer, Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Talk Title: Agent vs Human: The Trust Gap
Talk Summary: How do you convince people to help build an AI agent when they think it's going to replace them?
For AI agents to deliver real business value, engineers need deep collaboration with domain experts. Yet that collaboration can be difficult when people fear the technology is being built to replace them rather than empower them.
This talk explores how to shift that mindset - from viewing AI agents as competition to seeing them as collaborative tools that amplify human expertise. We'll examine where agents excel, where they fall short, and how to design workflows that keep people at the centre of the solution.
Using Snowflake as a practical example, the session will demonstrate how to build effective agent workflows, why business metadata is essential for reliable AI, and how strong partnerships between engineers and business specialists are the foundation of successful AI adoption.
Speaker Bio: Rosanna is a Data Engineer who enjoys solving problems at the intersection of people, data, and AI. At the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, she builds scalable data platforms, modern analytics solutions, and AI agents that empower business users to interact with complex data using natural language.
Originally trained in Physics and Mathematics at the University of New South Wales, Rosanna contributed to research in quantum computing before moving into data engineering. She enjoys solving complex problems by combining analytical thinking with practical software engineering, and is passionate about translating emerging technologies into solutions that create meaningful impact for both businesses and their people.

🎤 Stephen Mc Gowan, AI Solutions Architect Consultant · Founder, TrolleyRelay
Talk Title: AI-Enabled SDLC: From Startup to Global Enterprise
Talk Summary: Over the last four months, I have shipped nearly 500 production pull requests on a SaaS product with an unusual team structure: one human and an AI agent as the primary implementer. Every rule in the delivery process behind that number is scar tissue: dated, and traceable to a specific incident where the agent did something no experienced engineer would. At the same time, I have been helping a global enterprise in a regulated industry adopt AI tooling and an AI-enabled SDLC, where the same questions arrive but with risk & compliance attached. This talk is the story of what actually breaks when you hand an AI real autonomy: the gates that earned their place, the patterns that transfer from a one-person startup to a global enterprise, and the ones that absolutely do not. The numbers are real, and so are the failures.
Speaker Bio: Stephen Mc Gowan is a technical leader and solutions architect with 15+ years taking software and AI from inception into customers' hands, across start-ups, scale-ups and global enterprises. He is the founder of TrolleyRelay, a multi-tenant SaaS he has built solo on a fully AI-driven SDLC, and also works with large enterprises as an AI Solution Architecture Consultant, championing Claude Code and practical AI solutions. He was previously CTO at Realta Logic and My Emergency Doctor. Based in Sydney.

If you'd like to submit a talk, host a meetup, or become a volunteer, head here: https://dataengbytes.com/meetup

Remember to bring along some great questions! See you all there...