Engineering + PM: How to build a healthy relationship

Ever wondered what makes some Engineering & Product Management partnerships thrive while others struggle? What are the unspoken dynamics that can make or break collaboration? At this meetup, we'll explore what it takes to build trust, navigate tension, and create alignment between engineering and product. This is your chance to ask the tough questions, hear real experiences, and walk away with practical insights you can use.

✨ Our Speakers

• Alex Rimthong, Director of Platform Engineering @Dialogue
  Alex (aka Rimthong) is a Director of Platform Engineering with over 20 years of experience building and operating software systems across a range of Canadian startups and scale-ups. He has led teams responsible for developer platforms, DevSecOps, and core infrastructure, focusing on reliability, security, and enabling teams to move faster with confidence. Alex works closely with product leaders to translate product goals into scalable technical foundations, and is particularly interested in how platform teams can reduce friction, manage complexity, and create leverage for product engineering teams.
• Sara Hamidizadeh, Senior Product Manager @Mistplay
  Sara builds products that connect money to attention. An engineer by academic training, a product manager by experience. With a decade architecting AdTech platforms and marketplaces at companies like Samsung, she's engineered the invisible infrastructure that decides what you see and what advertisers pay for it. She's equally comfortable birthing products from scratch or scaling mature platforms that already touch millions. Engineering taught her to think in systems. Product management taught her which systems actually matter.
• Elodie Bouneau, Vice President of Product & Technology Operations @Petal
  Elodie is a senior product and technology executive with over 15 years of experience building and scaling digital platforms in highly regulated, complex environments. She currently serves as Vice President of Product & Technology Operations at Petal, a healthcare SaaS company, where she leads product and technology delivery focusing on data-driven, scalable, innovative solutions for the healthcare ecosystem.
  Previously, Elodie held senior strategic leadership roles across fintech, SaaS, and public-sector innovation. Most notably, she led large, multidisciplinary teams to launch Canada’s first all-digital, free small-business banking platform at EQ Bank. Her career spans startups and scale-ups in London and San Francisco, as well as executive leadership within the Canadian federal government, where she served as Director General driving national digital initiatives.

📅 Agenda
5:30 pm: Doors Open
6:30 pm: Welcome
6:45 pm: 30 min Presentations
7:15 pm: Community announcements
7:30 pm: Break / Networking
7:45 pm: Q&A Session
8:05 pm: Break / Networking
8:30 pm: Doors Close