Valencia Codes

Valencia Codes warmly welcomes you to another Engineering Manager Guild event at the offices of Datamaran.

What is Engineering Manager Guild?
Our aim is to form a strong community of leaders in engineering in Valencia. We'll meet occasionally to share and learn from each other about the non-technical aspects of managing a tech team.

Every month, we'll switch things up: we'll bring in experienced guest speakers from successful companies, form smaller groups for discussions and problem-solving, arrange panels with multiple speakers, etc.

How Claude helped me land a new job (Presentation with Q&A)
Finding a new job as an Engineering Manager is not just about updating your CV and sending applications. In this talk, I will share how I used Claude, an AI assistant, as a thinking partner throughout my job search.

I will show real examples of how I prepared for behavioral and system design interviews, how I used peer feedback to build honest and credible stories, and why warm introductions beat cold applications every time.

The talk is practical and honest: AI did not do the job search for me, but it made me significantly better prepared for every conversation that mattered.

Objectives:
- How to use an AI assistant as a structured thinking partner, not just a text generator
- How to turn interview feedback and peer reviews into credible stories for your next role
- How to identify and bridge real gaps in your experience without faking it

Session lead: César Gómez-Mora
César is the coordinator of the Engineering Manager Guild community. He has spent 25 years in the software industry, most recently leading platform engineering teams at LanguageWire. He used AI tools extensively during his own job search, and wants to show you exactly how

Agenda
18:30 - Arrive (on time is late, we start on the dot).
18:35 - Presentation with Q&A [60 min]
19:35 - Drinks if anyone is interested

Valencia Codes would like to welcome you all to our #26 edition of Level Up at the offices of GFT.

What is Level Up? It's a monthly meet-up where we will be inviting speakers from inside and outside of our community to introduce you to interesting technical topics and share their experiences with you.

Soft Skills in the Age of AI by Kirill Boiarkin, Senior Software Developer & Agile Coach @ Steinberg Media Technologies

Soft Skills aren't a very popular subject in the IT universe, and with the rise of AI they are being neglected even more. They are often overlooked during computer science education - thus being an important lesson that many of us never had. But the focus on mastering tools without developing the skills to use those tools effectively within a team often leads to missed opportunities for career growth, project failures, and avoidable mistakes. This talk highlights why Soft Skills are needed for IT-professionals, especially now, when AI gets more and more powerful. It explores what limitations does the AI have in the context of Soft Skills, and offers plenty of practical tips for Soft Skills to improve your day-to-day teamwork. The talk goes beyond generic suggestions - in the relaxed and entertaining manner Kirill will present interesting perspectives based not only on his own experience, but also on many books, articles, conference talks and observations that he had over two decades of dealing with software and people. Everybody, from junior to senior developer, devops, QA, PO, manager will find some useful and possibly even eye-opening ideas in this talk.

Mastering Hyperscale: from photo albums to 400+ Designs per Second by Javier Turégano, Engineering Leadership Freelance, Turegano.net (ex-Canva, ex-Slack)

What does it take to scale a product from simple school photo albums to handling 400 designs per second and serving 260 million MAU? In this talk, we’ll explore the evolution of a platform that grew from its early days into a hyperscale system used around the world. We’ll walk through key architectural shifts, the challenges that emerge at massive scale, and the trade-offs. From monolith to distributed systems, and from predictable workloads to AI-driven experiences, this is a pragmatic look at what breaks, what works, and what actually matters when operating at hyperscale. Expect a relaxed, interactive session — whiteboarding ideas, sharing lessons, and diving into real-world scenarios together.

Agenda
1830 - Intro and networking
1845 - Talk "Soft Skills in the Age of AI"
1915 - Talk "Mastering Hyperscale: from photo albums to 400+ Designs per Second"
1945 - More networking!

Sponsors
- Our hosts for this event are GFT Technologies. They are hiring for many roles in Valencia! https://jobs.gft.com/go/spain/4411401/