GenAI transforming Engineering [IN-PERSON!]

Meet us for in-person talks at Zalando on April 28, 2026!
Join us for an evening exploring how GenAI is transforming modern engineering — from low-code feature engineering and research workflows to agent-driven optimization and production ML systems.
Please make sure you register with your full name, as it will be checked by security on arrival.

📅Date and Time:Tuesday, April 28, 2026
Doors open: 17:30
Talks start: 18:00
Panel discussion: 19:20
Networking & pizza: 20:00

📍 Location: Zalando Office BHW
Warschauer S-Bahn, Auditorium Cinema

📝Agenda:*
17:30 – Doors OpenWelcome, pizza, and networking***

18:00 – Talk #1
Low-Code Feature Engineering in Zalando with Agentic Support
Ola Wahab — Zalando
An inside look at how Zalando leverages agentic systems to simplify and accelerate feature engineering workflows, enabling faster experimentation with less manual effort.

18:20 – Talk #2
Research Harness Engineering for Model DevelopmentFlorian Hönicke — Elasticsearch
How Elasticsearch used a research harness to support development of the v5-omni model, enabling structured experimentation and faster iteration cycles in applied AI research.***

18:40 – Talk #3
Ranking Logic Migration from Monolith — Using Code Agents for Iterative Performance Benchmarking
Ivan Potapov — Zalando
How Zalando’s Search and Browse Discovery team extracted a latency-critical ranking service from a monolith and validated it for production.
This talk covers:

Migrating the ranking read path into a standalone Ranking API Using AI-powered agentic loops with async-profiler to close the p99 latency gap

• Practical lessons on allocation profiling, virtual threads, and production validation

Format: 20 min talk + 10 min Q&A

19:00 – Talk #4
Coding Agents for ML Pipelines & AI Systems (Hopsworks + Claude Code)
Jim Dowling — Hopsworks
Coding agents are rapidly reshaping software and ML engineering. This talk explores how