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Socials: jonathan
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eld.ing
Jonathan Fielding / 4th November 2025 / Lead Dev Berlin
Levelling up engineers in an
AI-driven world
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AI is changing how our teams
deliver software
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1811, England
A New Map of England. From the latest Authorities by John Cary Engraver 1811
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The Luddites
Unknown. 195 years since publication, copyright extinguished - Working Class Movement Library catalogue
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Fear
E.L. Hoskyn - Plate from More Pictures of British History, London, 1914, p.61. Publisher: London. Adam and Charles Black. 1914
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Fast Forward To Today
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AI is already part of how we build software
90 % of developers now use AI tools
80 % say it’s boosted their productivity
30 % don’t trust the code it writes
Source: DORA 2025 – State of AI-Assisted Software Development
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The Shift
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Core engineering skills
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Problem Framing
Thinking
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Reading Code
Thinking
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Debugging
Thinking
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Designing systems
Technical Judgement
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Making tradeoffs
Technical Judgement
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Spotting smells
Technical Judgement
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Structuring Code
Technical Judgement
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Communication
Human Skills
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Ownership
Human Skills
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Core skills still need space to grow
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New skills that everyone will need to
master
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Think critically about
information.
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Prompt engineering
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Veri
fi
cation & Validation Skills
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Veri
fi
cation & Validation Skills
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We need to layer these skills on top of
our core skills
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Adapting our mentorship model
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How we learned as juniors
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AI Changes the learning path
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What this means for
engineering leaders
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From answers to questions
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Always explain “Why?”
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Expose the thought process
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Give feedback on the thought process
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Scaling mentorship in the AI Era
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Group Mentoring
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Peer mentoring
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Reverse Mentoring
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One to One Mentoring
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Mentorship is still human work
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Mentors must keep learning too
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Feedback must remain human
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From Mentorship to Measuring Growth
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From Mentorship to Measuring Growth
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What growth ladders reward
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But Real Growth Isn’t Just Doing More
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Surface the Depth, Judgment and Impact
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Make Readiness Visible
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Assess With AI in Mind
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Progression in the AI Era is Human Work
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Takeaways & Closing
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AI helps when it accelerates understanding
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AI Hurts When It Hides Gaps
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Mentorship Matters
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AI changes how engineers work
but not what great engineers do.
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