AI Exchange recap

AI Exchange @ Tessl

30 July 2026LondonWayve|Tessl|Snyk

A huge thank you to everyone who joined us for our biggest AI Exchange turnout yet. It was great to see so many new faces in the audience alongside the regulars we are glad to see every month.

A special thank you to our speakers from Wayve, Tessl and Snyk for three genuinely useful talks on the future of AI powered software engineering, and to Tessl for hosting us.

Between them the evening covered how AI agents are being deployed in real software development workflows, how AI is reshaping the role of the software engineer, and why security and AgentOps are becoming essential to keeping autonomous systems reliable. The common thread was how engineering teams are adapting to a future where AI is a core part of the software development lifecycle.

A full room at AI Exchange @ Tessl, the audience seated in rows facing a speaker and a projected slide.

The talks

01|Dave Kirk — Wayve

Inside Wayve’s AI code review

Dave explored how Wayve is using AI agents to support code review, with a focus on making sure their output is reliable, accurate and actually useful. He showed how the team measures agent performance, gathers feedback and continuously refines prompts to improve results.

His through-line: observability, evaluation and data-driven decision making are what make an AI agent deployable in production. Rather than replacing engineers, agents enhance software development when paired with the right guardrails and oversight.

Watch on YouTube

02|Amy Heineike — Tessl

The future of software engineering with AI

Amy argued that AI is reshaping the role of the software engineer, and that the future lies in guiding and managing agents rather than simply writing code.

She introduced the idea of the “harness engineer”: the person responsible for setting guardrails, defining coding standards and using analytics to ensure AI-generated code is reliable, maintainable and production ready.

Watch on YouTube

03|Nick Vinson — Snyk

AI agents need guardrails

Nick took on the growing security challenges of autonomous AI agents, demonstrating why traditional security practices alone are no longer enough.

He shared practical approaches for securing AI systems through strong guardrails, zero-trust principles and AgentOps — how engineering teams can deploy agents safely, reducing risk and keeping control as those agents become more autonomous.

Watch on YouTube

Thank you again to everyone who came, to our speakers, and to Tessl for hosting. AI Exchange runs regularly in London — the next date goes up on Meetup as soon as it is confirmed.

Tony, Leah and the AI Exchange team

From the night

A speaker with a microphone addressing a full room, beside a slide headed “Conclusion” listing takeaways on agent pipelines, metrics and observability.
A speaker at the lectern beside a slide asking “Won’t better models just fix this?”, showing a chart of model cost against intelligence.
A speaker closing their talk in front of a “Thank You” slide, with the AI Exchange banner beside the stage and the audience seated in rows.

Originally written up by Linux Recruit.