AI
Welcoming a Full Room to Europe’s First AI Engineer Conference
Phil Hawksworth opened to a packed house in London. Attendees had come from Ottawa, Sri Lanka, and the Dominican Republic. The crowd guessing game had one question: who traveled furthest.
Google DeepMind sponsored the day as the presenting partner, with BrainTrust, WorkOS, and OpenAI at the platinum tier. Six tracks ran across the venue after the morning keynotes. The draw, Hawksworth said, was simple: the industry keeps changing, and the people in that room have a thirst for knowledge.
From Skeptic to Cautiously Optimistic: One Engineer’s Shift
Hawksworth admitted he resisted AI tooling. He described a career moving from stock-exchange video switching through Ajax and web sockets, always adapting, always confident his craft mattered. When AI surged, that confidence cracked.
It didn’t stay cracked. Watching the people in that room build with new tools shifted his view. The fear that craft was disappearing turned out to be wrong: the craft moved to a different layer in the abstraction stack. That’s a distinction worth holding onto when the tooling looks overwhelming.
900% Growth, 10 Downing Street, and a Call to Connect
AI Engineer has grown 900% in 3 years, from a small 2023 San Francisco event to 5,000 attendees across three events in 2024. London is the sixth conference and the first in Europe. Partner events this year run in Miami, Singapore, Melbourne, and Paris.
The morning before the keynote, McBride and Swix were at 10 Downing Street with Cal Beer Sohi, the UK’s first Chief AI Officer, appointed in January 2026. The ambition coming out of that room, McBride said, creates meaningful career opportunities for everyone in the audience.
Notable Quotes
Go deep, ask questions, challenge ideas. Lia McBride · ▶ 10:32
isn’t going away, it’s just moving to a Phil Hawksworth · ▶ 5:40
AI Engineer has actually grown a rate of Lia McBride · ▶ 9:17
Key Takeaways
- AI Engineer Europe 2026 drew attendees from Sri Lanka and the Dominican Republic to London for its first European event.
- Phil Hawksworth: engineering craft has not disappeared under AI — it has moved to a higher abstraction layer.
- AI Engineer grew 900% in 3 years; the UK appointed its first Chief AI Officer in January 2026.