Michelle Brenner
Senior Software Engineer 👩💻 @ x-Netflix 📺| Speaker 🎙️ | Author 📚 | Mentor 👩🏫 | Founder Quill & Coin
Los Angeles, California, United States
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Michelle is a Senior Software Engineer with 16 years of professional experience. An art school graduate, she started in engineering support and, through self-study, grew into her role at Netflix. She thrives in technical leadership positions, solving unique business challenges with diverse teams. This includes platform infrastructure for fellow engineers, pipelines for VFX artists, and ordering systems for restaurateurs. Michelle is deeply passionate about contributing to the broader tech community, having spoken at over 50+ conferences worldwide, coaching engineers, founders, and VCs, and offering thought leadership through an upcoming book, podcasts, articles, classes, and videos to inspire, educate, and provide a warm welcome into a flourishing community.
Area of Expertise
Topics
I *am* Here to Make Friends: Networking Skills to Build Real Connections
In a world where AI blurs reality, face-to-face connections are critical to standing out. This workshop includes everything you were expected to know about socializing, but no one ever told you. We will do a deep dive into where to find events, breaking into conversations, what to say once you get started, and how to follow up so it’s not just a rising number of connections on LinkedIn.
This workshop has been a conference favorite because you won’t just be listening to me talk. You will immediately put each new skill into practice with your fellow attendees. Most people walk out with their first new connection already made. Having a structure to follow is what turns a daunting room into an exciting one.
10 years ago, I was stuck on a dead-end team at a company that eventually shuttered. I studied networking to kick-start my career, and after 7 years at Netflix, which started at a conference, I am going to help you skip a few steps and get right to what works.
Setting networking goals and identifying the most useful events
Becoming a confident conversationalist
Making a genuine connection instead of a one-off conversation
The Missing Cipher: The Field Guide to Becoming a Senior Software Engineer
I learned how to be a Senior Engineer by listening to those around me and deputizing my co-workers as my unofficial mentors. As many teams have become stratified and Senior Engineers are more likely to work remotely, this learning-by-osmosis is no longer happening.
In an excerpt from my book, we’ll discuss the product lifecycle, including writing the pitch and designing the MVP, to releasing a fully productionized app to general availability and handling exponential growth with distributed systems.
Technical skills are only half of what you need. We’ll cover the professional skills, from navigating ambiguity and technical negotiation to documenting your work to build your brand, and finally acing the next interview you’ll get with your expanded network.
For the engineer looking to take control of their career, or the manager seeking a lesson plan to uplevel their team, the missing cipher will help them navigate this critical transition. Based on my personal story, interviews with a diverse set of engineers at every level, and research from reputable primary sources, this talk will highlight the skills to thrive as a Senior Engineer.
Takeaways
System Design breakdown, from basics to productionizing
Communication and research tactics for bringing ideas to life
Adding resilience and observability to reduce support costs
AI native thinking to focus our judgment and skills on critical tasks
Changing Your AI Leadership from Adoption to Impact
Eighty-eight percent of companies use AI. Six percent report a significant impact on earnings. This talk will help your organization join the six percent. We’ll start by examining the friction points among the people in your company, who all have different AI goals. Executives want cost and headcount down. Technical leadership wants AI in the workflows without losing accountability. Engineering managers want to meet their production goals while keeping their teams. Engineers want to build good products, learn the new tools, and still have a job next year. Almost every AI collision at work is between those four goals, and we'll name them out loud so we can find solutions.
We’ll go through the research and what the numbers are saying instead of just the headlines. We’ll trace where the tech layoffs are really coming from, and how many of them are the result of AI efficiencies. We'll spend a minute on the history of how the spreadsheets were going to eliminate accounts in 1983, but there are even more in 2026.
Then we'll get hands-on. No one automatically knows how to use AI because it’s an everything tool. We’ll cut through the confusion by applying a Six Sigma process map. Originally designed to modernize bureaucracy, we’ll use it to understand where AI can be most effective and where we need to keep the creative human in the loop. This will help us focus on being more productive and using AI surgically, rather than spending a year’s worth of tokens in a month trying to do everything.
A map of the four AI goals in your org based on the current research, and language for surfacing them
A process mapping exercise you can run on your own work
What the six percent did differently
A concrete plan to make the most out of AI and increase ROI
DeveloperWeek New York 2026 Sessionize Event
CodeMash 2020 Sessionize Event
KCDC 2019 Sessionize Event
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