Hiring engineers has fundamentally changed, and most interview processes haven't kept up.
The best engineers today aren't the ones who ignore AI, and they're not the ones who rely on it blindly. They're the ones who combine deep engineering judgment with strategic AI usage to accelerate outcomes and maintain quality. But how do you identify them in an interview? And if you're a candidate, how do you demonstrate these skills effectively?
After interviewing hundreds of candidates at Elementor, I've completely redesigned my engineering hiring process for the AI era. In this session, I'll share what I changed and what actually works: how I evaluate coding ability when Copilot, Cursor, and Claude Code are in play, what system design questions reveal AI-orchestration skills, and which behavioral signals separate high-impact engineers from those using AI to mask capability gaps.
You'll walk away with:
A modern framework for evaluating AI-native engineering skills
Practical adjustments to coding exercises and system design questions
Red flags, green flags, and actionable evaluation criteria
Proven techniques to test and demonstrate judgment, debugging ability, and engineering reasoning, not just prompting skills
Strategies for interviewers to eliminate false positives and for candidates to stand out authentically
Whether you're hiring, interviewing for your next role, or scaling a mature engineering organization, you'll learn a battle-tested approach to succeed in this new era.