Inclusive spaces for Aotearoa's tech practitioners to connect, grow, and celebrate.

NZ Tech Rally is a grassroots community run by tech practitioners, for tech practitioners: engineers, developers, QAs, product folks, and tech leaders from across Aotearoa New Zealand.

We run in-person monthly meetups, professional development workshops, and an annual tech conference, right here in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, that your whole engineering team can attend together.

In May 2026, more than 400 people from over 100 organisations joined us in our capital city, to hear from our 23 local speakers. Watch our 2026 highlights reel above to see what the day looked like.

We are now getting ready for NZ Tech Rally 2027 from 6-7 May in Wellington. It will be our 4th Tech Rally edition. Ticket sales are open, and we are onboarding sponsors.

Our 2027 Call for speakers is now closed. We received 162 talk proposals. Thank you to everyone who sent us a talk proposal; we’ve now replied to everyone with an outcome. Our talk selection committee has carefully selected our final 23 speakers. Keep scrolling to see our 2027 speaker lineup and professional development workshops.

6-7 May 2027 @ Wellington, NZ

Workshops:

Thursday, 6th May 2027

@ Willeston Conference Centre, Wellington Central, NZ

Conference:

Friday, 7th May 2027

@ Tākina, Wellington Central, NZ

Workshops

Keynotes

AI, Data & Ethics

  • Chris Cormack

    Chris Cormack

    Kaihuawaere Matihiko @ Catalyst

    He ao anō tēnei / A different world

  • Maria McMillan

    Information Architect @ The Information Architect Ltd

    Why AI won’t fix your broken IA

  • David Curlewis

    Senior Engineering Manager @ Canva

    Lines of code got a better publicist

  • Indira Bandari

    Data & AI Architect @ Inde Technology

    The ethics review nobody wanted to attend

Product, Design & UX

  • Jamie Dawson

    Product Lead @ Basis

    10,000 data points a second, and nobody cared

  • Emma Buckland

    Mobile UX Lead Designer

    The hidden risk in mobile UX

  • Headshot of Julius, a person with a medium skin tone and dark, short-cropped hair, looking directly at the camera.

    Julius Charles Serrano

    Accessibility Specialist & Co-founder @ Tactile NZ

    Beyond the screen: Accessibility in physical spaces

  • Sailendhran Paramanandhan

    Founder @ Yantra NZ

    Three startups, no code

Community, Culture & Wellbeing

  • Vivian Chandra

    Co-Director @ Ally Skills Aotearoa

    Beyond the algorithm: Designing technology for trust, safety, and connection

  • Bianca Grizhar

    Advisor @ Magnificent

    Detangling ourselves from big tech

  • Luca Zampese

    Technology & Innovation Lead @ Primary Healthcare

    Health tech needs a reset

  • Thalia Kehoe Rowden

    Co-Executive Director @ Human Rights Measurement Initiative

    Do human rights exist online?

Engineering & Platforms

  • Francis Ho

    Director of Engineering @ Auror

    Scope down to scale up: Lessons from agentic AI adoption

  • Zanda Zvidrina

    Senior Software Developer & ADHD Coach

    I debugged software better than my life

  • Jakub Jurkiewicz

    Chief Product and Technology Officer @ Medtech Global

    What I got wrong about executives

  • TBC

Testing & Quality

  • Siobhan Cotter

    Head of Technology Delivery @ MAS

    Testing is not a phase: Building quality into a transformation programme

  • Gabriel Lantin

    Software Test Engineer @ RUSH Digital

    DIY QA : How to craft your own QA toolkit

  • Sarah Thomas is pictured from the shoulders up with shoulder-length dark brown hair and black-framed glasses. She is wearing a grey blazer, black top, patterned circular earrings, and a dark pendant on a cord necklace.

    Sarah Thomas

    Quality Consultant @ Planit Testing

    Rocket fuel or AI slop: 25 years of test management meets AI

  • Mei Reyes-Tsai

    Group CTO @ TTC Global

    The upskilling nobody asked for

Meet our 2027 crew