NZ Tech Rally 2026 Schedule

8:00am - 9:00am: Registration

9:00am - 9:15am: Opening notes

Aaron Hodder - Co-Founder @ NZ Tech Rally

9:15am - 9.55am: Keynote 1

Cognitive diversity in the age of AI: Building teams that out-innovate with a Pasifika lens

Norie Ape - Digital Transformation & Product Leader @ Te Wananga o Aotearoa

10:00am - 10:40am: Keynote 2

Building with AI without losing our values

Lauren Peate - Founder & CEO @ Multitudes

10:45am - 11:30am: Morning tea break & activities

11:30am - 11.55 am: Multi-track talks

Engineering & Platforms:

Taming chaos: Building a DevOps platform for a multi‑stack enterprise

Chris Jia - Senior Full-Stack Engineer & Automation Expert

Product, Design & UX:

Highchairs, toilet training and human-centered design: A parenting parallel to UX design

Ramya Ravishankar - Lead UX/UI Designer @ Ministry of Education

Testing & Quality:

Give an app to 5 different security testers, you'll get 5 different reports

Peter Jakowetz - Managing Director @ PrivSec Consulting

AI, Data & Ethics:

AI agents in your Kubernetes cluster: Troubleshooting at scale, 24/7

Dipin Thomas - Lead Engineer @ Xero

Community, Culture & Wellbeing:

RADical innovation: Circular economy meets digital equity

Kelsey Hallahan - Educational Programme Manager & Digital Equity Champion @ Digital Future Aotearoa

12:00pm - 12.25 pm: Multi-track talks

Engineering & Platforms:

The API product playbook: Managing the full lifecycle for a world-class DevEx

Darshit Pandya - Senior Principal Engineer - Platform @ Serko

Product, Design & UX:

Getting "Accessibility Ready" for a design system

Steve Barnett - Digital Accessibility Consultant @ Intopia

Testing & Quality:

Can AI really replace testers in the future?

Surya Baskaran - Senior QA Consultant @ TTC Global

AI, Data & Ethics:

The AI-era engineer

Lora Vardarova - Lead Engineering Enablement Specialist @ Culture Amp

Community, Culture & Wellbeing:

The dungeon master’s guide to feedback

Tamara Buckland - Founder @ Leadership Treehouse

12:30pm - 1:30pm: Lunch break & activities

1:30pm - 1.55 pm: Multi-track talks

Engineering & Platforms:

Manager, leader or engineer? It’s a pendulum and a continuum

Barbara Gruber - Principal Engineer @ Totara

Product, Design & UX:

Invisible design: Making governance work for regulated industries

Sneha Pulapaka - Senior Insights Analyst & Product owner

Testing & Quality:

Cracking the AI black box: Challenges and solutions in testing generative AI

Deep Pandey - Senior Consultant in AI @ Planit

AI, Data & Ethics:

Small voices, big stakes: How children's rights shape AI governance at UNICEF Aotearoa

Ben Chapman - Lead Full Stack Developer @ UNICEF Aotearoa

Community, Culture & Wellbeing:

You don’t need permission to lead: A grassroots community blueprint

Greg Ng - Co-founder @ BA Career & Business Analyst @ Transpower New Zealand

2:00pm - 2.25 pm: Multi-track talks

Engineering & Platforms:

Building the golden path: Unified platforms management across Cloud, On-Premise, and SaaS

Feilong Wang - Principal Engineer @ Kiwibank

Product, Design & UX:

The cognitively-kind web: Designing for our diverse brains

Oli Treadwell - Senior Software Engineer

Testing & Quality:

Supercharge your test automation with Playwright, MCP, and GitHub Copilot

Allan Munar - Principal Consultant @ TTC Global

AI, Data & Ethics:

TBC

Community, Culture & Wellbeing:

Your code is fine. Your leadership? …

Rachael Fitzjohn - People Director @ Emerging Engines

2:30pm - 3.00pm: Afternoon tea break & activities

3:00pm - 3:40pm: Keynote 3

The accessibility features of today are the breakthroughs of tomorrow

Maia Miller - Managing Director @ Aleph Accessibility

3:45pm - 4:15pm: Group activities & giveaways

Aaron Hodder - Co-Founder @ NZ Tech Rally

4:15pm - 4:30pm: Closing notes

Camy Bhandari - Co-Founder & Director @ NZ Tech Rally

5.00pm - 7.00pm: Exclusive post-conference networking mixer

TĀKINA Rongamātāne Foyer, Level 1

Sponsored by PrivSec Consulting