The Melbourne edition of the world's leading AI Engineer conference—two days focused on what actually matters: building production LLM systems, tooling that works, evaluation frameworks, safety considerations, and shipping AI-native products.
Join AI engineers, software engineers, CTOs, and VPs of AI who are solving these problems right now. Every edition has sold out. Secure your spot
Founders, VPs of AI, Software and AI Engineers
Talks from top experts
Top DevTools, Infra providers & Employers in Expo
I've looked up to Web Directions for a long time as one of the highest quality technical conference organizers in the world. As we grow AI Engineer as the premier technical event for AI practitioners, we're beyond excited to work with John and Web Directions to bring AI Engineering to ANZ!
Shawn (Swyx) Wang, Founder AI Engineer
If you're keen to speak at AI Engineer. CFPs are open now, closing Feb 28th 2026
Read all the details about what we're looking for and what we offer speakers.
AI Engineer Melbourne will in 2026 feature three tracks, AI Engineering, SWE and agentic coding, and a specialised leadership AI leadership track. There will also be bonus expo sessions during breaks.
Designed for practitioners building AI systems and applications in production this track explores novel architectures and system designs, from innovative approaches to RAG and agent pipelines to real-world case studies backed by production metrics.
Sessions will cover open source launches, major tool releases, and the hard technical problems teams are solving in the field—including integration patterns, infrastructure challenges, and lessons learned at scale.
For software engineers evolving their practice using AI coding tools. We'll cover how AI is transforming the entire software development lifecycle—from productivity hacks that save hours daily to real examples of AI-assisted development in action.
Sessions will explore when AI tools work brilliantly, when they fall short, and how to integrate them effectively into your process, whether you're working solo or on a team.
Exclusively for senior technical leaders defining AI strategy at scale—CTOs, VPs of AI, AI Architects at large organizations, and the most senior AI decision-makers at their companies.
Sessions will tackle the strategic challenges of building and scaling AI engineering organizations: defining and executing AI strategy, build vs. buy decisions for AI infrastructure, organizational transformations, compensation structures and career ladders for AI roles, and navigating compliance and legal considerations.
In 2026 we'll bring you AI Week, featuring the edition in Australia of the renowned AI Engineer Conference, UX Week Australia featuring UX Australia and Design Research. And we'll cap it all off with the 20th anniversary edition of Web Directions.
Keep up to date with news about AI Engineer Melbourne? Let us know below and we'll email you as things develop. But don't wait too long–Every edition of AI Engineer to date has sold out
There's in-person and streaming offerings, a dedicated leadership pass and, of course, the core conference.
If keynote attendance exceeds our main auditorium's capacity, an overflow theatre with a large high-resolution screen will be available.
Leadership passes and early registration will guarantee in-room seating for keynote sessions.
If you prefer your conferences live streamed, then watch everything live and then on demand with a Conffab Premium membership . You'll get 12 months of live-streamed conferences and over a thousand on-demand presentations.
AI Engineer Melbourne will take place at ACMI and Zinc in Federation Square in the heart of vibrant Melbourne.
Right near Flinders Street Station, there are numerous public transport options, and parking available close by.
There are plenty of accommodation options near Federation Square. Stay tuned for special rates at local hotels.
From early-stage start-ups looking to make their first connections to the world's leading technology companies, we'll help you engage your customers and find leading talent for your organisation.
Contact us for more on how we work can work with you to help you be even more awesome.
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Web Directions has for 2 decades years brought together leading developers, engineers, visual, IxD, UX and product designers, Art and Creative Directors, product managers indeed everyone involved in producing web and digital products to learn from one another, and the World's leading experts across this vast field.
We promise attending one of our events will leave you significantly better versed in the challenges you face day to day, and in solutions for addressing them.
John Allsopp has worked on the web for nearly 30 years, creating innovative tools like Style Master and X-Ray. His ideas laid the groundwork for Typekit (now Adobe Fonts) and Responsive Web Design itself.
His seminal 2000 essay "A Dao of Web Design" was cited by Ethan Marcotte as a key inspiration for Responsive Web Design and by Jeremy Keith as "a manifesto for anyone working on the Web." He's authored books including Developing With Web Standards, spoken at conferences worldwide, and brings deep expertise and passion to Web Directions
For over a decade, we've worked hard to create inclusive, fun, inspring and safe events for the Web Industry.
As part of our commitment to these values, we've adopted a code of conduct for all involved: ourselves, our speakers, our partners and our audience.
If you have any concern or feedback, please don't hesitate to contact us.