# Sherif Mansour — AI Engineer Sydney 2026

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Canonical page: https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/speakers/sherif-mansour/
Program status: The working timetable is public. Announced speakers and presentations are confirmed; some track assignments, session groupings and times may change as keynote, partner and specialist sessions are finalised. Morning keynote programmes and Industry sessions will be added as they are confirmed.

## The Contradictions of Building AI Products and Teams

- Track: Software Engineering

For every claim about how to build with AI, there seems to be an equal and opposite claim that’s also true. Chat is the universal interface, so go headless. Never bolt AI onto your product, reimagine it. Everyone on your team should become an AI builder.

Sherif Mansour has spent 17 years at Atlassian. He now runs AI platform across its 20+ apps, nearly 10 million people use for their AI capabilities, and leads the Product Management Craft of about 450 product managers. In this talk he shares three contradictions Atlassian’s teams have wrestled with: chat vs dedicated UI, reimagine vs bolt on, and the 10x AI builder.

Attendees will leave knowing:

- how to use chat as a product discovery tool, not just a feature
- when bolting AI onto existing workflows beats starting from scratch
- why the goal is a 10x *team*, not a 10x builder

## Sherif Mansour

Distinguished Product Manager and Head of AI, Atlassian

Sherif Mansour is a Distinguished Product Manager for Atlassian and Head of AI (Rovo, Atlassian’s generative AI platform). With over 20 years of software development under his belt, Sherif has played a key role in both developing new Atlassian products, including Atlas, Stride, Team Calendars, and Confluence Questions, and driving existing products forward, such as Confluence, a popular content collaboration tool for teams. Sherif now spends his days solving problems across all of Atlassian’s cloud products. Based in Sydney, Australia, Sherif enjoys running, pretending to be a professional soccer coach with kids under 10, and is a wannabe cartoonist.

## Conference

- [Conference overview](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/index.md)
- [Agent guide](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/for-agents/)
- [llms.txt](https://webdirections.org/ai-engineer/llms.txt)