QCon San Francisco 2026
About This Event
QCon San Francisco 2026 is a software development conference taking place November 16–20, 2026, at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco in California. The main conference runs November 16–18, followed by two days of optional technical workshops on November 19–20.
Organized by QCon, the event is designed for senior software engineers, software architects, engineering managers, technical leads, and technology decision-makers responsible for building and maintaining production software systems.
The conference focuses on real-world engineering challenges, including software architecture, production-ready artificial intelligence, distributed systems, cloud-native infrastructure, platform engineering, developer productivity, and engineering leadership.
Sessions explore how engineering teams can integrate AI into production applications, design resilient architectures, improve development workflows, and manage complex systems at scale. Speakers share practical experiences, architectural decisions, lessons learned, and approaches tested in production environments.
QCon emphasizes practitioner-led technical discussions rather than vendor-focused product presentations. Attendees can learn from experienced engineers, participate in technical conversations, and connect with peers working on similar software engineering challenges.
The optional workshop days provide more focused learning opportunities through instructor-led sessions on software architecture, AI engineering, system design, and related technical subjects.
QCon San Francisco 2026 is particularly relevant to staff engineers, principal engineers, software architects, engineering managers, platform engineers, and technical leaders seeking practical knowledge they can apply within their organizations.
Highlights
- 60+ senior software engineering practitioners sharing production experience
- 12 curated technical tracks covering modern software development
- Production-ready AI architectures and agent orchestration
- Distributed systems, resilience, and scalability engineering
- Platform engineering, cloud infrastructure, and developer productivity
- AI evaluation, guardrails, and observability practices
- Staff-level engineering skills and technical leadership
- Real-world architecture case studies from technology companies
- Networking with senior engineers, architects, and engineering managers
- Optional hands-on technical training on November 19–20
- Access to conference presentation recordings for 12 months
Schedule at a Glance
Registration and Breakfast
Badge pickup at Market Street Foyer and continental breakfast.
The Harness Is the New Operating System
Opening keynote by Manju Rajashekhar of Mad Labs.
Technical Conference Sessions
Practitioner talks on software architecture, AI evaluation, and engineering practices.
Lunch Break
Conference lunch and informal networking.
Afternoon Technical Sessions
Practitioner-led presentations across the conference tracks.
Conference Social
Evening networking with speakers and attendees.
Breakfast and Networking
Continental breakfast before the second day.
Learning Out Loud
Keynote by Laura Savino of Adobe Photoshop.
Distributed Systems in Production
Technical sessions exploring large-scale distributed infrastructure.
Engineering AI Systems
Discussions on production AI architectures, reliability, and implementation.
Breakfast and Networking
Third-day breakfast and attendee networking.
The Execution Muscle
Keynote by Charlotte Mestwerdt of Bravely on building effective engineering teams.
Architecting for Agents
Technical presentations on AI agent architecture and engineering.
Engineering Developer Experience
Discussions on developer productivity and modern engineering workflows.
Technical Training Begins
Optional instructor-led workshops on AI agents, Java development, and engineering productivity.
InfoQ Certified Architect Program
Certification workshop led by Luca Mezzalira.
Final Training Day
Full-day workshops on incident response, AI-native development, and MCP servers.
Lunch Break
Training-day lunch.
Afternoon Workshops
Continuation of the final day's technical training sessions.
Training Programme Concludes
End of scheduled full-day training workshops.
