AI Engineer Sydney 2026

AI Engineer Sydney 2026 is a two-day AI engineering conference at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney's CBD on December 7-8, 2026, with an optional Workshop Day on December 9. Web Directions, led by John Allsopp, runs it as the Australian edition of the global AI Engineer conference series. The organizer expects 800+ founders, VPs of AI and software and AI engineers, 80+ talks and 20+ expo providers. The program is organized around three themes: building agents that work in production (context, memory, tools, infrastructure), earning the right to trust them (evaluation, tracing, security, auditability, governance), and changing how software gets made with coding agents. A free two-day hackathon on December 4-5 feeds finalists onto the main stage, and the event anchors a wider AI Week running December 6-13. It follows the inaugural Australian edition, AI Engineer Melbourne, held in June 2026.

• Early-bird registrationNov 20, 2026

Date

December 7–9, 2026

Location

Hilton Hotel Sydney, Australia

Format

Hybrid

Event Type

Conference

Status

Upcoming

Expected Attendance

800+

Pricing

Paid

Organizer

Web Directions

Added

Oct 24, 2026

Updated

Oct 24, 2026

• ✓AI engineers
• ✓Software engineers
• ✓VPs of AI
• ✓Engineering leaders and CTOs
• ✓Founders of AI startups
• ✓Platform and infrastructure engineers

For a CTO or head of AI in Australia or Asia-Pacific, this is two days of production engineering detail on the systems your teams are building now: agent evaluation, tracing, governance, token cost control and coding agents. Speakers from Canva, Atlassian, Zendesk, Commonwealth Bank and Google share numbers from live deployments. The Leadership ticket buys a separate track and a speaker dinner, and team pricing (5+ passes) makes it practical to send the engineers who will carry the patterns home. Workshop Day gives hands-on time with DSPy, BAML and open-weight coding workflows.

• ✓Three program themes: agents in production, trust and evaluation, and coding agents in the software lifecycle
• ✓Workshop Day (December 9): Context Engineering with DSPy, led by Drew Breunig of Cmpnd
• ✓Workshop: Build and Evaluate a Security Agent (models, harnesses and evals), Simon Harloff of Dam Secure
• ✓Workshop: BAML by Example, building a self-improving agent with Vaibhav Gupta of Boundary
• ✓Workshop: Moving your agentic coding workflow to open-weight models, Joseph Gulay of ResetData
• ✓Talk: Tools Before Autonomy, what 200,000 tool calls taught Canva about agentic evals (Dean Soste)
• ✓Talk: Architecture patterns for cutting 70% of agent token costs in production (Tanya Dixit, Google)
• ✓Leadership track with VIP keynote seating and speaker dinner
• ✓Free AI Engineer hackathon, December 4-5, with finalists pitching on December 7
• ✓Streaming pass with live sessions, chat, Q&A and on-demand video

• ★Talks come from teams running agents at scale, such as Canva's lessons from 200,000 tool calls and Zendesk's agent flight recorders, with little vendor keynote filler on the published list
• ★A separate Leadership ticket adds a leadership track, VIP keynote seating and a speaker dinner for engineering heads
• ★It carries the AI Engineer series brand from San Francisco and London into Australia, so local teams get the same practitioner format without long-haul travel
• ★A free, catered hackathon on December 4-5 sends finalists to pitch on the main stage on December 7

From the register page (currency not stated on the page; the event is in Australia). Early prices run until November 20, 2026 and rise from November 21: Conference (2 days) $1,395, then $1,595; Conference + Workshop Day $1,895, then $2,095; Leadership (2 days, adds leadership track, VIP keynote seating and speaker dinner) $1,995, then $2,195; Leadership + Workshop Day $2,395, then $2,595; Workshop Day only $895, then $995; Streaming (online, 2 days) $595, then $695. Team pricing for 5+ passes: Conference $1,195 per person or Conference + Workshop Day $1,695 per person, with one free Leadership upgrade per five tickets. Special pricing on an honour system for agency, not-for-profit, education, junior and self-funded attendees. The December 4-5 hackathon is free.

When is AI Engineer Sydney 2026?

AI Engineer Sydney 2026 takes place December 7–9, 2026 in Sydney, Australia.

Where is AI Engineer Sydney 2026 held?

AI Engineer Sydney 2026 is held in Sydney, Australia. The event format is hybrid.

What is the AI Engineer Sydney 2026 submission deadline?

The next AI Engineer Sydney 2026 deadline is early-bird registration on Nov 20, 2026.

How much does AI Engineer Sydney 2026 cost?

AI Engineer Sydney 2026 is paid. From the register page (currency not stated on the page; the event is in Australia). Early prices run until November 20, 2026 and rise from November 21: Conference (2 days) $1,395, then $1,595; Conference + Workshop Day $1,895, then $2,095; Leadership (2 days, adds leadership track, VIP keynote seating and speaker dinner) $1,995, then $2,195; Leadership + Workshop Day $2,395, then $2,595; Workshop Day only $895, then $995; Streaming (online, 2 days) $595, then $695. Team pricing for 5+ passes: Conference $1,195 per person or Conference + Workshop Day $1,695 per person, with one free Leadership upgrade per five tickets. Special pricing on an honour system for agency, not-for-profit, education, junior and self-funded attendees. The December 4-5 hackathon is free.

Who should attend AI Engineer Sydney 2026?

AI Engineer Sydney 2026 is aimed at AI engineers, Software engineers, VPs of AI, Engineering leaders and CTOs, Founders of AI startups, Platform and infrastructure engineers.

What topics does AI Engineer Sydney 2026 cover?

AI Engineer Sydney 2026 covers AI agents in production, Agent evaluation and tracing, Context engineering, Coding agents, AI security and governance, Open-weight models, Agent cost optimization, Sovereign AI inference.

This page was written from 3 sources, 1 on domains other than webdirections.org.

1. 1.webdirections.org — ai engineervendor
2. 2.ai.engineer — ai.engineer
3. 3.webdirections.org — ai engineer melbournevendor