Organizations in Flux: Navigating and Managing AI's Impact on Engineering Teams

Blanca Rojo is a Distinguished Engineer and Executive Director at UBS, specializing in cloud engineering. Originally from Spain, she holds a degree and MSc in Software Engineering and was introduced to coding early by her parents, both math teachers. After moving to London, she began her career at an investment bank, initially as a Java engineer working with Spring and tackling complex challenges through code. Over time, Blanca transitioned to cloud engineering and data engineering, pivoting her career focus in 2019.

Blanca has been a passionate advocate for community involvement since 2017, volunteering with internal networks and organizing both in-person and virtual events. In 2021, she became the leader of the Women in Tech network in the UK, revamping its focus to include coding initiatives, upskilling women, and expanding the network's influence. Her technical expertise and community leadership led to her recognition as a Distinguished Engineer, a role that involves shaping technology and engineering practices across UBS.

In her current role, Blanca works in a Center of Excellence team, focusing on helping the department adopt a central Kubernetes offering to streamline cloud infrastructure and improve scalability. She is also the department’s AI champion, with a focus on enhancing developer experience and engineering productivity. Blanca and her team design, build, and maintain reusable cloud artifacts and best practices, ensuring high engineering standards across the organization. She leads proof-of-concept work, provides technical guidance to a department of 400+ engineers, and helps drive the adoption of innovative technologies and practices that optimize engineering workflows.

Blanca is also an emerging public speaker with a growing focus on AI-augmented development and its potential to improve developer experience. She has spoken at events such as London Tech Week, the Staff+ conference by Lead Dev, and internal tech conferences, sharing insights on topics like cloud-native architectures, patterns for monolith decompositions, and how AI can transform development processes to boost efficiency and collaboration.