Hello friends! 

At LeadDev, workshops are one of the most valued parts of our events — a place to slow down, think deeply, and work through real problems with your peers.

We’re now welcoming Workshop Proposals, year-round, for workshops that may be programmed across our LeadDev events (including LDX3 London, LDX3 New York, and LeadDev Berlin).

This CFP is not tied to a specific event or date, and you can submit a proposal whenever you’re ready — submissions will be reviewed monthly.

About LeadDev workshops

LeadDev events are for leaders who want to run more effective engineering organizations — covering leadership and collaboration, systems, strategy, and technical decision-making.

Our workshops are a core part of that experience. Attendees choose them because they want:

• Depth over breadth
• Active participation rather than passive learning
• Space to reflect, discuss, and learn from others in similar roles  

Workshop format

Our workshops are 80-minute-long, interactive, facilitated sessions, and they are typically programmed twice at an event (once on Day 1 and again on Day 2).

What we’re looking for

We’re interested in workshops that help engineering leaders actively work through real challenges, rather than hear about them at a high level. We want to see sessions that:

Are genuinely interactive

• Structured small-group discussions
• Guided exercises or scenarios
• Collaborative problem-solving
• Role-play or facilitated peer feedback
• Applying a framework to real-world examples

Go deep on a focused problem

• Focus on a single, clearly defined challenge
• Explore trade-offs and real constraints
• Leave time for discussion and reflection

If your idea works best as a talk or a blog post, it may not yet be the right fit for a workshop.

Are actively facilitated

The facilitator’s role is to:

• Set context clearly
• Maintain energy and pacing
• Encourage balanced participation
• Create a psychologically safe space
• Help participants learn from one another

Topics we’re interested in

We welcome proposals across the full LeadDev landscape, particularly workshops that explore:

Leading people & organisations

• Managing managers and senior leaders
• Handling conflict, underperformance, and tough conversations
• Mentoring, coaching, and developing others
• Inclusive leadership and culture
• Leading through growth, change, or uncertainty

Building effective systems & teams

• Team structures and ways of working
• Incident management and learning from failure
• Documentation, alignment, and decision-making
• Measuring effectiveness and productivity
• Balancing delivery, quality, and sustainability

Making technical and strategic choices

• System design and architectural trade-offs
• Platform engineering and enablement
• Roadmapping and long-term planning
• Legacy systems and technical debt
• AI in practice: adoption, guardrails, productivity, and people impacts  

A note on AI workshops

AI is a huge topic, and we expect to receive a lot of submissions in this area. Our audiences are most excited by highly practical, experience-led sessions grounded in how their peers are actually using AI to drive impact — rather than broader, foundational sessions with less tangible takeaways.

Before you submit

Ask yourself:

• What will participants do during the 80 minutes?
• Who is this workshop for, and who is it not for?
• How will you help participants engage with others in the room?
• What will people leave with that they didn’t have before?  

We’re especially keen to hear from facilitators who:

• Have lived experience of the problem they’re teaching
• Are comfortable guiding discussion, not just presenting
• Are open about what didn’t work as well as what did  

The facilitator experience

We love working closely with workshop facilitators and supporting them throughout the process.

As a LeadDev workshop facilitator, we'd offer:

• A free ticket to the conference where your workshop runs
• $500 USD per workshop session delivered
• Dedicated support from the LeadDev team  

Good luck!

We hope that's given you all the information you need to submit a great proposal. We can't wait to read them! 

Who will you be writing for? 

Our audience consists of all senior engineering folk, from tech leads to VPs and senior ICs. They are consistently technical (across a very broad range of technologies and industries) with many line-managing people in their organisations. It’s also important to note that some folks have just been promoted or are trying to figure out what skills they need to progress into a more technical role.   

What does LeadDev offer? 

If we choose your article for publication, we’ll offer all the support we can in the creation of your article. After a first draft has been handed in, it will be passed to our in-house editor, who will work with you to ensure your article is the best it can be.  We also pay a $250 honorariumto everyone who writes an article for our site.   

What are we looking for?

• Personal experiences with key takeaways for our community 
• Case studies or projects you’ve worked on that have made a difference 
• Lessons learned from your own career journey 
• Demystifying a complex role or piece of engineering jargon – whether that’s a team or a project, a collaborative process or a niche job title. If it will inform our audience. 
• Essays on how AI is changing software engineering, even (especially?) if it's an unpopular opinion! Is there something on the horizon you want to talk about? Or a hot take you are ready to defend? We’d love to hear from you!

What subject should you focus on? 

• Team (anything related to people management, inclusive & diverse environments, hiring & retention, challenging issues etc.)
• Tech (anything related to new languages, frameworks & technologies, AI, trends & changes, scaling, architecture etc.)
• Tools (anything related to the systems that you use to design, build, test, deploy, and maintain software more efficiently and reliably etc.)
• Process (anything related to the way your team works, Agile & other delivery methods, maintaining a high-performing team etc.)
• Personal Development/Career Development (anything related to improving leadership skills, maintaining your mental health, adapting to a new role etc.)
• StaffPlus (anything on big picture thinking, making the right technical decisions, or influencing at scale)

How does the article review process work?

We review article proposals on a rolling monthly basis, in the order they’re received. Due to a high volume of submissions, we review 40 proposals each month.

Submissions remain open at all times, so it may take 8–12 weeks for your proposal to be reviewed, depending on when it was submitted.

If you haven’t heard from us yet, your submission is still in our review queue. Thanks so much for your patience while we work through it. Unfortunately, we’re not able to provide individual status updates during this period.

If your proposal is selected, we’ll be in touch with the next steps and a writing timeline (usually 3–4 weeks). If your proposal isn’t selected, you’ll receive an update via Submittable once it’s been reviewed.

If you have general questions about the article submission process, you can contact the team at hello@leaddev.com

Hello Berlin!

We’re super excited to announce that LeadDev is returning to Berlin on 9–10 November 2026.

About LeadDev

LeadDev is an event aimed specifically at addressing the challenges faced by engineering leaders. If you're a Tech Lead, Engineering Manager, Staff Engineer, Head of Engineering or Director of Engineering  - then this is the place for you. The event focuses on two things: how to give you the skills and knowledge to be the most effective in your job; and how you can supercharge the effectiveness of your team.

What is the story you want to tell that can help other engineering leaders?

What topics are we interested in?

The event is focused around three big themes: team, tech, and tools. We’ve detailed a bit about them below and remember, you can submit more than one idea!

• Team - Our team talks cover anything related to leadership, personal development, and anything that happens within the unit of your teams. Think about: the skills that you need to be an effective leader; how to maximise the impact and velocity of your teams; skills for growing people; creating inclusive and diverse environments; hiring and retention; adapting to new roles.
• Tech - Our tech talks cover anything you need to run an effective technical team in 2026. We love hearing case studies for our tech talks - real stories about what went right and what went wrong (which is always more interesting!). Think about: AI / LLMS, new languages, frameworks, scaling, architecture.
• Tools - Our tools talks cover anything related to the way your teams get work done. Think about: agile and other delivery methods; frameworks for things like code reviews and 1:1s; on call; observability; continuous integration; velocity and debugging productivity; maintaining a high performing team.

The speaker experience

Working with speakers is one of our favourite things about running LeadDev. We love to give you the opportunity to share your stories and knowledge with our audience - and we put a tonne of work in to help your content shine. Throughout the process, you’ll have the opportunity to work with our professional coach who’ll help you hone your presentation delivery, and our content team who’ll review your talk and help you sharpen it for our audience.

As a speaker for the event, we offer you:

• A free ticket to the conference
• A complimentary ticket to a LeadDev conference the following year
• 2 nights accommodation at the conference hotel
• Economy travel expenses if you need them
• Dedicated support from our team at all stages of your participation 

Good luck

We hope that's given you all the information you need to submit a great proposal. We can't wait to read them!