The Future of Software Engineering Work

Software engineering work is changing fast.

The next few years won’t be about engineers being replaced — it will be about engineers becoming higher leverage.

What is changing

• AI handles more first drafts of code, tests, and documentation.
• Engineers spend more time on decisions: architecture, trade-offs, product impact, and reliability.
• Review quality matters more than raw typing speed.
• Communication becomes a core technical skill because humans and AI now collaborate in the same delivery loop.

Skills that will matter most

1. System thinking — understanding how parts interact under real-world constraints.
2. Product judgment — choosing what to build (not just how to build it).
3. Operational excellence — observability, incident response, and resilient deployments.
4. AI orchestration — prompting, evaluating, and refining AI output with engineering rigor.

My bet

The best engineers will look like technical leaders at every level: they’ll ship faster, with stronger judgment, and better outcomes.

In short: the future engineer is not just a coder — they’re a builder, reviewer, and decision engine.