When building products that combine the physical and digital — from IoT devices to medical hardware — alignment between hardware and software teams is essential, but rarely simple. Different timelines, tooling, and constraints can create friction without the right systems in place.
This panel dives into the nuts and bolts of hardware-software collaboration in high-growth startups. Engineering leaders with deep experience across embedded systems, consumer electronics, and connected devices will share practical strategies for building cohesive teams and products.
We’ll explore:
How to structure cross-functional teams for seamless hardware-software development
Development methodologies that accommodate physical constraints and fast iteration
Testing and QA strategies that ensure tight integration between code and components
Managing firmware updates, versioning, and backwards compatibility post-deployment
Technical architectures that give both hardware and software room to evolve
You’ll leave with actionable insights for building modern, integrated products that can scale—without letting hardware and software teams drift apart.
This session is part of Startup Boston Week 2025 and is designed for CTOs, engineering managers, software engineers stepping into hardware, and hardware engineers collaborating with digital teams—especially at Series B+ startups building in IoT, embedded systems, consumer electronics, or medtech.
Once your startup has product-market fit, steady revenue, and a growing customer base, it’s time to think beyond just building product — it’s time to build systems that drive scale.
In this fireside chat, we’ll dive into the world of growth engineering: a discipline that blends software engineering, data, product, and marketing to systematically improve key business metrics. You’ll hear from an experienced growth engineer about how to build this function, what kinds of wins it can unlock, and how it differs from traditional engineering roles.
We’ll cover:
What a growth engineer actually does — and what makes the role unique.
When to hire your first growth engineer and how to set them up for success.
The marketing, product, and data skills that set great growth engineers apart.
Tools and platforms that help growth teams move fast and experiment effectively. How engineering culture shifts when the goal becomes learning over launching.
Whether you’re scaling a B2C product or SaaS platform, this session will help you think strategically about when and how to build a growth engineering team that moves the needle.
This session is part of Startup Boston Week 2025 and is perfect for founders of post-Series B startups, technical leaders building for scale, HR and talent pros sourcing specialized roles, and software engineers curious about business-facing paths in tech.
AI agents that can reason, plan, and act autonomously are unlocking new frontiers in product development — but building them requires more than just calling an API.
In this hands-on workshop, you’ll roll up your sleeves and build an AI agent from scratch. With guidance from experienced practitioners, you’ll explore the core components of agentic AI, experiment with open-source frameworks, and walk away with a working prototype you can build on.
This session is all about practical skills — no fluff, just code, tools, and real-world implementation. You’ll learn:
The building blocks of agentic AI systems — from reasoning loops to memory structures
How to use and customize open-source frameworks for agent development
Design principles for safe, reliable, and controllable autonomous agents
How to integrate agents into real-world applications and workflows
Which tools, libraries, and infrastructure choices will set you up for success
By the end, you’ll not only understand how agentic AI works — you’ll have built your own and know exactly where to take it next.
This session is part of Startup Boston Week 2025 and is perfect for software engineers, AI/ML developers, and technical founders who want to get hands-on with the next wave of intelligent systems.
Modern life sciences don’t just rely on lab equipment — they run on code. As biology becomes increasingly data-driven, purpose-built software platforms are playing a critical role in everything from early-stage research to clinical decision-making.
This panel brings together engineers and technical leaders building scientific applications at scale. We’ll explore the unique challenges and opportunities in developing software for complex biological systems, and how to balance usability, scientific rigor, and scalability. Topics include:
Designing architectures that handle messy, high-dimensional biological data
UI/UX strategies that make complex tools intuitive for scientists and clinicians
Structuring data models for both biological accuracy and computational efficiency
Best practices for deploying and validating software in regulated environments
Collaborating across disciplines to keep science and software in sync
Whether you're building internal tools for researchers, launching a computational biology startup, or modernizing clinical workflows, this session will help you level up your technical strategy in life sciences.
This session is part of Startup Boston Week 2025 and is ideal for software engineers, data scientists, and technical leaders building platforms at the intersection of biology and technology.
Building fast doesn’t mean you can ignore the rules—especially when your startup operates in industries like healthcare, fintech, AI, or consumer hardware. As regulations grow more complex and enforcement tightens, engineering leaders need to build with compliance in mind from day one.
In this panel, startup CTOs and compliance-savvy engineers will share how to strike the right balance between shipping quickly and meeting critical regulatory requirements.
You’ll hear practical strategies for embedding compliance into your development process without slowing down innovation. We’ll dive into:
How to build regulatory thinking into engineering workflows from the start
Smart documentation and testing practices that reduce compliance overhead
Navigating overlapping frameworks like FDA, HIPAA, GDPR, and beyond
When to hire external compliance help vs. managing in-house
Future-proofing your architecture for evolving rules around AI, data, and security
Whether you’re preparing for your first regulatory submission or scaling existing processes to meet new demands, this session will give you tools to move fast — and stay compliant.
This session is part of Startup Boston Week 2025 and is built for CTOs, technical founders, and engineering leaders in regulated sectors, especially those navigating compliance while building for scale.
AI is reshaping how products are built and businesses operate — but many startups hit a wall when it comes to building the right team to bring their AI ambitions to life.
In this panel, engineering and talent leaders will explore how to navigate the AI talent crunch: from knowing which skills to prioritize, to deciding when to hire vs. train, to building an engineering culture that’s ready for AI integration.
Whether you're launching your first AI project or scaling a full machine learning team, we’ll cover strategies that work. Topics include:
The core AI and ML skills that actually matter for startup teams.
How to stand out in a competitive hiring market — and win over top AI talent.
When it makes sense to reskill existing engineers vs. hiring specialists.
Best practices for embedding AI capabilities into traditional software orgs.
Common missteps in hiring and workforce planning — and how to avoid them.
You'll leave with a clearer framework for scaling AI talent inside your organization, no matter where you're starting from.
This session is part of Startup Boston Week 2025 and is designed for CTOs, VPs of Engineering, engineering managers, and tech recruiters at Series B+ startups looking to build AI capabilities while growing high-impact teams.
