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Melissa BenuaQueen of Code

Engineering Leadership & Technical Excellence

VPE/CTO, Keynote Speaker, and Thought Leader in Software Engineering

Melissa Benua

Tech Talks

My recent and upcoming speaking engagements

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Test Smarter, Not Harder: How to Design Test Suites for Continuous Delivery

STAReast 2026

Testing
CI/CD
Automation
April 27, 2026
Orlando, FL
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AI-Enabled SDLC: Let the Robot Do the Work

STAReast 2026

AI
Testing
SDLC
April 28, 2026
Orlando, FL
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How Not to Get Fired in the Age of AI: Leading Software Testing Teams Into the Future

STAReast 2026

Testing
Leadership
AI
May 1, 2026
Orlando, FL
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Code

Check out some of my contributions to the developer community

DotnetModelFuzzing

Model-based fuzzing for dotnet core, based on FuzzDB attacks. Especially good for fuzzing HTTP-based services!

alexa-recipe-app

Tutorial project for building and testing with containers

Tengwar Messaging
iOS App

iOS keyboard and messaging app for beautiful Tengwar script communication

Coming Soon
iOS App
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Latest articles

Thoughts and insights on engineering leadership

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Context Is the Spec: Planning and Defining 'Good' for AI-Assisted Development

The quality of what comes out of an agentic workflow is directly proportional to the quality of what goes in. Here's what that looks like in practice -- and why the spec is your highest-ROI engineering investment.

February 25, 2026

Safety Is Speed: Why the Boring Parts of Engineering Just Became the Most Important Parts

Everyone's looking for the right AI tool. The teams shipping fastest with agents aren't the ones who found the best model. They're the ones who already had strong engineering fundamentals in place.

February 18, 2026

Building Teams That Thrive

Key strategies for creating engineering teams that are resilient, innovative, and focused on outcomes.

March 22, 2023

The Evolution of Engineering Leadership

How the role of engineering leaders has transformed in the era of remote work and AI-assisted development.

January 15, 2023

Melissa on WeHackPurple Podcast!

An engaging discussion on security, testing, and engineering leadership

August 15, 2020

Migrating 'Mature' Code to Continuous Delivery

Strategies for modernizing legacy codebases and adopting CD practices

June 8, 2020