Dennis Nerush is the Director of AI at Elementor, where he leads the company's AI strategy and guides teams through the integration of GenAI technologies that enhance productivity while preserving human creativity and accountability.
With over 15 years of experience as a developer, manager, director, and adviser across multiple tech companies and startups, Dennis has dedicated his career to building people-first cultures rooted in continuous learning, curiosity, and growth. He believes that when individuals thrive, teams and businesses flourish, a philosophy that has guided him in founding dozens of teams and mentoring over 100 managers.
Dennis is a seasoned public speaker and writer who shares his insights on AI integration, leadership, and team performance at international conferences. He's passionate about helping leaders develop the skills and confidence to excel in a world where human leadership and AI collaboration go hand in hand.
In his free time, Dennis loves cooking and spending time with his kids. His main goal is to help people reach the next level.
Hiring engineers has fundamentally changed, and most interview processes haven't kept up.
The best engineers today aren't the ones who ignore AI, and they're not the ones who rely on it blindly. They're the ones who combine deep engineering judgment with strategic AI usage to accelerate outcomes and maintain quality. But how do you identify them in an interview? And if you're a candidate, how do you demonstrate these skills effectively?
After interviewing hundreds of candidates at Elementor, I've completely redesigned my engineering hiring process for the AI era. In this session, I'll share what I changed and what actually works: how I evaluate coding ability when Copilot, Cursor, and Claude Code are in play, what system design questions reveal AI-orchestration skills, and which behavioral signals separate high-impact engineers from those using AI to mask capability gaps.
You'll walk away with:
- A modern framework for evaluating AI-native engineering skills
- Practical adjustments to coding exercises and system design questions
- Red flags, green flags, and actionable evaluation criteria
- Proven techniques to test and demonstrate judgment, debugging ability, and engineering reasoning, not just prompting skills
- Strategies for interviewers to eliminate false positives and for candidates to stand out authentically
Whether you're hiring, interviewing for your next role, or scaling a mature engineering organization, you'll learn a battle-tested approach to succeed in this new era.
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