# Shawn Wang

> Shawn 'swyx' Wang is a Singapore-born AI engineer, founder, and community builder who pivoted from a $350k/year quantitative finance career to become one of the most influential voices in AI engineering and developer tools. He coined the term 'AI Engineer', co-founded the AI Engineer Summit (now the world's largest technical AI conference for engineers), co-hosts the Latent Space podcast reaching 10M+ readers/listeners, and is the author of the seminal 'Learn in Public' essay that has shaped how millions of developers think about career growth. He is the founder of Smol.ai and a prolific creator with 626+ published essays, talks, and tutorials.

- **Role:** Cofounder & CEO at AI Engineer Foundation; Founder at Smol.ai; Host at Latent Space
- **Organizations:** AI Engineer Foundation, Smol.ai, Latent Space, Cognition
- **From:** Singapore
- **Nationality:** Singaporean
- **Education:** Self-taught Software Engineering, freeCodeCamp (self-taught)
- **Known for:** Coined the term 'AI Engineer' and catalyzed a new professional category, Co-founded AI Engineer Summit - grew to world's largest technical AI conference for engineers (6,000+ attendees), Latent Space podcast and newsletter reaches 10M+ readers and listeners

## Career timeline

- **pre-2017** — Quantitative finance career - currency derivatives trader and portfolio analyst earning $350k/year
- **2017** — Quit finance job, taught himself to code via freeCodeCamp
- **2018-2019** — Full-stack engineer and freelance developer; began building React community presence
- **2019** — Joined Netlify in Developer Experience; gave 'Getting Closure on Hooks' talk at JSConf Asia
- **2019** — Published 'Learn in Public' essay - became a seminal piece read by millions
- **2020** — Joined Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Developer Relations
- **2021** — Joined Temporal as Head of Developer Relations
- **2022** — Joined Airbyte as Head of Developer Relations
- **2022** — Published 'The Rise of the AI Engineer' essay - coined the term 'AI Engineer'
- **2023** — Co-founded Latent Space podcast with Alessio - grew to top technical AI podcast
- **2023** — Co-founded AI Engineer Summit with Ben Dunphy; inaugural event sold out with 10:1 applicant ratio
- **2023** — Founded Smol.ai - LLM data pipeline company
- **2024** — AI Engineer World's Fair drew 3,000+ attendees to San Francisco - largest technical AI conference for engineers
- **2025** — Latent Space reaches 10M+ readers and listeners; AI Engineer expands to 29 tracks, 300 speakers, 6,000+ attendees
- **2026** — AIE Europe 2026 in London exceeds 1,000 attendees; planning Moscone expansion in San Francisco

## Achievements

- Coined the term 'AI Engineer' and catalyzed a new professional category
- Co-founded AI Engineer Summit - grew to world's largest technical AI conference for engineers (6,000+ attendees)
- Latent Space podcast and newsletter reaches 10M+ readers and listeners
- Published 626+ essays, tutorials, podcasts, talks, and notes
- 'Learn in Public' essay read by millions and shaped developer career philosophy globally
- typescript-cheatsheets/react GitHub repo with 47k stars
- Authored The Coding Career Handbook (450+ pages)
- Successfully transitioned from $350k/year finance to leading AI engineering community
- Launched smol-ai/developer - first library to embed a developer agent in your app
- Grew X/Twitter following to 137k+ on technical AI engineering content
- Organized React and Svelte communities as moderator of /r/reactjs
- Expanded AI Engineer conference to four continents

## Latest updates

- **2026-04** — Planning Moscone expansion for AI Engineer Summit San Francisco; AIE Europe 2026 London exceeded 1,000 attendees with plans for 2,000 in 2027
- **2026-02** — Interviewed by freeCodeCamp on AI model development paths and surrounding harness code strategies
- **2026-01** — Published 'How to Thought Lead' essay on swyx.io
- **2025-12** — Latent Space reaches 10M+ readers and listeners milestone; collaborating on coding agent evaluation standards at Cognition
- **2025-06** — AI Engineer World's Fair 2025 expanded to 29 tracks, 300 speakers, 100 expo partners, 6,000+ AI Engineers

## Links

- Website: https://www.swyx.io/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnswyxwang
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/swyx
- GitHub: https://github.com/swyxio
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxBcwypKK-W3GHd_RZ9FZrQ
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swyxio/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/shawn-wang
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-04-21