Speaker: Mallika Rao

She / her / hers

Senior Engineering Manager @Zocdoc, Previously @Netflix, @Twitter and @Walmart

Mallika Rao who has been an Engineering Leader at Twitter, Walmart and Netflix with deep expertise in building and operating large-scale distributed systems, including search, recommendations, and personalization infrastructure. She brings a systems-thinking mindset to infrastructure strategy and is passionate about integrating AI into product and engineering in ways that enhance resilience, transparency, and operational excellence. Her work focuses on enabling teams to innovate rapidly while maintaining the stability and rigor required in enterprise-scale environments. Beyond her technical leadership, Mallika mentors senior engineers and leaders, and draws inspiration from the elegance of mathematics and the improvisational creativity of music.

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Session

Adaptive Systems in Production: What Recommendation Systems Can Teach Us About Agents

As organizations race to build AI agents, many teams are encountering challenges that feel new: evaluation uncertainty, feedback loops, behavioral drift, exploration versus exploitation, and maintaining user trust in systems that continuously adapt.

But these challenges are not new.

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