Priceline CTO Wants Engineers Who Can 'Hold a Room and a Roadmap'
InformationWeek, Friday, May 1st, 2026
Priceline CTO Sejal Amin prioritizes hiring engineers with strong leadership and collaboration skills in the AI era.
Priceline CTO Sejal Amin discusses how AI is reshaping the criteria for evaluating software engineers, moving beyond pure coding ability to emphasize leadership, collaboration, and product instinct.
She has shifted Priceline from a functionally-oriented organization to a product operating model, prioritizing ownership and accountability across teams. Amin stresses the importance of responsible AI integration through governance and enablement committees rather than just tool approval, and highlights that effective engineers must demonstrate versatility, resilience, and comfort with ambiguity.
She notes that future engineering success depends on orchestrating AI systems and collaborating effectively rather than writing code in isolation, a perspective influenced by industry leaders' evolving views on measuring engineering contribution through metrics like token consumption.