Hiring signals are changing, fast.

Degrees, CVs and tech stacks no longer tell the full story, while AI fluency is quickly becoming a baseline expectation rather than a differentiator. So what actually separates standout engineers today?

‍Join us for a practical conversation with OfferZen’s Head of Engineering, Nicolaas Van Noordwyk, and Talent Partner, Dinielia Pillay, on how software engineering roles are evolving, what companies are really hiring for, and which signals matter most when assessing engineers in the AI era.

They’ll be joined by Tian Schoeman (GenAI Productivity Manager at Impact.com) and Andrew Considine (Chief Product and Technology Officer at Pollinate) to explore how AI is reshaping their teams, hiring philosophies, and expectations of engineering talent.

Whether you’re leading engineering teams or navigating your own growth as a developer, this conversation will help you cut through the noise and better understand what strong engineering performance looks like in the age of AI.

Meet your speakers

Nick Van Noordwyk

Head of Engineering, OfferZen

Nick is an engineering leader with several years of experience in technical guidance, people management, and team enablement, with a leadership approach focused on creating effective, sustainable ways of working that drive meaningful outcomes. 

Passionate about building and retaining strong teams, he prioritises clear direction, achievable goals, and supportive leadership that helps people stay motivated, grow, and do their best work. Nick thrives in collaborative environments where continuous learning and adaptability are valued, believing that every interaction is an opportunity for mutual growth. For him, work is about more than day-to-day delivery – it’s about learning through experimentation, failing forward, and empowering people to help move companies forward.

Dinielia Pillay

Talent Partner, OfferZen

Dinielia Pillay is a Talent Partner specialising in tech and developer hiring, helping engineers build careers with intention – not just job titles. She works closely with scaling tech teams to match people to problems that actually matter. When she’s not helping teams scale, she’s probably overthinking a LinkedIn caption.

Andrew Considine

Chief Product and Tech Officer, Pollinate

Andrew Considine is the Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO) at Pollinate - a Fintech company that has recently established a new technology team in South Africa.

He has more than two decades of experience and has deep domain expertise in payments and AI. He has held technology leadership positions at early-stage startups, scale ups and large multi-nationals.

Over the last 12 months, AI has rapidly and significantly changed not only how Pollinate handles infrastructure, development and product - but also how it finds and recruits technology people. Andrew is looking forward to providing his insight on what they look for in candidates, how they've identified them (with OfferZen’s help!) and where he sees the market going through 2026 and into 2027.

Tian Schoeman

GenAI Productivity Manager, Impact.com

Tian Schoeman leads the GenAI Productivity Team at impact.com, where he's built a hub-and-spoke model that embeds GenAI engineers across business units to scale AI capability company-wide and drive productivity innovation through custom agentic solutions and enablement across the business. His team has shipped AI products that have saved tens of thousands of hours across the busness, automated high-effort workflows end-to-end, and unlocked new revenue-generating capacity by freeing teams to focus on the work that moves the business forward.
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Based in Cape Town, Tian works at the intersection of enterprise engineering and applied AI, with a background in entrepreneurship and Software Engineeringt, AI-augmented SDLC, and measurable productivity gains. He's particularly interested in how the engineer's role is shifting from writing code to orchestrating agents, evaluating LLM output, and designing the workflows around them.