Deputy CTO at DX, leading engineering intelligence and AI adoption strategy. With 20+ years in software engineering, he’s a thought leader in developer experience, platform engineering, and AI-assisted development measurement.
Systems Thinking Meets AI Strategy
Justin Reock has become a leading voice in AI engineering adoption, advocating for systems-level thinking over individual productivity metrics. His philosophy: treat software development as a systems problem, measure what matters, and build psychological safety to accelerate AI transformation.
Current Work
As Deputy CTO at DX (recently acquired by Atlassian), Justin leads research on measuring AI’s impact on engineering effectiveness. He authored DX’s Guide to AI Assisted Engineering, a comprehensive resource on implementing AI-assisted development with practical adoption strategies, guardrails, and bottleneck resolution frameworks.
His work includes the DX AI Measurement Framework, which provides engineering leaders with metrics across three dimensions: Utilization (adoption rates), Impact (productivity gains), and Cost (ROI). He also writes The AI Strategy Playbook newsletter for engineering leaders navigating AI transformation.
Background
Previously Head of Developer Relations at Cortex, Field CTO and Chief Evangelist at Gradle, and OSS/API Management Chief Evangelist at Perforce/OpenLogic. His career spans platform engineering, developer productivity, and organizational transformation, with expertise in DORA/SPACE metrics and engineering effectiveness frameworks.
Philosophy on AI Adoption
Justin’s approach emphasizes culture and measurement as much as tooling:
Find the bottleneck, fix the bottleneck - Strategic AI implementation should target specific constraints, like Zapier’s approach that unblocked developers and enabled hiring growth.
Psychological safety drives adoption - References Google’s Project Aristotle research showing psychological safety as the overwhelming predictor of team effectiveness. Reduce fear through education and transparency.
Systems thinking over individual metrics - Integrate AI across the entire SDLC, not just coding. Look at development as a system, identify constraints, and optimize holistically.
Never use temperature extremes - Avoid 0 or 1; use values like 0.00001 for more deterministic behavior while maintaining model flexibility.
Implement feedback loops - Continuous improvement requires mechanisms for evaluating and refining system prompts and AI configurations.
DX
DX is an engineering intelligence platform helping organizations optimize developer productivity and AI adoption. The platform provides data-driven insights into engineering effectiveness, developer experience, and the impact of AI tools on software delivery. Recently acquired by Atlassian, DX continues to lead research on measuring and improving engineering performance.
Conference Appearance
Event: AI Engineering Code Summit 2025 Date: November 20, 2025 Time: 4:40 PM Session: Developer Experience and Productivity
Justin presented a framework for engineering leaders adopting AI, covering the DX AI Measurement Framework, psychological safety as adoption foundation, systems thinking for SDLC integration, and trust-building through compliance and transparency. His talk emphasized that successful AI adoption depends equally on culture, measurement, and strategic leadership as on tooling choices.