Executive Distinguished Engineer for Developer Experience at Capital One with 20+ years experience in software engineering. Author of “Code Simplicity: The Fundamentals of Software” and thought leader on making developer experience work for both humans and AI agents in enterprise environments.
Champion of Fundamentals in the AI Era
Max Kanat-Alexander has emerged as a leading voice on how AI coding agents reshape developer experience, advocating that solid engineering fundamentals matter more, not less. His philosophy: “What’s good for humans is good for AI.”
Current Work
As Executive Distinguished Engineer at Capital One, Max leads developer experience strategy in a highly regulated financial services environment. His focus areas include:
- AI-Ready Developer Experience - Building systems that support coding agents while maintaining compliance and security
- Compliance as Code - Using Open Policy Agent (OPA) to bake regulatory requirements into deployment pipelines
- Enterprise DX at Scale - Solving real-world developer productivity challenges across large organizations
- Code Review Velocity - Addressing the bottleneck as AI agents increase code volume
Max maintains an active presence through his Code Simplicity blog, where he writes about code quality, simplicity, and software engineering principles.
Background
Max’s career reflects deep expertise in developer productivity across major tech companies:
- Google - Technical Lead for Code Health, pioneering approaches to code quality at scale
- LinkedIn - Led developer experience and productivity initiatives
- Bugzilla Project - Chief Architect, maintaining one of the world’s most widely-used bug tracking systems
- Capital One - Executive Distinguished Engineer shaping DX for AI-powered development
Philosophy on AI-Ready Development
Max challenges conventional thinking about AI coding agents with four key insights:
1. Fundamentals Matter More - Testing, documentation, code structure, and review processes become more critical, not less, with AI agents. “All that is old is new again.”
2. Written Context is Essential - Agents cannot attend verbal meetings. External context, business logic, and architectural decisions must be explicitly documented.
3. Code Review Must Scale - “The people best at code reviews aren’t doing code reviews.” Need faster individual responses and better assignment of review work.
4. Good Enough and Better - Aim for “not perfection, good enough, and better than it was before.” Pragmatic quality enables sustainable velocity.
Key Publications
Code Simplicity: The Fundamentals of Software - Foundational text on software design principles emphasizing simplicity, maintainability, and long-term cost of code maintenance.
Understanding Software - Collection of essays on simplicity, coding practices, and software development fundamentals from the Code Simplicity blog.
Conference Appearance
Event: AI Engineering Code Summit 2025 Date: November 20, 2025 Time: 3:05 PM Session: Developer Experience in the Age of AI Coding Agents
Max addressed how rapid AI adoption changes the future landscape, emphasizing that organizations must design developer experience supporting both human autonomy and AI agent effectiveness. Key themes: standardize tooling, improve deterministic validation, document external context, and recognize that investing in human-friendly practices naturally benefits AI agents.
Related Content
- Developer Productivity Podcast (Spotify) - Engineering Unblocked episode on productivity drivers and detractors
- Navigating DX Challenges at Capital One - Interview on enterprise DevEx
- Platform Engineering Podcast (Cortex) - Discussion on platform engineering for developer experience