About this Event
Join us on 26th February 2026 for a London Java Community meetup hosted at Capital One. This event brings together practitioners exploring what it means to build modern, cloud‑native platforms and work effectively with AI‑powered development tools.
As cloud adoption matures and AI coding agents become embedded in engineering workflows, this evening focuses on two critical themes: architecting for cloud‑native efficiency and leveraging AI agents more effectively in real‑world development.
Talk 1 – Tom Clifford‑Clarke, Lead Software Development Engineer at Capital One
Keeping our heads in the cloud, using AI agents on the ground
Many organisations operate entirely in the cloud — but far fewer are truly cloud‑native. As architectures evolve and AI becomes a core concern, the gap between “running in the cloud” and “optimising for it” becomes increasingly costly.
Tom explores why robust architectural patterns and standards are non‑negotiable today. Drawing on Capital One’s journey, he’ll cover practical approaches to Event‑Driven Architecture, serverless adoption, and service cataloguing strategies that unlock scalability, efficiency, and AI readiness — while improving the developer experience.
Talk 2 – Steve Poole, Community Director at LJC
AI-Assisted Development and the New Risk Surface
AI-assisted coding is now a standard part of development. It accelerates delivery and reduces friction, but it also changes how risk enters our codebases.
AI models replicate patterns at scale, including insecure defaults, outdated practices, and subtle flaws. In some cases, attackers can influence public training data or open-source projects, allowing weaknesses to spread quietly through tools and libraries developers trust.
This talk looks at how AI-generated code fits into the modern software supply chain, and how speed, automation, and trust can be exploited. We'll examine how vulnerabilities slip past reviews, why unvetted AI output can bypass safeguards, and what these failures look like in real systems.
With real-world examples, we'll focus on practical ways to review, test, and integrate AI-generated code responsibly. Strengthening your workflow instead of undermining it.
AI isn't the problem. Unexamined automation is.
The goal is not fear, but sharper judgment about when AI is helping, and when it needs a closer look.
Speaker Bios
Tom Clifford‑Clarke
Lead Software Development Engineer at Capital One. Tom’s background spans large‑scale corporate software, end‑user products, and custom delivery tooling. He now focuses on cloud productivity engineering — improving developer experience and enabling teams to build high‑quality software at a sustainable pace.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tbc2/
Steve Poole
Community Director for the London Java Community. Steve is a Developer Advocate, DevOps practitioner and a long time Java developer, leader and evangelist. He’s been working on Java SDKs and JVMs since Java was less than one year old.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noregressions/
Huge thanks to our friends at Capital One for sponsoring this event and supporting our Community.
This event is organised by RecWorks on behalf of the London Java Community.
The London Java Community is sponsored by Hazelcast, Neo4j, Redis, and Discover
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Capital One, 1 Old Street Yard, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
