Research from community host BairesDev finds 4 of 5 U.S. tech leaders feel pressure to overstate AI progress.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 23, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A founding cohort of 40 CTOs, CDOs and SVPs of Engineering today joined the Engineering Executive Exchange (E3), an invite-only peer community for senior engineering leaders from companies like Cisco, Adobe, and ServiceNow. The invite-only peer community is hosted by BairesDev®, a nearshore software development company. E3 was created to navigate challenges better, as the pressure on the senior engineering leaders has grown across several fronts at once.
Boards have put AI at the center of strategy, vendors move faster than any one leader can evaluate, and teams below watch for signals about their future. A survey of senior technology leaders found that 97% have felt isolated in the role at some point, a structural condition of a seat that compresses technical authority, board-facing accountability, and people leadership with no obvious peer inside the company.
“Every fundamental shift I've navigated as a technology leader, from the internet to mobile to cloud to AI, I got through because I had peers around me who were figuring it out alongside me. That's what kept me credible when my CEO or Board turned to me and asked 'What does this mean for us?' E3 is the kind of peer circle that helps us stay ahead of these kinds of shifts instead of being reshaped by them,” said Kathy Keating, CTO Advisor and Executive Coach.
The community is designed around three principles that distinguish it from conventional executive networks: Membership is invite-only and capped, open to senior technology leaders at the VP level or above who oversee software development. The format centers on recurring small-group dialogue. Peer relationships of lasting value, founding members agreed, require cadence and time. The community also includes a CTO Transition Toolkit, offering peer support and advisory introductions for leaders moving between roles, an area the founding cohort consistently identified as underserved.
“True innovation and effective leadership don't happen in a vacuum. Initiatives like E3 provide the ecosystem by fostering deeper and long-term engagements with CTOs and Senior Technology Executives community”, said Kapil Bakshi, CTO at Cisco. “E3 is an invaluable platform for Senior Technical leaders looking to share strategic insights, tackle organizational hurdles, and build relationships that outlast industry trends.”
The operating environment founding members are responding to is well-documented. BairesDev's AI Execution Gap report found that 79% of senior U.S. tech leaders feel pressure to overstate AI progress to satisfy executive or stakeholder expectations. Of those, 46% identified the C-suite or board as the primary source. The Dev Barometer Q2 2026 found that only 16% of senior developers believe their junior colleagues fully understand the AI-generated code they submit, a signal that confidence in AI output has outpaced confidence in the people working with it.
The pressure those leaders absorb reflects a broader shift at the top of the organization. KPMG’s Global AI Pulse Survey found that for 74% of CEOs AI will remain a top investment priority even in the event of a recession, with leaders planning to invest a weighted global average of US$186 million in AI over the next 12 months. Decisions about architecture, talent, sourcing, and governance are landing on engineering leaders' desks at a pace and consequence level few earlier moments in the discipline produced.
"The leaders we work with have been describing the same thing in private conversations for the last year. The volume of decisions has gone up, and the time available to make them has gone down. Peer dialogue has become the natural way to adapt to changes, and that is worth building," said Nacho De Marco, CEO and co-founder of BairesDev. "E3 is the room those leaders said they needed. Our role is to make it possible and then stay out of the way."
Senior engineering leaders interested in joining E3 can request membership at joinecubed.com. Applications are reviewed and subject to approval. Membership is open to senior technology leaders at theVP level or above who oversee software development at the initiative or company level.
About BairesDev
BairesDev provides nearshore software development services to some of the world's largest and most respected companies, like Abbott, Adobe, Coca-Cola, eBay, Google, HP, and Rolls-Royce. Backed by 4,000+ engineers across LATAM, BairesDev has delivered high-quality software in over 130 industries.
Join BairesDev's team by applying to https://jobs.bairesdev.com/. Or recommend a candidate in the Talent Referral Program https://applicants.bairesdev.com/external-referral
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