Kumar Kasimala

Prompt Engineering in the Agentic AI Era: The AI Co-Engineer That Will Redefine—Not Replace—Software Developers

Abstract:

Software development is entering one of the most significant transformations in its history. Agentic AI—systems that can reason, take action, call tools, manage workflows, and collaborate with humans—is reshaping how software is built, tested, deployed, and maintained. Yet contrary to widespread fears, this shift is not about replacing developers; it is about multiplying their abilities.

In this keynote, I will demystify Agentic AI and show how it functions as a true co-engineer that accelerates innovation rather than eliminating jobs. We will explore how autonomous reasoning loops, tool-driven actions, multimodal agents, and orchestration platforms are already enabling developers to write higher-quality code, automate tedious tasks, debug faster, and focus on creative and strategic problem-solving.

This talk is designed for students, graduates, and working professionals who feel uncertain about their future in an AI-driven world. Attendees will learn the core skills that matter in the Agentic AI era—how to think, how to build, how to collaborate with AI systems, and how to prepare their careers for the next decade. We will also discuss emerging opportunities in AI-augmented software engineering, including agent orchestration, prompt engineering, data-centric design, workflow automation, and domain-driven reasoning systems.

The message is simple: you are not going to lose your job — your job is going to evolve. Agentic AI will eliminate repetitive work, not creative work, and will open the door to massive productivity gains, new roles, and entirely new industries.

By the end of this session, attendees will understand how Agentic AI works and how to harness it to accelerate their learning, elevate their careers, and become part of the future of software development—where humans and AI build together.

Profile:

Kumar Kasimala is a Software Engineering Architect at Salesforce and a recognized thought leader in generative and agentic AI systems. With nearly two decades of experience, he has architected enterprise-scale platforms that enable intelligent automation and power billions of customer interactions across global organizations.

At Salesforce, Kumar is best known as the architect of Prompt Builder, a large-scale generative AI orchestration platform that underpins Salesforce’s Data & AI business. He has also led the architecture of multiple Service Cloud platforms, including incident and case management, voice, and productivity systems, contributing to Salesforce’s position as a consistent Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Customer Service and Support Platforms. His impact has been recognized with Salesforce’s highest engineering honors, including the Chief Engineering Officer President’s Award and multiple innovation awards.

Kumar specializes in designing multi-tenant agentic AI platforms that combine dynamic workflow orchestration, temporal AI pipelines, runtime data grounding and RAG systems, metadata-driven agent behavior, multi-LLM architectures, and secure knowledge layers. His work focuses on evolving AI from fragile, single-prompt solutions into resilient systems that integrate reasoning, tools, memory, and real-world execution.

He is the author of the forthcoming book Next-Gen Multi-Tenant Agentic AI Platforms and has contributed chapters on Agentic AI to Wiley-published books. Kumar has also authored research on prompt grounding and AI reliability in IEEE Transactions. A Senior Member of IEEE and a member of ACM, he is a mentor and educator committed to advancing the design of trustworthy AI systems that operate safely and effectively at scale.