How AI will change travel booking with Trainline's Gary Stevens

Team engagement is a top priority, focusing on ensuring engineers feel their work has impact and meaning while maintaining clear goals and metrics

Rail travel technology faces interesting challenges around aggregating routes across Europe, multimodal journey planning, and integrating machine learning/AI while maintaining customer trust

Leadership approach emphasizes coaching over direct problem-solving - learning to “put down the pickaxe” and enable teams to find solutions themselves while providing support and guidance

Regular team showcases led by individual contributors help celebrate wins, share knowledge, and give visibility to different team members’ work, especially for remote teams

Customer trust is vital - being transparent about how recommendations and decisions are made, particularly when implementing AI/ML features

Focus on sustainable transport and improving the rail booking experience through better data, simplified UX, and transformative product features

Career progression from individual contributor to director required shifting mindset from hands-on problem solving to enabling and developing others

Measuring success through engagement metrics while being careful about potential negative effects of focusing too heavily on single metrics

Importance of creating space for teams to try things and potentially fail while providing appropriate support and guidance

Staying current with rapidly evolving technology landscape (especially frontend) requires balance between hands-on knowledge and trusting team expertise