Harness Engineering: How to Build Software When Humans Steer, Agents Execute — Ryan Lopopolo, OpenAI

Presenters Ryan Lopopolo Vibhu Sapra Source AI Engineer Europe 2026 Harness Engineering: Building Software with Humans Steering and Agents Executing 🚀 The world of software development is undergoing a seismic shift, and at the forefront of this revolution is Ryan Lopopolo, a Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI. For the past nine months, Ryan has been living and breathing a new paradigm: building software exclusively with agents. He’s a self-proclaimed “token billionaire,” not in the financial sense, but in his belief that everyone should have access to the power of AI models to accomplish complex tasks. ...

April 16, 2026 · 6 min