Q&A: Pankaj Kane of Admiral Group, AI and Software Development Awards finalist

'The industry has moved from talking about AI’s potential to grappling with its responsibility.'

The AI and Software Development Awards showcase outstanding achievements and solutions in the fields of AI and software development from organisations, personalities and teams.

This year's winners will be announced at a live awards ceremony on Thursday, 14^th May in London.

Pankaj Kane is a finalist in Software Leader of the Year category.

Pankaj is Chief Engineer at Admiral Group Plc, with over 28 years of global technology leadership across India, New Zealand, Denmark and the UK. A multiple‑year recipient of Computing UK's Top 100 IT Leaders recognition, he is known for building high‑performing engineering cultures and leading large‑scale transformation. Pankaj's work focuses on strengthening engineering capability, advancing automation and tooling, and using data‑driven approaches to improve quality, pace of delivery and long‑term operational excellence.

Why do events like the AI and Software Development Awards matter?

Events like the AI & Software Development Awards matter because they create space to pause and reflect in an industry that rarely slows down. Software and AI now sit at the heart of almost every organisation's competitiveness, resilience and customer experience, yet much of the real progress happens quietly inside teams.

These awards shine a light on the people and practices that are turning emerging technologies into real‑world impact - responsibly, at scale, and with humans firmly in the loop. They also provide a valuable moment of collective learning: an opportunity to see what's working across industries, to share hard‑won lessons, and to raise the bar for what good looks like in software leadership.

What would winning this award mean to you, your company and your team?

Personally, it would be a genuine honour, particularly because this award recognises leadership rather than a single product or technology. Software leadership today is about decisions, trade‑offs and culture as much as it is about tools.

For my company, it would reinforce the belief that investing in engineering excellence, people capability and responsible AI pays dividends—not just in productivity, but in trust and long‑term outcomes.

Most importantly, it would belong to the team. Any progress we've made over the past year has been driven by talented, curious engineers, product leaders and platform teams who are willing to experiment, learn quickly and share openly. Recognition like this validates their work and the environment we've worked hard to create.

What is your or your company's proudest achievement over the past year?

Our proudest achievement has been scaling AI from experimentation to everyday practice in a way that genuinely improves how software is built and operated. Rather than treating AI as a side project, we embedded it across the software development lifecycle—while setting clear guardrails around quality, security and ethics.

Equally important has been the cultural shift that came with it. We focused heavily on enablement: demystifying AI, building confidence, and making it accessible to engineers at all stages of their careers. The result has been measurable productivity gains, faster feedback loops, and - crucially - teams who feel empowered rather than replaced by the technology.

How has your industry changed over the past year, and what changes do you think it still needs to make?

The industry has moved from talking about AI's potential to grappling with its responsibility. The conversation is no longer "Can we?" but "Should we - and how do we do it well?"

That's a positive shift, but there is still work to do. We need to move beyond tool‑centric thinking and focus more on systems: how AI interacts with people, processes, regulation and organisational design. There also needs to be greater honesty about failure and unintended consequences, so we learn faster as an industry rather than repeating the same mistakes in parallel.

Which new technology trend are you placing your bets on?

I'm placing my bets on AI‑enabled software engineering—particularly where it strengthens, rather than shortcuts, good practice. Tools that improve code quality, testing, observability and knowledge sharing will have a far greater long‑term impact than those focused solely on speed.

Alongside that, I see significant potential in combining AI with systems thinking: using it to surface hidden dependencies, predict failure modes and support better architectural decisions. The real differentiator won't be who adopts the latest model first, but who integrates these capabilities thoughtfully into how they build and run software.

The AI and Software Development Awards will take place on 14th May in London. Click here to view the shortlist and here to book your table.