Leonid Belkind, co founder and CTO at Torq, joins The Tech Trek to talk about what changes when an engineering organization does more than experiment with AI tools. Torq builds agentic security operations, and Leonid shares how his team is using AI across engineering, product, hiring, customer success, and go to market work.

This conversation gets past the shallow version of “AI makes coding faster.” Leonid makes a clear distinction between coding and software engineering, and explains why the best teams are using AI to shift cognitive load, not remove judgment.

Practical takeaways

• AI does not erase software engineering. It changes where engineering judgment shows up.

• Strong engineers still produce better AI generated work because they know what to ask, what to test, and what tradeoffs matter.

• Hiring processes need to reflect how engineers actually work now, including how they use AI to build, explain, and defend technical decisions.

• Productivity should not only be measured by speed. Leonid talks about throughput, maturity of delivery, and whether teams can produce more without lowering quality.

• AI adoption becomes more powerful when it moves beyond engineering into product, customer success, revenue operations, and talent.

Key moments