SDVs, Teamwork, and Cybersecurity take Center Stage at Dev:Radar 2026

Dev:Radar is WirelessCar’s developer-driven event, bringing together engineers, architects, and product teams to explore how software is reshaping the automotive industry. At its core, the event focuses on a simple but critical question: where is mobility heading, and what does that mean for the people building it?

Held in Gothenburg on March 11, Dev:Radar 2026 gathered hundreds of WirelessCar developers for a day of talks, workshops, and hands-on sessions. The focus was not just on trends, but on how those trends are already shaping everyday engineering decisions.

We spoke with several of this year’s speakers to better understand the shifts underway, from software- and AI-defined vehicles to new approaches in security, collaboration, and developer productivity. Here is a closer look at some of the themes shaping the road ahead.

The rise of the software-defined vehicle (SDV) and the AI-defined vehicle (AIDV)

In her opening keynote, Christina Rux, Head of Product Management (Open SDV Platform) at WirelessCar, outlined how software-defined vehicles and, increasingly, AI-defined vehicles are reshaping the automotive landscape.

The shift is not only technological, but structural. As OEMs move from vehicle-centric to user-centric models, software becomes the primary driver of innovation. This demands faster iteration cycles, continuous deployment of connectedservices, and a deeper decoupling of hardware and software.

At the same time, SDVs and AIDVs are part of a broader transformation toward connected mobility ecosystems that span industries and technologies. The challenge is no longer just to build individual services, but to orchestrate systemsthat are scalable, secure, and commercially viable.

“We need to understand where our customers find themselves in this period of transition, and why. When we do, we can help them overcome their obstacles.” — Christina Rux

AI Assisted Engineering – a collaborative, cross-team effort

AI Assisted Engineering stood out at Dev:Radar as a clear example of how AI is moving from experimentation into structured engineering practice. The initiative was developed through a dynamic, cross-team collaboration, with a group of engineers (Kaj Fehlhaber, Manish Mundra, Oscar Hillestad, and Sanjaya Rajamantrilage) coming together organically around a shared interest, reflecting the kind of bottom-up innovation the event is designed to foster.

The team explored how AI can be integrated into development workflows in a way that is reliable, repeatable, and aligned with production standards.

Rather than treating AI as a creative tool alone, the focus is on combining engineering discipline with agentic AI capabilities, enabling developers to maintain control over quality while accelerating development.

“AI Assisted Engineering is a new way of building software, combining engineering with agentic AI development. It allows developers to maintain control over quality through a repeatable, verifiable process.” — Kaj Fehlhaber

At the same time, the initiative reflects a broader shift in mindset. As Fehlhaber puts it, developers should not wait for consensus, but instead explore these approaches in their daily work, starting with the fundamentals and learning as theygo.

Inside the cyber kill chain – how developers can help prevent cyber attacks

Cybersecurity was a key theme at Dev:Radar 2026, explored from multiple angles. In his session, cybersecurity architect Roman Sukhanov walked through the stages of the cyber kill chain, showing how understanding the sequence of an attack enables teams to detect, disrupt, and stop threats earlier, often before they succeed.

The key message was simple: think like an attacker. By understanding how attacks are structured and which vectors are used, developers can design systems that break the chain before it progresses.

While perimeter defenses such as firewalls remain important, they are not sufficient on their own. Security must be built into the code itself. Practices such as input validation, strong authentication and authorization, and secure design help strengthen systems from within, making attacks more difficult, more costly, and less attractive.

“Attackers don’t want too much of a challenge, or to have to learn something new. They want an easy target and easy money. If you take that away, they’ll often move on. Security doesn’t start with a firewall, it starts with the code.” — Roman Sukhanov

Ensuring security and privacy through compliance by design

How do you build secure systems in the age of software- and AI-defined vehicles? The answer is increasingly clear: by moving from reactive vulnerability fixing to proactive risk reduction, embedding security and privacy into the architecturefrom the start.

At Dev:Radar 2026, Erik Johansson, Data Protection Officer, and Zachary Garner, Cybersecurity Compliance Lead at WirelessCar, outlined what this shift means in practice. Compliance by design is not only about reducing risk, but also about lowering long-term remediation costs and improving overall product quality.

The key principle is simple: security cannot be added later. It must be built in from the beginning, and designed to hold over the full lifecycle of a system.

“In order to create something that is resilient over time and manageable throughout its lifecycle, secure design and development has to be at the start, because you can't just add that in later.” — Zachary Garner

Beyond risk reduction, compliance by design also shapes how developers work. It requires a deeper understanding of systems, their context, and how they evolve, while encouraging closer collaboration across teams. As Erik Johansson noted, these structured approaches not only improve security, but also support scaling, onboarding, and long-term maintainability.

Some key take-aways from Dev:Radar 2026

Across the program, several clear patterns emerged in how software is shaping the future of mobility. The shift toward software- and AI-defined vehicles is not only accelerating, but fundamentally changing how teams build and operate, requiring tighter integration across domains, faster feedback loops, and stronger alignment between product, platform, and engineering.

Most striking was how much of this transformation is already happening in practice.

That progress is visible both internally at WirelessCar and through close collaboration with key industry partners such as AWS and GitHub. Being able to collaborate closely with strong partners and draw on their expertise is a clearadvantage as teams continue to accelerate capabilities in areas such as cloud-native architectures, agentic AI, and integrated security.

Dev:Radar itself also stands out as a key enabler of this progress. By bringing together developers, architects, and product teams across the organization, the event creates a space where ideas can be shared, challenged, and developedfurther, helping them move faster from exploration into real impact.

Another pattern that became clear throughout the day is the cultural shift underway. Developer productivity, trust in automation, and ownership of security, compliance, and cost are increasingly becoming core engineering responsibilitiesrather than specialized concerns. Taken together, these signals point to a broader transition, from delivering individual services to orchestrating scalable, secure, and intelligent ecosystems.

To explore some of the topics covered at Dev:Radar 2026 in more detail, visit the WirelessCar Insights Blog and read related articles on Open SDV Platform, SDV innovation and collaboration, and AI in compliance.

Luciana Haugen

Data Engineer

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