The Next Essential Developer Skill: Building AI Agents

As AI agents transform software development, developers face a fundamental shift in the skills they need to succeed. In this episode of The New Stack podcast, recorded at AGNTCon and MCPCon in San Jose, Frederic Lardinois speaks with Angie Jones, Vice President of the Agentic AI Foundation, about the evolving developer role and the challenges of adopting AI across engineering organizations. Drawing on her experience leading AI enablement at Block, Jones explains how embedding agent-friendly practices into development workflows helped drive widespread adoption. She emphasizes the growing importance of system design, logical thinking, and building agentic systems rather than simply using AI coding tools. The conversation also explores opportunities for junior developers, the role of open standards like MCP, and how AI-generated contributions are reshaping open source maintenance. As organizations navigate this transition, Jones highlights the importance of cultural change, collaboration, and developing new skills to build secure, reliable AI agents that extend beyond software development. Learn more from The New Stack around the latest developments around the evolving role of the developer: The 3 roles AI agents play in your developer platform AI Will Steal Developer Jobs (But Not How You Think) 10 New Jobs for Burned-Out Software Developers Join our community of newsletter subscribers to stay on top of the news and at the top of your game.