As Scala continues to evolve, so must its community. In this talk, I share practical lessons from two years of mentoring and organizing for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) with the Scala Center, helping new contributors grow into confident open source developers.

Drawing from real-world experience with projects like Scaladex, Scala CLI and LLM4S, this session explores what works (and what doesn’t) when mentoring newcomers in a strongly typed, functional ecosystem. Whether you’re a maintainer, educator, or contributor, you’ll come away with actionable insights to grow Scala’s contributor pipeline and make your own projects more welcoming and sustainable.

Kannupriya Kalra is a seasoned engineering leader with over a decade of experience designing scalable backend systems using functional programming. She specializes in building resilient, high-availability platforms with Scala. At Sky, London, she led critical backend development using functional Scala to power large-scale operations.

A passionate contributor to the Scala ecosystem, she co-created LLM4S, a Scala-first AI platform, and has actively contributed to projects like Scala CLI and Scaladex. She serves as a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) Org Admin & Mentor (2024, 2025) with the Scala Center, mentoring contributors and helping grow the next generation of open source developers.

She also maintains several open source projects, including Scaladex, LLM4S, and various initiatives under Google Summer of Code. Beyond code, she’s building a global AI community focused on responsible and accessible AI development. She offers AI training and education for developers and teams, bridging the gap between functional programming and practical AI applications. Currently collaborating with Manning Publishing, she’s developing learning resources to help engineers navigate the future of Generative AI.

As a seasoned international speaker, she has delivered talks in 10+ countries at events such as Scala Days, Google Open Source Conference, and Bay Area Scala Conference, engaging audiences on AI, functional programming, data engineering, and software design.