Catalin Caldararu

AI Product Owner & Developer

First-named inventor on 22 Applied AI patent applications

Hello, I am an AI Product Owner who can build, ship, and help teams do the same.

I have hands-on experience across .NET AI Systems and Applied AI, including Edge AI, Hybrid AI, and Agentic AI.

As first-named inventor on 22 Applied AI patent applications, I strive to embed collaborative innovation and learning into the software delivery lifecycle, so the products and teams I work with don't just ship, they grow and remain relevant in changing markets.

I'm also an advanced Agile practitioner (PSPO II & PSM II Certified). I've applied Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming (XP) inside real AI initiatives.

I am open to remote B2B/B2C engagements and full-time roles.

Top Skills

  • Innovation Strategy

  • AI Product Delivery

  • AI Development

Experience

AI Product Owner & Developer

Self-employedJun 2026 - Present · 2 mosBucharest, Romania · Remote
  • Originated, built, and shipped a private local AI system that powers acquisition decisions in a commercial niche, running at near-zero marginal cost per query.
  • The system combines semantic embeddings, sentiment analysis, and real market data to identify, score, and rank acquisition candidates. The scoring informs the decision rather than making it.
  • Advised functional leaders on AI product strategy in an engagement focused on local AI.
Applied AIEdge AIAI AgentsProduct ManagementProduct Strategy

AI Product Owner, R&D (Inventor)

Dell Technologies, Part-timeMay 2024 - Present · 2 yrs 3 mosBucharest, Romania · Remote

Alongside full-time delivery, sustained an AI Product Innovation initiative for two years: optional, competitively funded, and rewarded on results. The invention team was self-managing, with no manager or assigned requirements. Its only authority was the VP-level sponsoring organization, which owned budgets, roadmap, and engineering execution.

Key outcomes:

  • Built a 35-invention Applied AI portfolio from zero. (Company-issued proof available on request)
  • Filed 22 patent applications as first-named inventor, 11× the average across Dell's ~8,000 all-time inventors.
  • Ranked the most active inventor at Dell's Romania site, and in the company-wide top 10% by filed applications.
  • Attracted 10 co-inventors across their own domains, with no authority requiring them to join.
  • Invented across 8 domains: Security, Privacy, Resilience, Efficiency, Accessibility, Personalization, Automation, and Agent-Native SDLC.
  • Approximately $600k was allocated for the portfolio's protection, further showcasing its relevance.

Responsibilities:

  • Originated the inventions, defining the business case and strategy for each.
  • Defined the solution architecture for each invention, then hardened it with 9 Principal Engineers who owned the domains being designed into.
  • Ran the portfolio as product owner while also developing: set strategy, maintained the backlog, and ran a Kanban flow across parallel inventions.
  • Created PRDs complete enough for an engineering team or a coding assistant to implement with minimal oversight.
  • Converted PRDs into filed applications with 4 patent attorneys, reviewing and approving each.
  • Pitched every invention to engineering and legal leaders, including formal reviewers.

(Stats per IDiyas Public Statistics)

Applied AIAI AgentsProduct ManagementInnovation ManagementProduct InnovationProduct StrategyProduct Research

AI Software Developer

Dell Technologies, Full-timeMay 2024 - May 2026 · 2 yrs 1 moBucharest, Romania · Remote

Moved to a different business unit, working across two 5-person Scrum teams within two AI initiatives.

Key outcomes:

  • Shipped into two products featured at CES and Dell Technologies World, now shipping to all Dell AI PC customers.
  • Enabled internal teams and customers to build Hybrid and Agentic Edge AI applications across heterogeneous AI PC fleets.

Responsibilities:

  • Owned and built 4 OpenAI-compatible AI APIs (SLM/ASR) across two silicon platforms, each the only Dell offering of its kind on that hardware.
  • Delivered inference services across NPUs, GPUs, and CPUs, spanning all 4 silicon targets (AMD, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Intel).
  • Built accuracy, latency, and safety test suites for candidate SLM and ASR models that determined which models shipped.
  • Contributed to the redesign of an existing Applied AI desktop application, then to a greenfield Hybrid AI platform.
  • Facilitated Daily Scrums for a 5-person inference team, assigning tasks and clearing blockers.
  • Resolved defects and dependencies with hardware vendors and 3 other Scrum teams (ML, DevOps, and a consumer).
  • Monitored service quality across successive hardware, driver, and dependency versions, catching degradation trends early and re-optimizing.
  • Reported progress and impediments to internal and external leaders, including directors and Fellows.
AI InferencingEdge ComputingONNXEdge AIOpenAI APIHybrid AIGenerative AISmall Language Models (SLMs)Speech Recognition

Software Developer

Dell Technologies, Full-timeAug 2021 - Apr 2024 · 2 yrs 9 mosBucharest, Romania · Remote

Enterprise web platform enabling large customers to order fully configured PCs, delivered within a 20+ team modernization program.

Key outcomes:

  • Replaced 6 legacy modules with modern services, improving performance and UX.
  • Onboarded 7 developers of varying experience levels, expanding the team's delivery capacity.

Responsibilities:

  • Delivered 24 .NET Web APIs consumed by 10 teams.
  • Executed delivery strategy for a 12-person team, as one of four core developers.
  • Ensured NFR compliance across CI/CD automation, integration testing, security, and observability.
  • Monitored service quality across all environments, resolving most issues before production.
  • Supported cross-team UAT/E2E testing, and prepared release documentation across 10 releases.
Web DevelopmentCloud ComputingAgile Application DevelopmentCI/CDSQL

Education

  • Harvard Business School Online

    Certificate of Specialization, Entrepreneurship & Innovation

    Apr 2026 – Jul 2026

    A 16-week, 100-hour online specialization program spanning three modules: Disruptive Strategy, Transforming Customer Experiences, Design Thinking and Innovation

    Skills:StrategyCustomer ExperienceDesign ThinkingProduct InnovationInnovation Management

  • Faculty of Economic Cybernetics, Statistics and Computer Science, ASE Bucharest

    Master's degree, IT Solutions for Management

    Sep 2021 – Jul 2023

    Skills:Agile Application DevelopmentData-driven Decision MakingProject Management

  • Faculty of Economic Cybernetics, Statistics and Computer Science, ASE Bucharest

    Bachelor's degree, Computer Science for Business

    Oct 2018 – Jul 2021

    Skills:Web DevelopmentDesktop DevelopmentMobile Application Development

Certifications