• Applied AI
  • AI SDLC
  • Hybrid AI
  • Agentic AI

Catalin Caldararu

AI Product Engineer · Technical AI Product Manager

LinkedIn (opens in a new tab)Experience

First Inventor on 22 AI Product Patent Applications

Hello, I am an AI Product Engineer with strong Applied AI, Delivery & Innovation skills. I can spec features and build them myself.

I've developed, owned, and shipped greenfield AI services featured at CES and DTW. These public services shipped to all Dell AI PC customers on two hardware platforms, reaching hundreds of thousands of users.

I've also originated and led the development of an AI Product Innovation (R&D) portfolio. I owned its backlog, business cases, PRDs, and roadmap, cutting the concepts that didn't fit the company's AI strategy. Through that work, I became the first-named inventor on 22 AI product patent applications.

I have delivered software with teams distributed across the Americas, Europe, and Asia, working cross-functionally with UX, DBA, DevSecOps, E2E, Support, Legal, Vendors and External Counsel from the start. I have a record of hunting down blockers and communicating trade-offs clearly to leadership.

From time to time I also act as a Trainer, striving to foster innovation and a culture of continuous learning, so the people behind the products grow alongside them.

Next Steps

I'm looking for a Technical AI Product Manager, AI Project Manager, or AI Delivery role. The scope matters more to me than the title or where I sit.

Credentials

Technical Overview

My depth is in Applied AI and full-stack delivery, so I can often ship working prototypes or production components by myself. Beyond that, I partner with specialists. Finding the right co-inventors and teammates is part of how I ship.

Technical Stack

Applied AI
LLM, SLM, ASR, and Embedding Models, AI Agents, MCP, RAG, Vector Databases, OpenAI SDK, ONNX, Hybrid Edge AI, Self-hosted and NPU/GPU Local AI Services
Back-end
.NET/C#, SQL, Python, FastAPI
Front-end
Next.js / React
Deployment
GitHub or GitLab CI/CD, Azure or Vercel

Recommendations

See my recommendations on LinkedIn (opens in a new tab)

Experience

AI Product Engineer & Innovation Lead

Dell Technologies, Full-time

May 2025 - Aug 2026 · 1 yr 4 mos

Bucharest, Romania · Remote

Project
Hybrid AI Product Innovation Portfolio, a team of 10 working in Kanban.

Using the research I did on the side, I originated and led the delivery of an AI Product Innovation (R&D) portfolio. It led to 22 patent applications with me as first-named inventor and earned VP sponsorship, which paid for the patent filings and rewarded the team.

Impact

  • Ranked as Dell Romania's most active inventor. I am also the first-named inventor on 13 other completed internal inventions that are currently being considered for engineering roadmaps.
  • Together with the team, built over 35 software feasibility prototypes across .NET/C#, Python, ONNX Runtime GenAI, OpenAI SDK, and Next.js. Many of the portfolio's concepts ship today as production components through Dell's publicly disclosed AI-native product foundry.

Ownership

  • Originated product designs aligned with the company's public AI strategy: building AI into its products, applying AI to its internal systems and processes, and delivering AI with its partner ecosystem.
  • Owned the portfolio's backlog and a 4-phase research roadmap, along with the initiation deliverables for each concept: business cases, PRDs, and the initial AI solution architectures.
  • Owned a part of the research, solution design, product design and innovation feeding 8 products, a mix of commercial products and internal tools run by product managers.

Cross-team Delivery & People

  • Recruited 9 Principal Engineers across 3 time zones as volunteer co-inventors through 6 presentations within my division, bringing in specialists across Security, ML, Data Science, Infrastructure, and Hardware.
  • Product Development
  • Agile Application Development
  • Innovation Management
  • Applied AI
  • AI Agents
  • Hybrid AI

AI Product Engineer & Delivery Lead

Dell Technologies, Full-time

May 2024 - Apr 2025 · 1 yr

Bucharest, Romania · Remote

Project
Hybrid AI Platform, working in Scrum@Scale.

In a newly formed AI division focused on product development, I designed and built 7 OpenAI-compatible AI services as sole developer. They shipped to every Dell AI PC customer on AMD and Qualcomm hardware, reached hundreds of thousands of users, and were featured at CES and DTW.

Impact

  • Within months of launch, every service was adopted by customers that couldn't use AI before due to privacy or costs.
  • Delivered Dell's first NPU-based ASR service from zero to production in 4 months, followed by Dell's first NPU-based ONNX SLM chat services on both platforms in 5 months.
  • Built 2 function-calling services, Dell's first on ONNX in production on both platforms, which enabled Agentic Edge AI across those AI PCs. They stayed the default for a year, strengthening data privacy and eliminating recurring cloud costs.

Ownership

  • Owned the services end to end: research, testing, model validation (MMLU/WER), and deployment, using mostly pre-optimized models, plus a few I exported myself with vendor-specific tooling.

Cross-team Delivery & People

  • Coordinated the day-to-day delivery for a squad of 5 mid-level and senior product engineers new to Edge AI, each owning their own services, and escalated risks to leaders from Dell's CTO organization.
  • Cleared the squad's impediments and resolved cross-team dependencies and integration defects, working with 5 partner Scrum teams (ML, HW, Consumers) across 4 time zones.
  • Onboarded 2 new developers and coached them in on-device AI. Both became core members of the division.
  • Applied AI
  • Hybrid AI
  • Generative AI
  • Agile Application Development

Software Developer & Delivery Lead

Dell Technologies, Full-time

May 2023 - Apr 2024 · 1 yr

Bucharest, Romania · Remote

Project
Web Platform Modernization, one of 20+ teams in a Digital Transformation Program run with SAFe.

After my promotion to mid-level, my squad and I built from scratch the .NET Web API services behind 3 operator-facing modules. From release, they were used by all of Dell's factory engineers across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC, retiring the legacy ones.

Ownership

  • Owned the non-functional requirements, observability, defect triage, and GitLab CI/CD for every service my squad shipped, while continuing to expand my own web services.

Cross-team Delivery & People

  • Coordinated the day-to-day delivery for my squad of 5 recent joiners and interns, escalating risks to my EM, who managed 8 squads.
  • Planned releases with the EM, PDM, and TPM, and was the development point of contact for testing teams, UAT, and the consuming teams, working across 4 time zones to resolve cross-team dependencies and integration defects.
  • Added technical detail to the squad's user stories and tasks, based on those planning discussions and, at times, on input from internal business stakeholders.
  • Onboarded 7 developers: 2 interns who were hired as full-time juniors, a senior who later became team lead, and 4 juniors across the program.
  • Web Development
  • Cloud Computing
  • Agile Application Development
  • Coaching & Mentoring

Junior Software Developer

Dell Technologies, Full-time

Aug 2021 - Apr 2023 · 1 yr 9 mos

Bucharest, Romania · Remote

Project
.NET Rotation across 4 Scrum teams in a Digital Transformation Program of 20+ teams.

Built .NET Web APIs used by 6 teams and automated their testing and deployment with GitLab CI/CD pipelines.

  • Web Development
  • Cloud Computing
  • Agile Application Development

IT Human Resources Member

SiSC - Sindicatul Studenților din Cibernetică

Oct 2018 - Sep 2021 · 3 yrs

Hybrid

Recruited and coached students across 10 projects that prepared them for their first IT jobs.

  • Training
  • Coaching & Mentoring

Software Developer Intern

Suvoda, Internship

Oct 2020 - Dec 2020 · 3 mos

Bucharest, Romania · Remote

Learned software development principles and took part in building IRT systems with .NET.

  • Web Development
  • Agile Application Development

Education