Catalin Caldararu

AI Innovation Consultant

First-named inventor on 22 Applied AI patent applications.

AI Innovation Consultant who can invent, build, ship, and help teams do the same.

I have hands-on experience across 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 holding both PSM II and PSPO II. 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 Innovation Consultant

Self-employedJun 2026 - Present · 2 mosBucharest, Romania · Remote
  • Advised functional leaders on AI product strategy in an engagement focused on local AI.
  • Originated, built, and shipped a private local AI system that powers data-driven acquisition decisions in a commercial niche, running at near-zero marginal cost per query. Combined semantic embeddings, sentiment analysis, and real market data to rank and notify users of acquisition candidates.
Applied AIEdge AIAI AgentsProduct ManagementProduct Strategy

Inventor, Hybrid AI

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. It was optional, competitively funded, and rewarded on results. The invention team was self-managing, with no product owner or assigned requirements. Its only authority was the VP-level sponsoring organization, which managed budgets and stakeholders.

Key outcomes:

  • Initiated and grew a 35-invention Hybrid AI portfolio. (Company-issued inventorship letter available on request)
  • Filed 22 patent applications as first-named inventor, 11× the average across Dell's ~8,000 all-time inventors. (According to IDiyas Public Statistics)
  • Ranked the most active inventor at Dell's Romania site, and in the company-wide top 10% by volume of filed applications among the ~8,000 people who have invented at Dell. (According to IDiyas Public Statistics)
  • Invented across 8 domains: Security, Privacy, Resilience, Efficiency, Accessibility, Personalization, Automation, and Agent-Native SDLC.
  • Produced a defensive IP portfolio across 8 new or redesigned applications (3 commercial, 3 internal, 2 on a roadmap).
  • 10 colleagues, a quarter of my former org, chose to join as co-inventors across their own domains, with no authority requiring them to.
  • Several inventions were already adopted into shipping products.

Responsibilities:

  • Drafted the first architecture, business case, and PRD for each invention, then opened them up for the co-inventors to shape.
  • Wrote each PRD to be build-ready, complete enough for an engineering team or a coding assistant to implement with minimal oversight.
  • Refined every deliverable together with 10 co-inventors (~4 per invention) and 4 legal specialists (1 per invention), each a partner in their own domain.
  • Facilitated weekly refinement sessions, creating the conditions for engineers to co-create through Design Thinking.
  • Owned the invention backlog and kept a Kanban flow the whole team could pull from.
  • Handed the finished deliverables to the VP-level sponsoring organization, which owned roadmap, prioritization, and engineering execution.
Applied AIAI AgentsProduct ManagementInnovation ManagementProduct InnovationProduct StrategyProduct Research

AI Developer, Hybrid AI

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:

  • Both products were featured at CES and Dell Technologies World and ship to all Dell AI PC customers.
  • Played a key role in enabling internal teams and customers to build Hybrid and Agentic Edge AI applications across heterogeneous AI PC fleets.

Responsibilities:

  • Contributed to the redesign of an existing Applied AI desktop application, then to the development of a greenfield Hybrid AI platform.
  • 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.
  • Contributed to many more inference services across NPUs, GPUs, and CPUs, spanning all 4 silicon targets (AMD, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Intel).
  • Built test suites measuring the accuracy, latency, and safety of candidate SLM and ASR models, determining which models shipped.
  • Facilitated Daily Scrums for a 5-person AI inference team, assigning tasks and clearing blockers.
  • Resolved defects and dependencies while coordinating directly with hardware vendors and three other Scrum teams (ML, DevOps, and a consumer).
  • Monitored service quality across successive hardware, driver, and dependency versions, spotting 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-timeMar 2023 - Apr 2024 · 1 yr 2 mosBucharest, Romania · Remote

Part of a 5-person Scrum team within the same scaled modernization program of 20+ teams.

Key outcomes:

  • Retired several legacy modules and shipped their replacements, improving performance and UX.
  • Onboarded 4 developers of varying experience levels, enabling the team to take on more work.

Responsibilities:

  • Worked alongside two rotating developers (juniors or new hires) and two specialists (DBA & UX).
  • Built 3 modules (6 .NET APIs, 2 React front-ends) alongside the team, consuming Web APIs from 6 teams and serving APIs to 3 others.
  • Facilitated Daily Scrums, cleared blockers, and acted as integration engineer for the team's releases, working with many stakeholders.
  • Monitored service quality across all environments, delivering most improvements before reaching production.
  • Ensured deliverables met NFRs spanning automation, security, accessibility, observability, secret management, and performance.
Web DevelopmentCloud ComputingAgile Application DevelopmentCI/CDSQL

Junior Software Developer

Dell Technologies, Full-timeAug 2021 - Feb 2023 · 1 yr 7 mosBucharest, Romania · Remote

Rotated through 4 Scrum teams, developing .NET APIs and automating their testing and deployment with GitLab CI/CD pipelines.

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