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

Catalin Caldararu

AI Product Engineer · Technical AI Product Owner

LinkedIn (opens in a new tab)Experience

First Inventor on 22 AI Product Patent Applications

Hello, I am an AI-Native 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.

I've also originated an AI Product Innovation (R&D) portfolio and owned its backlog, business cases, PRDs, and roadmap, cutting the concepts that didn't fit the company's AI strategy. As first-named inventor on 22 AI product patent applications, I embed collaborative innovation into the SDLC.

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 a culture of continuous learning, so the people behind the products grow alongside them.

Next Steps

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

Credentials

Experience Overview

5 years as a hands-on developer, including:

  • 3 years also coordinating delivery across product and research teams
  • 2 years owning production AI services and an AI Product Innovation (R&D) portfolio

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 & Inventor

Dell Technologies, Contract

Jun 2026 - Aug 2026 · 3 mos

Bucharest, Romania · Remote

  • Continued supporting my co-inventors through the remaining prototyping work and patent filings. Once only support and review remained, I handed the portfolio over to one of them.
  • Innovation Management
  • Applied AI
  • Hybrid AI

AI Product Engineer & Inventor

Dell Technologies, Full-time

May 2025 - May 2026 · 1 yr 1 mo

Bucharest, Romania · Remote

Project
Hybrid AI Product Innovation Portfolio.
Delivery Model
Kanban

Once the Hybrid AI platform stabilized, I turned the research I did on the side as a developer into an AI Product Innovation (R&D) portfolio spanning Hybrid AI products.

The ideas I had started were then developed by a team of 10, after 9 Principal Engineers volunteered to join me as co-inventors. The portfolio earned VP sponsorship, which paid for the patent filings and rewarded the team.

Impact

  • Filed 22 patent applications as first-named inventor and 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 inclusion in engineering roadmaps.
  • Originated and contributed to over 35 software feasibility prototypes across .NET/C#, Python, ONNX Runtime GenAI, OpenAI SDK, and Next.js. None of this stayed on paper. Many of the portfolio's concepts ship today as production components through Dell's publicly disclosed AI-native product foundry.
  • Received company-issued proof for all inventions and can share it on request until the filings begin publishing in July 2027.

Ownership

  • Originated product concepts 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. Killed the concepts that didn't serve one of these three directions.
  • Owned the portfolio, its backlog, business cases, PRDs, initial solution architectures, and a 4-phase research roadmap.
  • In practice, I 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

  • Coordinated the R&D delivery and built the prototypes together with the team, working across 3 time zones.
  • Recruited the co-inventors through 6 presentations within my division, bringing in specialists across Security, ML, Data Science, Infrastructure, and Hardware. Ran the group as a self-managing team.
  • Coached engineers across the division on innovation and the fundamentals of applied and on-device AI.
  • Product Development
  • Agile Application Development
  • Innovation Management
  • Applied AI
  • AI Agents
  • Hybrid AI

AI Developer & Delivery Lead

Dell Technologies, Full-time

May 2024 - Apr 2025 · 1 yr

Bucharest, Romania · Remote

Project
Hybrid AI Platform.
Delivery Model
Scrum@Scale

I moved into a new AI division focused on product development. It needed service developers who could work closely with ML Engineers, Data Scientists, Hardware Teams, Consumers, and at times external partners.

I was a developer in one Scrum team, building my own services, and co-led the delivery of another squad that owned other AI services.

Impact

  • Owned and built 6 OpenAI-compatible AI services that shipped to every Dell AI PC customer on AMD and Qualcomm hardware and powered capabilities showcased at CES and DTW. 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. It was followed by Dell's first NPU-based ONNX SLM chat services on both platforms in 5 months.
  • Built 2 other services, for function calling, that enabled Agentic Edge AI across those Dell AI PCs. They were Dell's first ONNX-based function-calling services in production on both platforms and the default for a year, strengthening data privacy and eliminating recurring cloud costs for Dell's clients.
  • In parallel, took on extra work by voluntarily researching where AI could be applied across the division, with no dedicated team, no funding, and no guarantee the ideas would clear the formal review and pay off.

Ownership

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

Cross-team Delivery & People

  • Co-led the day-to-day delivery for a squad of 8 mid-level and senior developers new to Edge AI, sharing the role across time zones and escalating risks to my EM, who managed 10 squads.
  • Cleared the squad's impediments and resolved cross-team dependencies and integration defects, working with 5 partner Scrum teams (ML, HW, Consumers) distributed across 4 time zones.
  • Added technical detail to the squad's user stories and tasks based on discussions with the EM, PDM, and TPM.
  • Onboarded 2 new developers and coached them in on-device AI, team processes, and debugging across heterogeneous AI PC fleets. 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, Digital Transformation Program — one of 20+ teams.
Delivery Model
SAFe

I was promoted to mid-level as part of a small group trusted with application development and cross-team collaboration. By then I already owned Web APIs used by 6 other teams, so I was given a squad to help me extend them.

Impact

  • Together with the team, 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.

Cross-team Delivery & People

  • Coordinated the day-to-day delivery for a 4-person squad of 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.
  • Cleared the squad's impediments and resolved cross-team dependencies and integration defects, working with stakeholders distributed across 4 time zones.
  • Added technical detail to the squad's user stories and tasks based on those planning discussions and, at times, 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.

I had more ideas than the skills to build them, so I took a developer role to close the gap.

  • Built .NET Web APIs and automated their testing and deployment with GitLab CI/CD pipelines.
  • Took ownership of a production microservice within 6 months. Never missed a release since, including through the later modernization program.
  • Web Development
  • Cloud Computing
  • Agile Application Development

Software Developer Intern

Suvoda, Internship

Oct 2020 - Dec 2020 · 3 mos

Bucharest, Romania · Remote

  • Learned software development principles and processes.
  • Took part in building IRT systems with .NET, LINQ, Entity Framework, and ASP.NET MVC.

Education