Catalin Caldararu is a Technical AI Product Owner who stays close to engineering and delivery. He can build and ship what he specs. He sits at the intersection of Full Stack AI engineering, product, delivery, and innovation, with hands-on experience across AI-Native SDLC, Hybrid Edge AI, Agentic AI, .NET, CI/CD, and AI-assisted Next JS. His depth is in applied GenAI, product, and full-stack delivery. For classical ML, low-level optimization, infrastructure engineering, and UX, he partners with specialists. Partnering with the right co-inventors and teammates is part of how he ships. He is a first-named inventor on 22 AI product patent applications. He embeds collaborative innovation into the SDLC, so products don't just ship, they evolve. He enjoys Agile delivery. He is PSPO II and PSM II certified and has applied Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming (XP) in AI initiatives. He understands how developers work and has delivered with distributed teams across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. He hunts down blockers and communicates trade-offs clearly to leadership. From time to time he also acts as a Trainer, striving to foster a culture of continuous learning, so the people behind the products grow alongside them.

Top skills: Innovation Strategy, AI Product Delivery, and AI Development.

Current role:

Technical AI Product Owner, Applied AI (Self Employed, Aug 2026 - Present, Bucharest, Romania · Remote). Independent product and development work in Applied AI and Hybrid Edge AI. Most current engagements are new, short, and under NDA. Originated, built, and shipped a local AI system that powers acquisition decisions in a commercial niche with a known, finite set of candidates. The system runs at near-zero marginal cost per query. Advised a client on Hybrid Edge AI product strategy. Edge remains a specialized market today, but he's positive on its trajectory.

Roles at Dell Technologies:

Senior AI Product Engineer, R&D Portfolio (Aug 2025 - Jul 2026, full-time, Bucharest, Romania · Remote). Project: Hybrid AI Product R&D Portfolio — Kanban team of 10. He took the initiative and built the foundation for an IP portfolio spanning Hybrid AI products, which earned him multiple internal innovation awards. Initiated and led a VP-funded Product R&D initiative. Originated and owned 50 formal software product prototypes and filed 22 patent applications as first-named inventor. (The invention names are under NDA until July 2027. Company-issued proof is available on request.) Built working prototypes through full-stack, AI-assisted development across .NET/C#, Python, ONNX Runtime GenAI, and Next.js. Ranked as Dell Romania's most active inventor and in the top 20% of inventors in company history (per public statistics). Achieved this without a formal innovation mandate or dedicated resources, pitching each invention individually and earning sponsorship through results. The company committed roughly $600k to protecting the portfolio. Originated product concepts aligned with the company's 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 one of Dell's Hybrid AI Product R&D Portfolios: its backlog, business cases, PRDs, solution architectures, and a 4-phase roadmap. Prioritized the portfolio with Evidence-Based Management, weighing the Current Value, Unrealized Value, Ability to Innovate, and Time-to-Market. Held 6 presentations within his division. As a result, recruited 9 Principal Engineers as voluntary co-inventors and ran the globally distributed group as a self-managing team, organizing weekly design-thinking sessions. Promoted innovation and supported new inventors, which led to co-inventor credit on 3 patent applications outside his portfolio. After he left, one of the Principal Engineers took over the workstream's leadership.

AI Software Developer & Service Owner, Hybrid AI Platform (Aug 2024 - Jul 2025, full-time, Bucharest, Romania · Remote). Project: Commercial Hybrid AI Platform — Core Services team of 5. He moved into a new AI division as a mid-level developer, after being an early adopter of AI coding tools. Owned and single-handedly built 6 OpenAI-compatible AI services (SLM/ASR) across two silicon platforms, with inference running on NPUs and GPUs. Delivered Dell's first NPU-based ASR service from zero to production in 4 months. It was followed by Dell's first ONNX-based SLM services on both AMD and Qualcomm hardware in 5 months. Later contributed to services spanning all four silicon targets (AMD, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Intel). Built 2 of the 6 primary function-calling services that enabled Agentic Edge AI across all Dell hardware. These commercial, user-facing services ship to every Dell AI PC customer and power capabilities showcased at CES and DTW. Within months of launch, every service was adopted by customers, including teams that couldn't use AI before. Enabled internal teams and customers to add SLM and ASR to their AI apps by pointing existing OpenAI code at a local endpoint, cutting time from PoC to production by ~80%. This also strengthened data privacy and eliminated recurring cloud costs. Built the accuracy, latency, and safety test suites (MMLU, WER) that vetted every model behind these APIs. Alongside his own services, served as Scrum Master for one of the platform's 5-person squads, without touching their services. The squad consisted of experienced developers who were new to Edge AI. Refined the squad's technical user stories and tasks based on discussions with leadership, the Product Manager, and external vendors. Facilitated the squad's Daily Scrum, and resolved cross-team dependencies working with external vendors and 5 partner Scrum teams (ML, HW, Consumers).

Software Developer & Service Owner, Web Platform (Aug 2023 - Jul 2024, full-time, Bucharest, Romania · Remote). Project: .NET Web Platform Modernization — Scrum team of 4, one of 20+ teams in a scaled-Scrum digital transformation program. He was promoted to mid as part of a small group trusted with application development and cross-team collaboration. He led one of the 5 squads building the product, a team of newer engineers, recent joiners, and interns, with his EM managing many squads across the program. His team owned end to end the .NET Web API services behind 3 operator-facing modules, built from scratch to replace legacy systems, with partner teams owning the React front-ends. From release, their services powered the modules used by all of Dell's factory engineers across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC, retiring the legacy ones. Improved the services' speed and reliability with self-healing, CI/CD deployments, and complete observability. Supported the PO during refinement by adding technical detail to the squad's user stories, so each task could be picked up independently. Made sure every deliverable met the program's NFRs, and owned the observability, defect triage, and GitLab CI/CD for every service the squad shipped. Planned releases with the EM, PO, and Program Manager, and was the development point of contact for testing teams, UAT, and 6 partner Scrum teams. Resolved cross-team dependencies and integration defects while working with stakeholders distributed across 3 time zones. Facilitated the Daily Scrum and onboarded 7 developers of varying experience levels across the program.

Junior Software Developer (Aug 2021 - Jul 2023, full-time, Bucharest, Romania · Remote). Project: .NET microservices across 4 Scrum teams, a rotational track in a scaled-Scrum program of 20+ teams. Built .NET Web APIs and automated their testing and deployment with GitLab CI/CD pipelines. Collaborated cross-functionally with the E2E and DevSecOps teams, and with many consumer Scrum teams across the program. Took ownership of a production microservice within 6 months. Never missed a release since, including through the later modernization program. Rotating across 4 teams gave him an early map of who owned what — the basis for the cross-team work in every role after.
Early Career Experience (Oct 2018 - Sep 2021, Bucharest, Romania · Hybrid). Volunteered for 3 years at SiSC (Cybernetics Students' Union). Recruited, mentored, and coached students across 10 educational projects that prepared them for their first IT jobs. Here he found that he genuinely enjoys helping people grow. Completed the Leaders Foundation's Next Generation of Innovators Program and earned IBM's Design Thinking Co-Creator credential (Sep 2021). Received a Special Mention Award in McKinsey & Company's Romania Reinvented student innovation contest (Jul 2021). Completed a .NET Software Developer internship at Suvoda (Oct - Dec 2020).

Projects:
Hybrid AI Product R&D Portfolio (Internal, Aug 2025 - Jul 2026, Senior AI Product Engineer, R&D Portfolio at Dell Technologies). Took the initiative and built the foundation for an IP portfolio spanning Hybrid AI products, which earned him multiple internal innovation awards. Initiated and led a VP-funded Product R&D initiative, delivered with a Kanban team of 10. Originated and owned 50 formal software product prototypes and filed 22 patent applications as first-named inventor. (The invention names are under NDA until July 2027. Company-issued proof is available on request.) Built working prototypes through full-stack, AI-assisted development across .NET/C#, Python, ONNX Runtime GenAI, and Next.js. Ranked as Dell Romania's most active inventor and in the top 20% of inventors in company history (per public statistics). Achieved this without a formal innovation mandate or dedicated resources, pitching each invention individually and earning sponsorship through results. The company committed roughly $600k to protecting the portfolio. Originated product concepts aligned with the company's 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 one of Dell's Hybrid AI Product R&D Portfolios: its backlog, business cases, PRDs, solution architectures, and a 4-phase roadmap. Prioritized the portfolio with Evidence-Based Management, weighing the Current Value, Unrealized Value, Ability to Innovate, and Time-to-Market. Held 6 presentations within his division. As a result, recruited 9 Principal Engineers as voluntary co-inventors and ran the globally distributed group as a self-managing team, organizing weekly design-thinking sessions. Promoted innovation and supported new inventors, which led to co-inventor credit on 3 patent applications outside his portfolio. After he left, one of the Principal Engineers took over the workstream's leadership.

Commercial Hybrid AI Platform (Commercial, Aug 2024 - Jul 2025, AI Software Developer & Service Owner, Hybrid AI Platform at Dell Technologies). AI Software Developer & Service Owner on a Core Services team of 5. Owned and single-handedly built 6 OpenAI-compatible AI services (SLM/ASR) across two silicon platforms, with inference running on NPUs and GPUs. Delivered Dell's first NPU-based ASR service from zero to production in 4 months. It was followed by Dell's first ONNX-based SLM services on both AMD and Qualcomm hardware in 5 months. Later contributed to services spanning all four silicon targets (AMD, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Intel). Built 2 of the 6 primary function-calling services that enabled Agentic Edge AI across all Dell hardware. These commercial, user-facing services ship to every Dell AI PC customer and power capabilities showcased at CES and DTW. Within months of launch, every service was adopted by customers, including teams that couldn't use AI before. Enabled internal teams and customers to add SLM and ASR to their AI apps by pointing existing OpenAI code at a local endpoint, cutting time from PoC to production by ~80%. This also strengthened data privacy and eliminated recurring cloud costs. Built the accuracy, latency, and safety test suites (MMLU, WER) that vetted every model behind these APIs.

.NET Web Platform Modernization (Internal, Aug 2021 - Jul 2024, Junior Software Developer, then Software Developer & Service Owner, Web Platform at Dell Technologies). Scrum team of 4, one of 20+ teams in a scaled-Scrum digital transformation program. His team owned end to end the .NET Web API services behind 3 operator-facing modules, built from scratch to replace legacy systems, with partner teams owning the React front-ends. Took ownership of a production microservice within 6 months and never missed a release since. From release, their services powered the modules used by all of Dell's factory engineers across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC, retiring the legacy ones. Improved the services' speed and reliability with self-healing, CI/CD deployments, and complete observability. Planned releases with the EM, PO, and Program Manager, and was the development point of contact for testing teams, UAT, and 6 partner Scrum teams. Resolved cross-team dependencies and integration defects while working with stakeholders distributed across 3 time zones. Made sure every deliverable met the program's NFRs, and owned the observability, defect triage, and GitLab CI/CD for every service the squad shipped. Facilitated the Daily Scrum and onboarded 7 developers of varying experience levels across the program.

Education: Certificate of Specialization in Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Harvard Business School Online (Apr 2026 - Aug 2026), a 16-week, 100-hour online specialization program focused on mastering proven frameworks for harnessing innovation and transforming disruptive ideas into viable products and services, with key activities: Discover (user research and disruption theory) · Define (problem framing and Jobs to Be Done) · Design (structured ideation across product, service, and business models) · Deliver (team enablement and MVP prototyping) · Engage (behavior-change models) · Adapt (evaluation and emergent strategy); Master's degree in IT Solutions for Business & Project Management, Faculty of Economic Cybernetics, Statistics and Computer Science, ASE Bucharest (Sep 2021 - Jul 2023); Bachelor's degree in Computer Science for Business, Faculty of Economic Cybernetics, Statistics and Computer Science, ASE Bucharest (Oct 2018 - Jul 2021).

Certifications: Professional Scrum Product Owner II (PSPO™ II), Professional Scrum Master II (PSM™ II), ANC Certified Innovation Manager (Ministry of Education - Romania, issued Aug 2026), and ANC Certified Trainer (Ministry of Education - Romania, issued Aug 2026).