Crafting remarkable software products and helping teams do the same. Former CTO, from product design to production ML. Booking contracts or looking for gainful employment.
Hi, I'm Simon 👋. I help companies design and build software products with a focus on user experience. I'm actively looking to work with smart and conscientious people, and companies that have a net positive impact on the world — preferably in HealthTech or FinTech.
Recently: implemented an ML project for NOSIBLE, fine-tuning Qwen3-0.6B to match GPT-5.1's accuracy on financial sentiment classification at a fraction of the cost. Models and datasets are open-source on HuggingFace.
I spent the ~3.5 years as a vested CTO at Wealthbit, a FinTech startup on a mission to get a million South Africans to financial health. I built and led the engineering team, and from early 2025 grew a completely new product packaged in a mobile app from concept to production.
Before that, I spent ~3.5 years at Ctrl Group building Fora Health, a chat-based patient engagement platform used by clinical contract research organisations and the NHS. I built the backend from scratch, integrated with Epic EMR, and prototyped the first version of their web app for care teams. Concurrently with Wealthbit from 2023, I contracted back with Fora Health to build their AI systems: an agentic clinical search system with a custom eval framework, conformance tracking against a clinical safety constitution, and a human-in-the-loop verification layer.
My background is diverse: I've led teams, designed products, shipped frontends and backends, and now I am looking for my next significant project. I'm most useful when a project needs someone who can move fluidly between strategy, design, and implementation, and all the messy bits in between.
I studied Computational Intelligence (Honours, Cum Laude) at the University of Pretoria. Over my career I've spoken at conferences in the US, UK, and South Africa on topics including chatbots (before they were cool), cancer diagnosis with machine learning, and software design. See simonvandyk.info/speaking for details.
When I'm not developing software, I enjoy making good food and coffee, playing guitar for my son, or taking photos.
I'm looking for one of two things: (1) a senior IC role in a small, highly skilled team of conscientious people where I can do the best work of my career alongside people I can learn from; or (2) an engineering leadership role (tech lead, head of engineering) where I can build and grow a team while staying close to the technical work. Either needs to be at a company doing something that matters, preferably HealthTech or FinTech. UK remote preferred, open to travel to London or hybrid in Edinburgh. Permanent.
Skills
AI-forward, grounded use of agentic coding assistants, primarily Claude Code, with a deliberate approach prioritising systems and processes.
Languages
RubyPythonTypeScript / JavaScriptElixir
Design & product
Figma / SketchDesign systems & tokensStorybook
Communication
Asynchronous written communicationTechnical writingConference speaking
Developed three production text classifiers for financial sentiment, forward-looking statements, and predictions. Fine-tuned Qwen3 0.6B to match GPT-5.1 accuracy at orders of magnitude lower cost.
Open-sourced all models and datasets on HuggingFace under the NOSIBLE org and authored the technical blog post detailing methodology and results
Implemented an active learning pipeline for label refinement using LLM ensembles
Fine-tuned models on GPUs using PyTorch and HuggingFace Transformers
Production AI safety engineering in healthcare. Built AI systems for Fora Health, a patient engagement platform used in the NHS and private healthcare settings, before vector search or agentic tooling existed as mainstream concepts. Engaged across multiple contracts over two years.
Built an agentic search system: an agent with tools to query a private medical literature database, a custom eval framework to verify answer safety against a clinical safety constitution, and tracking for hallucination rates, false positives/negatives, and safety metrics in a regulated clinical setting.
Built a clinical decision support tool for care teams that combines prescribing guidelines with patient data to surface relevant recommendations and visualise decision flowcharts.
Designed and implemented a custom evaluation framework to measure AI system conformance to a clinical safety constitution, tracking hallucination rates, false positives/negatives, and safety metrics.
Built a human-in-the-loop verification system allowing clinicians to validate AI-generated answers, which were then marked as verified for future patients asking similar questions.
Led technology strategy and engineering for a FinTech startup building financial wellness products for employees.
Built and led the engineering team, implementing a lightweight, high-touch growth management process that aligned individual development goals with work assignments—resulting in 100% retention of the technical team
Led the design and development of Wealthbit's mobile app, working with design consultancies to deliver the MVP and grow the product from concept to production: iOS & Android
Implemented a high-fidelity, component-based design system in Figma and UI library in React/Storybook, built on design tokens—reducing design decision fatigue for engineers and ensuring consistency across the platform
Adopted a custom version of 37signals' Shape Up process to balance design, research, and development in a post-agile environment
Engaged trusted design and development consultancies to augment the product team's capabilities when needed
Revamped Wealthbit's security compliance at no additional cost by implementing the open CIS (IG2) framework, enabling demonstrable compliance mapping to SOC 2 and ISO 27001 without premature certification overhead
Worked in a growing team building Fora Health, a chat-based patient engagement platform used in NHS and private healthcare research projects, assisting Ctrl Group's transition from services-based to a product-based business. Built and maintained the in-house backend for Fora Health, replacing an off-the-shelf solution, and piloted the first version of the care team web app. Worked in a multi-disciplinary team including the co-founder, a clinical researcher, user reseachers, iOS and Android engineers, a designer, and QA and release management.
Complete backend: mobile and web API, backoffice admin UI, independent application services, data exports, and custom anonymised user activity analytics
Led the integration of Fora Health with the Epic EMR medical system including implementation, end-to-end—security due diligence, Epic EMR's third-party application review, and listing on the Epic App Orchard
Achieved HIPAA compliance early on using Very Good Security's transparent PII proxy, avoiding PII storage entirely
Prototyped the first care team web application which has grown significantly since initial launch
Used a modified version of 37Signal's Shape Up process to balance the needs of research, design, and development in a fast-moving environment
Skills: Ruby on RailsReact.jsAmazon Web Services (AWS)PostgreSQLRedis
Technical advisory and management of the entire product lifecycle from design to implementation and management of key milestones and reporting, including developing product strategy for our clients.
Skills: Technical LeadershipProduct StrategyProduct Management People Management
Sustained and improved software development methodologies, technical guidance and leadership in software systems. Developed and maintained good client relationships, provided mentorship and guidance for juniors, and assisted in high level project strategy and estimation.
Skills: Ruby on RailsHTML, CSS, and JavaScriptAutomated Testing PostgreSQLRedisProduct Analytics
Built a voice-based money transfer chatbot for Root (pre-banking licence) and gave a conference talk about it—an early foray into conversational AI before the tooling existed.
Developed a KYC workflow system in Rails to implement digital KYC in multiple legal jurisdictions for Docfox. Project duration: 18 months.
Lead the development of a Rails application and an API for iOS and Android clients that allow managers to complete checklists across hotels to maintain hotel standards for LobsterInk . Project duration: 7 months.
Developed an internal tool in Rails for Internet solutions ISP providing a consolidated view of their data services from 5 APIs including visualising usage and event data over time. Project duration: 6 months.
Technical advisory and management of the entire product lifecycle from design to implementation and management of key milestones and reporting, including developing product strategy for our clients.
Skills: Ruby on RailsGitVimtmux
University of Pretoria
Research Engineer
CIRG, University of PretoriaPart-time
Pretoria, South AfricaOn-site
CIRG (Computational Intelligence Research Group) offered the opportunity to develop algorithms for their open source CI library called CILIB. I helped implement adaptive differential evolution algorithms. See cirg.cs.up.ac.za and github.com/cilib/cilib for more information.
Concurrent Systems (COS 226). Tutoring Concurrent Systems involved giving a weekly class test and helping students understand complex concepts by discussing the memorandum and answering general questions.
Education
BSc (Hons), Computer Science (Cum Laude)
University of Pretoria
Pretoria, South Africa
Major in Computational Intelligence
Dissertation on Adaptive Architecture Selection, in which neural network architecture is a control parameter during training. The aim of the study was to dynamically find and adapt the models optimal architecture in order to prevent overfitting and to improve the network's ability to generalise (paper available upon request).
BSc, Information & Knowledge Systems (Cum Laude)
University of Pretoria
Pretoria, South Africa
Major in IT & Music
Final year project on the development of a secure wireless access portal comparing the amount of information retrieved from active versus passive scanning in the digital fingerprinting of devices connecting to the network.
National Senior Certificate (NSC)
Willowridge High School
Pretoria, South Africa
Awards & Achievements
2015 – 2019: Global speaking engagements
Multiple speaking engagements across South Africa, USA, and UK
2018: Tech Nation endorsement
Endorsed as a global leader in the technology community
2013: Top of the class – tie
Award for the top student in BSc (Hons) Computer Science
2012: Top of the class
Award for the top student in BSc Information & Knowledge Systems
2012: Best undergraduate project
Award for the best year long project: a secure wireless access portal
2012 – 2013: Academic honorary colours
Academic certification of merit awarded to students that graduated with distinction (Cum Laude)
Crafting remarkable software products and helping teams do the same. Former CTO, from product design to production ML. Booking contracts or looking for gainful employment.
