Co-founder and AI engineer
Tom Haeldermans
I build software that has to keep running in production. I started as a researcher: five years of doctoral research in industrial engineering at UHasselt, where a problem is only finished once it genuinely holds. I took that rigour with me when I moved into software engineering.
- Based in
- Hasselt, Belgium
- Focus
- Agentic engineering and training
- Background
- A doctorate, then software
About me
After my doctorate I built backends, integrations and data flows for companies that run on them every day, and led the teams that maintained them. Today I build AI agents that take over work people used to do by hand. I don't just advise on them, I build them myself. That is how I see where they break, and which of the latest techniques work best.
I have been teaching for longer than I have been building AI. First at UHasselt, with lectures, labs and thesis supervision, then as a team lead, where coaching was daily work. Now I run the agentic engineering kata: a day that starts at “what is an LLM, really” and ends with a team running its first agent.
Career
SmartAgents
2026– · Hasselt
Co-founder and AI engineer
Builds the agentic systems behind the projects, and runs the training that teaches teams to build them themselves.
Cegeka
2026– · Hasselt · freelance
Senior consultant, AI
Rolling out an agentic AI platform on which users assemble their own agents, with tools, prompts and search across their own documents. Freelance, alongside SmartAgents.
Ravago
2021–26 · Arendonk
Software engineer, then team lead
Built backends and data integrations for the digital team, including a dynamic pricing engine. Then led several teams through the full lifecycle: code reviews, pairing, and the architectural decisions behind them.
UHasselt
2021–24 · Diepenbeek · part-time
Teaching assistant, industrial engineering
Lectures, lab and exercise sessions, project guidance and thesis supervision, for groups with very different levels of prior knowledge. That teaches you to pitch material up and down until it lands.
UHasselt
2016–21 · Hasselt
Doctoral researcher
Five years of applied research in industrial engineering, with teaching alongside it. It is where I learned not to let go of a problem before it holds.
Education and certifications
- PhD in industrial engineering UHasselt and IET InnoEnergy 2016 – 2021
- MSc in industrial engineering, magna cum laude UHasselt 2012 – 2016
- Postgraduate AI Technical Architect Hogeschool PXL 2023 – 2024
- Claude Certified Architect (Foundations) Anthropic 2026
- Model Context Protocol: Advanced Topics Anthropic 2026
- Building with the Claude API Anthropic 2026
- Certified Kubernetes Application Developer The Linux Foundation 2021
- AWS Certified Developer (Associate) Amazon Web Services 2020
Away from work
On holiday
Found somewhere on a mountain.
Dog dad
The walks are not up for discussion.
Away from the desk
Running, hiking, fitness and travelling.