Jan Dekkers

hello@aiwebcenter.com · aiwebcenter.com

Summary

Thirty years architecting and shipping production software across regulated healthcare and diagnostics, financial services, and embedded systems. Hands-on across the full stack, from firmware and custom hardware through enterprise platforms and cloud integration, with a specialty in inheriting failing legacy architecture and turning it into a durable, revenue-protecting asset.

Trusted at the executive table: reported directly to the CFO for 17 years while owning a six-application platform serving 1,000+ users. Now applying that judgment to AI-accelerated delivery: architecture strategy, modernization sequencing, and knowing where AI compresses timelines rather than manufacturing technical debt.

Selected outcomes

• AI-assisted platform rewrite. Leading a ground-up rewrite of a production software-as-a-service platform with a very small team, the large majority of the code AI-generated and reviewed.
• $6M a year saved for Roche. Integrated 2D barcode handling into Ventana cancer-staining diagnostic software, recognized with the Tom Grogan Award.
• Stalled integration unblocked in a month. Delivered a working proxy bridge between two incompatible generations of Roche Ventana BenchMark ULTRA staining instruments within the first month.
• 8 FTE days a month of manual billing work eliminated by rationalizing and automating an end-to-end billing workflow.
• 7 million pages digitized, with 5 million more in progress, at 100–200 pages per minute: 200+ file cabinets retired, paper load cut 90%, significant real estate overhead removed.
• Six-application enterprise platform for 1,000+ users across four distributed offices, retiring the legacy system it replaced.

Advisory focus

AI-accelerated delivery and code-generation workflows · Legacy modernization and rescue · Architecture review and technical due diligence · Regulated and medical software (DICOM, diagnostics, clinical integration) · Embedded, firmware and cross-platform systems · Workflow automation ROI assessment · Engineering mentorship and technical leadership

AI and emerging technology

I’m currently leading a production rewrite delivered almost entirely through AI code generation, by a much smaller team than the conventional approach needs. The bottleneck in that work isn’t the model. It’s specification, decomposition, and architectural judgment about what the generated system will cost to own. That’s exactly what three decades of shipping production software buys.

That work rests on hands-on experience in the disciplines AI now automates: computer vision and OCR at scale (Tesseract, 7M+ pages made searchable), pattern recognition in clinical diagnostics, DICOM medical imaging, and sensor fusion on constrained hardware. It makes vendor claims and pilot results legible rather than theoretical.

Experience

US software-as-a-service company · Software Engineer III

Remote · December 2023 – present

• Technical lead on the AI-assisted ground-up rewrite of a production platform: a near-zero-hand-coding workflow in which the large majority of production code is model-generated.
• Own architecture, work decomposition and review, the constraints that decide whether AI-generated systems stay maintainable, with a very small team.
• Maintain and extend existing production applications across an established codebase and release pipeline (TeamCity, Octopus Deploy, TFS).

SMedix, contracted to Roche Pharmaceuticals · Software Engineer, VSS Team, Pathology and Cancer Staining

San Diego, California · April 2021 – December 2023

• Built a proxy bridge reconciling two hardware generations of Ventana BenchMark ULTRA cancer-staining instruments, extending the service life of deployed clinical equipment.
• Integrated 2D barcode capability into the VSS software, saving $6M annually and earning the Tom Grogan Award.
• Delivered inside a regulated clinical diagnostics environment with zero tolerance for downtime or data-integrity failure.

Ascensus · Lead Software Engineer, reporting directly to the CFO

Huntington Beach, California · 2004 – March 2021

• Sole architect and owner of the business-critical platform behind retirement plan administration: six integrated applications plus supporting hardware, serving 1,000+ users across four offices. Defined and prioritized the roadmap directly with executive leadership and business stakeholders.
• Replaced an aging legacy solution with a scalable architecture spanning four distributed offices, each with its own database, unified by full networking.
• Cut 8 billing FTE days per month by streamlining the billing process end to end.
• Built a high-speed scanning solution (100–200 pages per minute) that digitized about 7 million pages, eliminated 200+ file cabinets and cut paper load 90%. Added Tesseract OCR to make the archive free-text searchable, and an automated barcode reader that files each image in the right place.
• Delivered end-to-end project tracking (task management, document delivery, free-text search, background scheduling, delay notifications), letting account managers administer substantially more plans each.
• Added secure messaging and data and census collection, and relieved accounting teams of repetitive manual work.
• Integrated a cloud-based Pega CRM front end with the internal network and SQL Server back end.
• Created paginated SSRS reporting and an email module for client communication.

MRTX Corporation · Lead Software Engineer (contract)

Huntington Beach, California · 2020, 6 months

• Architected a Qt/Linux embedded health-monitoring system for contactless measurement of heart rate, temperature and respiration: a COVID-era rapid-response build spanning hardware, firmware and application layers.
• Delivered sensor fusion and signal processing on constrained embedded hardware on a compressed timeline, alongside full-time responsibilities.

JadTech Corporation · Senior Software Engineer (contract)

Huntington Beach, California · 2010

• Recruited for imaging expertise to convert digital imaging and patient documentation into standard DICOM format, defining requirements directly with a university spin-off in Germany.

Creative Development Ltd. · VP and Senior Software Application Engineer

Huntington Beach, California

• Led a team of six building and marketing best-practice development kits that streamlined development for Fortune 500 clients. The imaging components (ImageLib) won the Delphi Informant Readers’ Choice Award multiple times.

FocusFocus · Founder and Lead Developer

Huntington Beach, California

• Founded and built video conferencing solutions sustaining 500,000+ discrete database transactions per day.

Independent product development

J-Dro Digital Position Readout

2013 – present · patent pending

Designed and built the hardware, software and firmware for a digital position readout for manual lathes: 10 scales, 4 RPM counters and 3 edge detectors, accurate to 1/1000″, with data shown over the LAN on Android, Windows, Linux and macOS from a single source base.

Laser Savior CO₂ Laser Controller

2016

Add-on controller hardware and firmware that shows laser temperature, coolant temperature and coolant flow, reducing the risk of catastrophic failure.

Technical depth

Education and languages

• Mechanical Engineering, KTS, the Netherlands
• Python: HarvardX (Using Python for Research) and MITx (Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python)
• Languages: Dutch (native), English (fluent), German (fluent)

Recognition

Tom Grogan Award (Roche) · IBM Top 10 Multimedia Components and Libraries · Delphi Informant Readers’ Choice (multiple years) · Windows Sources Stellar Award · Sams Publishing Multimedia Award · Imaging Magazine Award