Let's work on something interesting

Creative problem-solving for complex technical challenges

I love cracking hard problems. Whether you're building something ambitious, stuck on a technical direction, or just want to explore ideas—let's talk about it. 10+ years in production ML, across finance, automotive, vision, and deep tech.

10+
Years in ML & AI
PhD
Theoretical Physics
6
Industries
AMS
Amsterdam, NL

Let's start with the problem

What's the challenge you're facing? What are you trying to build? Let's understand it deeply and figure out the best approach.

I love the creative problem-solving part. That moment where we take something that seems impossible and figure out the angle. The intersection of deep technical thinking and scrappy iteration. Building solutions that work.

Let's start there. Understanding your situation, exploring solutions, and building something great together.


Once we understand the challenge

Here are the different ways we might work together. The right approach depends on your situation.

Interim CTO / Tech Lead

Full ownership of your technology. Architecture decisions, team management, product development, and investor-ready technical documentation. I build it, run it, and hand it over.

Fractional Head of ML/AI

Embedded ML lead on your team. Technical roadmap, model development, data infrastructure, team building. Strategic thinking with hands-on execution.

Strategy & Assessment

Let's understand your challenge deeply. What are you trying to solve? What's feasible? What's the creative angle? A focused exploration leading to a clear roadmap.

Build & Ship

End-to-end ML solutions from ideation to production. Custom models, data pipelines, infrastructure. I write the code, think through the architecture, and make sure it actually works.

Team Building

Building your first technical team. Finding the right people, defining roles, evaluating candidates, onboarding, and creating an environment where they can do their best work.

Infrastructure & Privacy

Self-hosted LLM deployments, privacy-preserving AI systems, custom GPU infrastructure. For companies that need AI without compromising data security.


Companies I've worked with

End-to-end ownership — from research and architecture to production deployment and team building.

Nostics Medical Diagnostics
Interim Lead Data Science
Designed 3-month lab experiment to collect foundation library for deep learning-based medical diagnostics from spectrometer data. Led team through experiment design, data collection, and FDA pathway planning. Hired first data scientist to build on foundation.
Medical AI Experiment Design Foundation Library
Huawei R&D Amsterdam
Team Lead Computer Vision
Designed energy-efficient neural network for detecting street geometry from mobile cameras. Real-time processing on smartphones, integrated into Huawei Maps. Built GPU infrastructure, ML development environment, and CI/CD pipelines for the R&D team.
Edge AI Computer Vision Team Lead Kubernetes
TomTom
Senior Software Engineer — HD Maps
Deep probabilistic computer vision model reconstructing outdoor scenes from sparse LiDAR scans, combining PointNet, U-Net and VAE architectures. Built production infrastructure processing TBs of imagery weekly on Kubernetes.
LiDAR 3D Vision Production ML
ING Bank
ML Engineer
Probabilistic graphical model for network risk of large lending customers. Hierarchical time series forecasting for €120B adaptive balance sheet. Graph neural network on 1TB transaction dataset. Recommender system for marketing.
Finance GNN Forecasting Risk
Kew Ward — Engineering
ML Expert
Deep learning to characterize hysteresis patterns in hydrogen engine data. Variation metrics and tracking systems to reduce manufacturing variance in solenoid valves for luxury cars.
Engineering Manufacturing Time Series
DataMeister — Tokyo
ML Developer
Price forecasting engine for hotel chains. Scraped market data, built time-series model for supply and demand, created revenue-optimizing price recommendation engine.
Revenue Optimization Time Series Pricing

Industries I've worked across

Cross-domain experience means I see patterns and solutions that specialists miss.

Finance & Banking Automotive & Maps Computer Vision & Perception Medical Diagnostics Engineering & Manufacturing Deep Tech / Science Privacy & Sovereign AI Tourism & Revenue Marketing & Conversion Edge AI & Mobile

What I build with

Machine Learning

  • Custom deep learning architectures
  • Probabilistic ML & Bayesian methods
  • Computer vision (2D, 3D, LiDAR)
  • Time series & forecasting
  • Graph neural networks
  • Physics-informed modeling
  • Optimization & experimental design

Generative AI

  • LLM application design & RAG
  • Self-hosted open-source models
  • Privacy-preserving deployments
  • Document Q&A systems
  • LLM-based data extraction

Engineering

  • Python, R, C++, Julia
  • PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX
  • Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD
  • GPU infrastructure & MLOps
  • FastAPI, PostgreSQL, cloud
  • Full-stack prototyping

Leadership

  • Technical roadmap ownership
  • Hiring & team building
  • Architecture decisions
  • Investor-ready documentation
  • Vendor evaluation
  • Stakeholder communication

Sjoerd de Haan

I'm a machine learning engineer and technical leader with a background in theoretical physics. I started in academic research (PhD at the University of Groningen, Master's in Mathematics at Cambridge), then spent a decade building production ML systems in industry.

My career has taken me from quantitative finance at ING, to HD maps for self-driving cars at TomTom, to leading a computer vision team at Huawei's R&D center in Amsterdam. Along the way I've been interim lead data science for a medical diagnostics startup and developed ML solutions for engineering, marketing, and tourism.

What I bring is rare combination: I can design a neural network architecture, set up the GPU infrastructure to train it, build the production API to serve it, and explain it to investors. I write the code myself, then build the team to maintain it.

I also run Data Driven Lab Consulting — applying ML and automation to analytical chemistry and materials science R&D. And I write about ML, data science, and software engineering at sjoerddehaan.com.

Education

PhD Theoretical Physics — Groningen

MSc Mathematics — Cambridge

MSc Physics — Groningen

Training

MIT Professional Education — Bioprocess Data Analytics & ML

Location

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Languages

Dutch (native), English (fluent)

Links

LinkedIn · Blog · GitHub

Go Grow AI B.V.

Legal Entity

Go Grow AI B.V.

Trade Names

Go Grow AI — ML/AI consulting (general)
Data Driven Lab Consulting — Science & engineering

Location

Turnerstraat 27D
1076 VC Amsterdam

KvK

83138218

BTW (VAT)

NL862745809B01

Contact

sjoerd@gogrowai.com
+31 6 12261747

What are you working on?

Tell me about your challenge. Whether it's technical direction, building something ambitious, or exploring what's possible—let's dig in.

Let's dig in → sjoerd@gogrowai.com