Simon van Dyk

Updated on 16 April 2026

Building AI-powered clinical systems at Ufonia. Former CTO at Wealthbit, from product design to production ML.

+44 7946 317675 simon.vandyk@gmail.com linkedin.com/in/simon-van-dyk London, UK

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Summary

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.

Hi, I'm Simon 👋. I build software at the intersection of design and engineering — the kind of work where understanding both sides deeply makes the product meaningfully better. I care about craft, about tools that respect their users, and about closing the gap between what's designed and what's built.

Hi, I'm Simon 👋. I work on AI systems where correctness matters, and I'm drawn to the problem of interpretability and reliable AI grounded in truth. My background is in Computational Intelligence, and I've spent the last few years applying ML and LLMs in domains that can't tolerate hallucinations: clinical decision support, agentic search in regulated healthcare, and fine-tuned models for financial text classification.

Hi, I'm Simon 👋. I care deeply about user experience, and I'm fascinated by the emerging craft of designing AI product interfaces that actually work: interfaces that make a model's capabilities legible, controllable, and genuinely useful. My background sits at the intersection of design, frontend engineering, and applied ML. Most recently I led the design and build of Wealthbit's financial wellness mobile app from concept to production, alongside fine-tuning models and running evals in regulated domains like clinical decision support and financial text classification.

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. Based in London, prefer hybrid but open to remote/on-site. Permanent.

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. Based in London, prefer hybrid but open to remote/on-site. Permanent.

I'm looking for a senior IC role in a small, highly skilled team where I can do the best work of my career alongside people I can learn from — ideally where design and engineering intersect, and where my experience building design systems, prototyping products, and shipping full-stack code has the most impact. Based in London, prefer hybrid but open to remote/on-site. Permanent.

I'm looking for a senior IC role on a small, highly skilled team building AI that has to actually work in the real world, where reliability, explainability, and the gap between a demo and a trustworthy product are taken seriously. I admire Unlikely AI's neurosymbolic approach of combining stochastic models with symbolic reasoning to get grounded, auditable answers, and it's exactly the kind of problem I want to be working on. Based in London, prefer hybrid but open to remote/on-site. Permanent.

I'm looking for a senior IC role on a small, highly skilled team building AI products that people rely on. I admire Mistral's bet on open, European frontier AI, and a consumer product like le Chat sitting alongside serious model work is exactly the kind of place where my experience across design, frontend, and applied ML has the most leverage. Based in London, prefer hybrid but open to remote/on-site. 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
Process: Systems from first principlesShape UpProduct analyticsSpine model

Experience

Senior Product Engineer

May 2026 – Present

UfoniaFull-time

London, United KingdomHybrid

Building AI-powered clinical assistants at Ufonia, an Oxford-based health technology company. Ufonia's core product, Dora, is a UKCA-certified autonomous AI that conducts natural voice consultations with patients on behalf of NHS clinicians — handling post-op reviews, pre-op assessments, and routine check-ins at scale, with no app or device required from patients.

Skills: TypeScriptAgentic Engineering

Sabbatical

Jan 2026 – Apr 20264 mos

Took time away from work to be present with my newborn son.

Machine Learning Engineer

Oct 2025 – Dec 2025 3 mos

NOSIBLEContract

Delaware, United States Remote

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

Skills: PythonPyTorchEmbeddingsFine-TuningActive Learning

Senior Software Engineer

Jun 2023 – Sep 20252 yrs 4 mos

Fora Health1 day/week contract

London, United KingdomRemote

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.

Skills: Ruby & TypeScriptRAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation)EvalsAgentic Engineering

Chief Technology Officer

Feb 2022 – Sep 20253 yrs 8 mos

Wealthbit4 days/week contract

Johannesburg, South AfricaRemote

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

Skills: Technology LeadershipManagementFigmaStorybookPythonReact Native

Senior Software Engineer

Apr 2019 – Oct 20223 yrs 7 mos

Ctrl GroupFull-time

London, United KingdomHybrid

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

Software Engineer

Nov 2018 – Mar 20195 mos

thoughtbotFull-time

London, United KingdomOn-site

thoughtbot is a design and development consultancy that brings your digital product ideas to life.

Built and managed client projects and internal tools at thoughtbot's London studio.

Splitfit: built on the prototype for a US startup connecting people with personal trainers
Internal quiz platform: repurposed thoughtbot's open-source technical writing into interactive content
Quote request site for a cyber security insurance company
Contributed to thoughtbot's technical blog

Skills: Ruby on RailsReact Native

platform45

Mar 2013 – Sep 20185 yrs 7 mos

Lead Product Engineer

Jul 2017 – Sep 20181 yr 3 mos

platform45Full-time

Johannesburg, South AfricaOn-site

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

Software Engineer

Dec 2013 – Jun 20173 yrs 7 mos

platform45Full-time

Johannesburg, South AfricaOn-site

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.

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.

Skills: Ruby on Rails & PythonReact.js & Ember.jsAutomated Testing PostgreSQLRedisProduct Analytics

Intern

Mar 2013 – Nov 20139 mos

platform45 Part-time

Johannesburg, South AfricaOn-site

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 RailsHTML, CSS, and JavaScriptGitVimtmux

University of Pretoria

Jul 2012 – Jan 2013 7 mos

Research Engineer

Aug 2012 – Jan 20136 mos

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.

Skills: JavaData Structures & AlgorithmsComputational Intelligence

Tutor

Jul 2012 – Dec 20126 mos

University of PretoriaPart-time

Pretoria, South AfricaOn-site

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)

20131 yr

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)

2010 – 20123 yrs

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)

2003 – 20075 yrs

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)