Cherian Mathew

Work hands-on with early-stage teams as an embedded tech lead or fractional CTO to design, build, and launch software products with strong architectural foundations. Support founders across the entire product lifecycle by translating product vision into MVP execution, selecting pragmatic tech stacks, and implementing AI-enabled development workflows. Focus on real execution, team formation, and establishing lightweight agile processes that balance speed, cost, and long-term maintainability.

Designed and developed the Rootd platform, including a Flutter-based web and mobile application and a Scala backend API for B2B/B2C access management and observability. Integrated Generative AI workflows using OpenAI APIs for data extraction and semantic search, alongside self-hosted open LLMs utilizing RAG and PEFT techniques for private data. Also drove strategic planning, project management, and provided technical and business roadmap inputs to support fundraising efforts.

Led the design, development, and project management for the Dryad Silvanet Cloud Platform, coordinating between hardware, embedded software, and cloud engineering teams. Built the initial frontend prototype and developed backend features including LoRa payload codecs, device management, and data analytics. Set up cloud deployment alongside ML model training oversight and first-level customer support.

Contributing to the ongoing data-driven digital transformation within the organization. Introduced and led the move towards a software development driven approach to building digital products / services. Contributed to long term digital strategy - specifically in terms of technical guidelines and governance.

Managed transition of legacy components to a containerized infrastructure along with deployment of an end-to-end software development workflow. Led the effort to update the legacy web application to the latest technologies.

Contributed to the design and development of our data analysis platform - alambeek. This involves the understanding, usage and / or implementation of data related concepts which include - flow-based programming, serverless architectures, distributed / service oriented architecture, reactive programming.

Contributed technical expertise to the taxonomy service set within the BioVeL project, specifically in the area of taxonomic name resolution, species occurrence retrieval and data cleaning. This included the construction of scientific workflows within the Taverna Workflow Management System as well as building an biodiversity-specific extension to Open Refine. Actively engaged in software development activities related to the EDIT Platform for Cybertaxonomy.

Developed and maintained applications, primarily in the area of scientific visualisation, for the Virtual Reality Centre at the University of Groningen. This included software written in C, C++ to run on a linux-based visualisation cluster which drives a 6-projector (HD) Reality Theatre and a 4-projector Reality Cube.

Managed test activities on multi-platform systems including Unisys mainframes and Unix. Responsibilities included administering applications to ensure stability, processing test scenarios and coordinating product definition, developers, code integrators, quality control and production operations.Built applications in Java to perform test activities, primarily in the area of manual / automatic software testing and result analysis. This included designing / implementing algorithms and interfaces , able to process and analyse large units of complex results.