# Wouter Durnez — rugvin.be

AI & software engineer building LLM tooling and agent infrastructure. PhD in experimental psychology, MSc in AI. Based in Ghent, Belgium.

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# About

This site is the rugvin ("dorsal fin") of haai, the BV I freelance through: the part of the shark that breaks the surface. The rest stays underwater.

Through haai, I design and ship software for real products. Most of that work sits around AI engineering: LLMs, agents, AI features, and the infrastructure needed to keep them upright in production.

Sometimes that work happens closer to the surface: landing pages, small frontend builds, and interfaces where the visual side matters as much as the technical one.

Away from code, I make cards, posters, and other graphical odds and ends.

Based in Ghent, Belgium. Focus: AI engineering · LLM tooling · agentic systems. Stack: Python · TypeScript · AWS.

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# CV

## Summary
AI & software engineer building LLM tooling and agent infrastructure. PhD in experimental psychology, MSc in AI. Based in Ghent, Belgium.

## Experience
- **2025–present · Ringtime** — Founding AI Engineer. Voice-AI agents for blue-collar recruitment — agent infrastructure, MLOps around phone-call workloads, 22-language coverage. (https://www.ringtime.ai/)
- **2023–2025 · Showpad** — Senior → Staff AI Engineer. GenAI platform: RAG, asset summaries, AI Page Generation, tool-wielding conversational agent in the flagship product. (https://www.showpad.com/)
- **2023 · Adapt & Enable** — Senior Data Scientist. Internal HR recommender — fuzzy skill extraction, weighted collaborative filtering, embeddings-based conversational variant. (https://www.ae.be/)
- **2023 · Jan De Nul** — Python Developer. Flask-based BI template — auth, structured logging, CI/CD, Docker. (https://www.jandenul.com/)
- **2018–2023 · imec-mict-UGent** — Senior Researcher. HCI research with biometrics and smartphone logging, plus the ETL/analysis frameworks that made it tractable. (https://www.ugent.be/mict/en/)

## Education
- **2018–2021** — MSc Artificial Intelligence (Engineering & Computer Science), KU Leuven
- **2011–2015** — PhD Experimental Psychology, Ghent University
- **2006–2011** — MSc Theoretical & Experimental Psychology, Ghent University

## Skills
- **Languages:** Python, TypeScript, SQL
- **AI:** LLM tooling, agent infrastructure, RAG, prompt engineering, tool use, evals, voice-AI agents, recommender systems, deep learning
- **Infra:** AWS, Docker, CI/CD, structured logging, MLOps
- **Libraries:** Fence (author), Astro, Flask, PyTorch
- **Research-adjacent:** HCI, biometrics / eye tracking, experimental design, statistics

## Contact
- Email: wouter@rugvin.be
- Available for contract work and consulting on LLM tooling, agentic systems, and AI engineering.

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# Sites & apps

## Reef
Long-term memory your assistant actually keeps — private by default, shared with the people you choose.
Tags: app, python, mcp.
URL: https://reefwith.me

## SiteSee
Field-inspection app for [HybriX Energy](https://www.hybrix-energy.com) — observations in, reports out.
Tags: pwa, client, react.

## Ringtime
Voice-AI recruiting agents for [Ringtime](https://www.ringtime.ai) — they call, screen, and match candidates in 22 languages.
Tags: voice-ai, agents, client.

## Maus Cars
Car detailing & auto-import — Kortrijk.
Tags: site, client, astro.
URL: https://mauscars.be

## Termicolor
Drop an image, get a terminal palette — WCAG-aware, export anywhere.
Tags: typescript, react, design.
URL: https://termicolor.io

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# Open-source code

## Fence
A lightweight LLM & agent library — the bloat moat, vs LangChain.
Tags: python, llm, open-source.
URL: https://github.com/WouterDurnez/fence

## Airhead
Tiny CNNs for brain-tumor segmentation — thesis-era medical imaging via low-rank tensor decomposition.
Tags: python, deep-learning, research.
URL: https://github.com/WouterDurnez/airhead