Summary
Coen Stevens is a hands-on technology leader and ex-YC founder with 13+ years delivering AI-driven products from prototype to production across startups and scaleups. Currently Staff Engineer & AI Agent Manager at Klime and running a fractional CTO practice, he combines system design, architecture and coding to turn ambitious AI research into reliable, scalable systems that reduce execution risk. He’s led teams through fundraising and growth cycles that collectively raised over $50M, and has repeatedly rebuilt or scaled AI platforms (LLMops, RAG pipelines, MLOps) for customers including KLM, SkinVision, and EvidenceHunt. Known for bringing order to early-stage chaos, he stays deliberately hands-on where delivery matters most and mentors engineers on production-grade practices. His background in cognitive psychology and a PhD-era focus on multimodal perception give him an uncommon perspective on building user-centered AI systems.
13 years of coding experience
15 years of employment as a software developer
W2010 Batch, W2010 Batch at Y Combinator
Master's final project, Knowledge based systems, Master's final project, Knowledge based systems at University of Portsmouth
Propedeuse, Psychology, Propedeuse, Psychology at Leiden University
Master of Science (M.Sc.), Knowledge based systems, Master of Science (M.Sc.), Knowledge based systems at Delft University of Technology
English, Dutch, German, French