Sjoerd Geistdorfer · Forward Deployed AI Engineer, London
I build AI systems that do real work, safely.
scroll · the long way here
2015
The floor
A decade of five-star hospitality. I learned to read a room, fix what is wrong, and stay calm at 2am, long before I wrote any code.
2018
The first tools
Somewhere between shifts, the building started: spreadsheets and small tools that made the floor run smoother. The habit never left.
2021
The platform
Manual Excel nights became an automated reporting platform serving 150–200 clients. The reporting job quietly became a data engineering one.
2025
The fleet
Now agents do the shipping: backlogs worked unattended, output verified with evidence, platforms that watch themselves overnight.
now
Forward deployed AI engineer.
The next chapter happens inside your business.
Sjoerd Geistdorfer · Forward Deployed AI Engineer, London
I build AI systems that do real work, safely.
Most businesses use AI as a chat window. I embed it in the operating fabric of a company: agents that work a ticket backlog, test their own output in live cloud environments, and keep overnight data platforms running. Built on four-plus years of production data engineering with Microsoft Fabric, Azure, Power BI, and Python.
2015
The floor
A decade of five-star hospitality. Night manager, guest experience, front office. I learned to read a room, fix what's wrong, and stay calm at 2am, long before I wrote any code.
2018
The first tools
Somewhere between shifts, the building started: spreadsheets and small tools that made the floor run smoother. Nobody asked for them. The habit never left.
2021
The platform
At a hospitality feedback analytics company I turned manual Excel nights into an automated reporting platform serving 150–200 clients, and taught myself Python, SQL, and cloud engineering to do it. The reporting job quietly became a data engineering one.
2025
The fleet
Now agents do the shipping: backlogs worked unattended, output verified with evidence, platforms that watch themselves overnight. A Level 7 AI Data Specialist apprenticeship made it official. Daily practice keeps it current.
2015 luxury hospitality 2018 first tools 2021 reporting platform 2025 AI systems & workflows now forward deployed AI engineer
The next chapter happens inside your business.
Most AI spend dies between the demo and production.
95% of enterprise generative AI pilots deliver zero measurable P&L impact, against 30 to 40 billion dollars invested.
of companies abandoned most of their AI initiatives in 2025, up from 17% the year before.
of generative AI projects are abandoned after proof of concept: costs, data quality, unclear value.
I work in the 5%.
Delivered, in production, measured.
Nobody sent me here.
I spent a decade in five-star hospitality and client-facing work: reading rooms, absorbing complaints, staying calm while things went wrong around me. The curiosity about the data underneath all of that was mine alone. No restructure, no manager's nudge; I followed my own interest out of one industry and into engineering.
That interest never switched off. I completed a Level 7 AI Data Specialist apprenticeship in 2025 alongside the day job, and I study new models, techniques, and workflows every day, then put them to work the same week. On paper my title is still data engineer; titles move at the speed of HR, and the field moves daily. The work on this site is where the two catch up.
And I work in the open. Every system here is written up as a case study, and video walkthroughs of the tools are on their way: knowledge shared is how I'd want to be hired.
Testimonial and where to start
Peter Konopka, Head of Data and AI (direct manager)"I would confidently recommend Sjoerd to any organisation looking for a competent data professional who delivers real business value, not just pipelines and dashboards."