Franco De Waal

AI Systems Engineer

About

I build software systems with an emphasis on clarity, reliability, and long-term maintainability.

My work focuses on AI-driven automation, backend architecture, and production-grade integrations. I design workflows that reduce complexity and scale without excessive abstraction.

Currently working on conversational AI orchestration, journey-based automation, and analytics for dealership platforms.

Interested in problems that sit at the intersection of engineering constraints, decision-making systems, and practical automation.

Principles

Selected Work

AI Consultant — DealerStudio
Feb 2026 - Present
Architected and shipped a visual builder for AI-guided customer conversations end-to-end: data model, backend orchestration, a React editor with an embedded AI assistant, and analytics on conversation outcomes. Built the safety layer behind a production conversational AI system, guarding live customer interactions against unsupported claims and incorrect behavior.
AI Agent Engineer — GrowFactory
Jul 2024 - Feb 2026
Built and deployed AI-driven services integrated into complex business workflows. Led end-to-end delivery of full-stack features with multi-vendor AI model integration (OpenAI, Gemini, OpenRouter).
Technical Product Manager — SeekTruth
Jan 2023 - 2025
Developed Chrome extension for real-time political bias analysis. Created AI algorithms for detecting political leanings and contextual framing in news articles.
Lead Software Engineer — Midnight Programming
Feb 2020 - Sep 2022
Created software solutions in C#, C++, and Python. Scaled from 0 to 3000+ users while leading a team of three.

Research

Machine-Native Agent Communication
Preprint — Jun 2026
Tests whether agents should default to natural language when talking to each other. Compares plain, terse, JSON-structured, and compressed protocols across two model generations, structured formats cut token cost with lower variance, but protocol design mattered more than the format chosen. Read the paper

Technical Focus

Languages

Python
TypeScript
JavaScript
SQL

Systems

FastAPI
PostgreSQL
Docker
Redis

AI/ML

LangChain
RAG Systems
Vector DBs
LLM Integration

Contact

francotdw@gmail.com GitHub LinkedIn