Tessa Hendriks

Senior .NET developer, AI specialist

is a senior .NET developer and AI specialist with more than twenty years of experience working on complex software systems. She has been using Azure AI Services such as OCR, Form Recognizer and LLM based solutions since before the current AI wave took over the industry. She is known for delivering results in situations where others expect long timelines or low feasibility. In one of her recent projects, she built a fully working AI powered solution in six weeks for a challenge that had originally been estimated at one year. This led to several follow up assignments, including a transformation project for a mixed engineering team with offshore developers, internal staff and external consultants working on a large and mission critical .NET and Azure platform. Her work focuses on three areas: improving team communication and psychological safety, using AI to analyse and optimise DevOps processes, and modernising codebases with practical and intelligent tooling. Outside of tech, Tessa has a background that strongly shapes her approach to leadership and decision making. She is a world level jiujitsu referee and the first woman in the Netherlands to earn the highest international arbitrage license. Years of performing under pressure, making split second decisions and staying calm in high stakes environments influence the way she works with teams and approaches engineering challenges. As one of the few women in her IT education and early career, she learned how to navigate environments that were not designed with her in mind. Her talks combine engineering depth with honest stories about bias, resilience and the human side of software development. She aims to make the industry more inclusive by sharing real experiences and practical lessons. She believes software development is a deeply creative profession, and that AI, when used thoughtfully, can make teams stronger and software better.