Groningen, the Netherlands · working internationally (NL & PT)
Ying Hao Ma
Technology leadership, interim & fractional.
I’m the founder and director of YTEC, a custom software agency in Groningen. For twenty years I’ve built and run business-critical systems for mid-market industry and healthcare. I take on a small number of interim, fractional and advisory engagements in technology, product and AI.
I'm selective about this: advisory and consultancy first, and a heavier interim seat only when it's really interesting.
Leadership: advisory to interim.
CIO, digital and product leadership. Usually advising or fractional; in the seat when the problem warrants it. Roadmaps, teams, vendors, budgets, and the judgment calls in between.
Product & delivery.
From strategy to shipped software. Nineteen years of running an agency that builds systems companies actually depend on: planning, integrations, dashboards, e-commerce, data platforms.
AI, pragmatically.
Deterministic where it matters, models where they earn their seat. From team adoption to agentic systems that survive production. More on how I think about this below.
With my team at YTEC I also provide technical due diligence for acquirers and investors.
My view on AI is simple: it amplifies the person using it. Skilled hands get wonderful things out of it. Careless hands get a mess, delivered faster than ever. So it should be treated with care.
In practice that means the model is the smallest part of the system. I build a deterministic spine that is checkpointed, auditable and fails loudly, and I give language models a few contained seats where they are genuinely better than code: classifying, summarising, judging edge cases. They never act unsupervised in anything that sends messages, moves money or makes promises. I run my own assistant in production this way.
The same logic applies inside a development team. AI is a tactical accelerator, great for prototypes, scaffolding and operational work. Architecture, production software and the strategic calls stay with engineers who own the consequences. Teams that work like this ship faster and break less.
I also write about this in my Notes.
I founded YTEC in 2007. Today we're a team of 26, building and maintaining business-critical software for manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, OEM, printing, energy and healthcare. The unglamorous systems companies actually run on.
In 2022 and 2023 I was interim CIO at VanMoof, sitting in the management team with responsibility for software and data: the consumer app, bike backend, e-commerce, ERP, and the internal production and repair tooling.
Other engagements include several years advising the executive team of Erasmus MC on IT strategy and digitalisation, development and team leadership for Amsterdam UMC, the Netherlands Forensic Institute and Victron Energy, and an IT programme management role in security printing, from international lottery tickets to national school exams.
Before all that I co-founded Lightyear Athletics and grew Europe’s largest Brazilian jiu-jitsu and grappling webshop from zero to seven-figure revenue, with our own warehouse and worldwide fulfilment. I raised growth funding along the way and exited when the business matured.
Away from work I’m rarely fully away from it: there’s always a new project or idea on the bench, home automation included. Beyond that: chess, playing it and sponsoring young talent; board games; strength and cardio after years of competitive Brazilian jiu-jitsu; a keen interest in longevity; and the occasional investment in a software business.
Want to know what I or my company can do for you?
Send me a message. I read everything myself.