The pace of change within IFS has never been more exciting. As we enter a period of rapid expansion in Industrial AI, the impact can be felt across everything we do – both internally and externally. The energy in our teams is remarkable, with employees eager to be part of this transformation and contribute to the next stage of our growth.

Curious to learn more about what it’s like to work at the center of this AI momentum, our HR team sat down with our Chief Technology Officer, Dan Matthews, to hear his perspective firsthand. In this interview, he shares his view on leading through this acceleration, the opportunities ahead, and what it means to be part of our journey during such a pivotal moment.

Meet Dan Matthews – CTO, R&D

Dan is Chief Technology Officer in R&D, based in our Gothenburg office in Sweden. He guides product and technology strategy in the leadership team, leads a team of senior architects and oversees experimental engineering through the company labs.

What excites you most about working with AI at IFS, and how does it make your day-to-day work engaging?

“We are living through one of the most intense times in the software industry. AI fundamentally changes the nature of what the industry does and what software can do for people. For me personally, this is the first time since university where I need to learn completely new theory. Large language models, embeddings, all these things, that is net new science. It doesn’t happen every day or even every decade. For many of us, this is completely new, and we actually have to go and learn it.”

How does working with AI at IFS allow you to grow professionally and develop new skills?

“Learning about the AI science, of course, but it also brings in other dimensions. It highlights legal aspects and ethical issues in a whole new way. Even though I have learned sales, legal, and enterprise work in my career, AI brings a completely new perspective on these areas. For many of us, these are new domains to explore, and we are bringing in people with different backgrounds to help navigate them.”

What makes the team and company culture at IFS a great environment for tackling AI challenges?

“We are not a technology company, we are an applications and solutions company. Many tech companies build AI to serve other software companies. We use AI to serve real industries – on factory floors, out in the field, even in the middle of a snowstorm. We need to understand and prove how the AI reasoned, why it took the actions it did, because if something goes wrong, we have to know. We have a very short distance between R&D and customers, and we’re out there talking to them weekly. That closeness gives us a real advantage in applying AI where it truly works.”

Can you share a moment when you felt proud of the impact of your AI work?

“About a month ago, during our Industrial X Unleashed event, we demonstrated an end-to-end process from predicting problems with industrial equipment, figuring out what is going wrong, executing the fix, and learning from to improve our institutionalized knowledge. We showed five different types of AI used 15 times in half an hour. That helped others understand that AI must be built directly into real workflows, not as a side prototype. I’m proud of the impact, and also of the team that visualized and delivered it, everybody who worked on all these applications and the demonstration itself.”

What would you tell someone considering joining to work with AI in IFS?

“It’s a shifting landscape right now and we are moving faster than most companies, while staying grounded in the customer’s reality. Every time there is a big shift like this, new players will emerge and some older ones may disappear. If you want to see AI make a real impact, not just in office environments, but out in the field, on factory floors, in mines, up the power lines – then this is the place to be! This is happening now, over the next few years. This is the time.”