Tejas Kumar

Tejas Kumar is an AI Engineer at IBM, bestselling author and experienced technology speaker recognised for making complex developments in artificial intelligence accessible to technical and business audiences. Based in Berlin, Tejas is the author of Fluent React and host of the ConTejas Code podcast. Having delivered more than 80 recorded talks at over 60 events, he combines extensive public speaking experience with practical expertise across AI engineering, software development and developer relations. His current work at IBM encompasses areas including large language models, retrieval augmented generation, the Model Context Protocol, small language models and multi agent systems.

Tejas began building on the web at a young age and delivered his first public talk at TEDxYouth@Doha in 2012. His career subsequently developed through engineering and developer focused positions, including roles with Contiamo, Vercel, G2i and Spotify. He was exploring artificial intelligence before the recent generative AI boom, building a chatbot with Brain.js in 2018. He later joined Xata as Director of Developer Relations, where he built its developer relations function, before establishing Tejas Kumar e.U. and continuing to develop his profile across technology, engineering and developer education. His subsequent work included DataStax, which was acquired by IBM, leading to his current position.

Alongside his engineering career, Tejas has established an international profile as an author, podcaster, investor and conference speaker. Fluent React became an O’Reilly bestseller, while ConTejas Code provides a platform for long form conversations about software and technology. As an angel investor, he has backed six early stage startups, three of which have since been acquired by CoreWeave, the Linux Foundation and Supabase. His speaking portfolio spans events across Europe, North America, Asia and Africa. At AI Engineer Europe 2026, he delivered Harnesses in AI: A Deep Dive, examining how tools, guardrails, context management and verification can make AI agents more reliable.

When hired as an AI speaker, Tejas brings first hand experience of developing and working with AI technologies, giving his talks a strong foundation in practical application.. His expertise covers AI agents, agent harnesses, large language models, retrieval augmented generation and the infrastructure required to create more reliable AI systems. His ability to demonstrate these concepts through practical examples helps audiences understand not only what emerging AI technologies can do, but how they work and where their limitations lie. Combined with more than a decade of public speaking experience and a career communicating technology to developers, Tejas offers organisations a technically informed and engaging perspective on how AI is evolving and how it can be applied effectively.