Jan Veldeman was born on April 25th 1980 in Leuven. After he finished high-school he started the studies in computer science. Soon after, he was already involved in the start-up of the open source robot control software project Orocos.

Next to his preferences for real-time embedded systems his interests are towards methodologies for programming languages. This was also the subject of his final thesis for his masters of science degree in 2004 from the Catholic University of Leuven.

Right after finishing his degree he started as embedded software developer in Linux and eCos at Mind N.V. After Mind and Essensium joined forces he assumed the new role as customer interface and started his career as sales manager embedded software.