Rodrigo Coutinho, Co-founder and AI Product Manager at OutSystems – Interview Series

Rodrigo Coutinho is a co-founder and AI Product Manager at OutSystems. Since co-founding the company in 2001, he has had a decisive participation in the design and vision of the product, in particular, its architecture and visual language. From day one, he focused on developing innovative and pragmatic ways to increase the speed of delivery […] The post Rodrigo Coutinho, Co-founder and AI Product Manager at OutSystems – Interview Series appeared first on Unite.AI.

Apr 2, 2025 - 18:22

Rodrigo Coutinho, Co-founder and AI Product Manager at OutSystems – Interview Series

Rodrigo Coutinho is a co-founder and AI Product Manager at OutSystems. Since co-founding the company in 2001, he has had a decisive participation in the design and vision of the product, in particular, its architecture and visual language. From day one, he focused on developing innovative and pragmatic ways to increase the speed of delivery of enterprise applications. He is now responsible for doubling down on this goal by using AI to increase productivity by an order of magnitude.

OutSystems is a low-code platform powered by generative AI that helps organizations rapidly build, manage, and evolve enterprise-grade applications. It enables faster development of mission-critical software, encourages collaboration between IT and business teams, and supports scalable, cloud-native architecture—streamlining the entire software lifecycle while reducing backlogs.

How is AI transforming the low-code development landscape?

New AI tools are bringing two significant transformations to low-code: productivity and communication methods. Generative AI is helping low-code developers build applications faster and with better quality. Models are trained using architectural best practices, which ensures the suggestions presented to the developers are sound. In addition, generative AI is also used in other parts of the lifecycle, like app design, app validation, and staging, accelerating the rate from idea to app even faster.

The second big transformation, a consequence of the first one, is that the communication between IT and business will change dramatically. With the ability to use AI and low-code to create the first version of the application in minutes and huge changes in seconds, the application can be made together with the business. Instead of communicating through requirements documents, IT can show an actual running application in real-time.

This will transform the role of IT, bringing developers to the table, and enabling innovation to spur from the conjunction of business with technology.

What are the key advantages of AI-powered low-code development over traditional coding approaches?

Unlike traditional code with AI, low-code platforms powered by AI – like OutSystems Mentor – overcome key challenges such as orphaned code, poor code quality, and lack of transparency and explainability. This is possible because low-code tools like OutSystems use high-level models that abstract the complexities of code, making it feasible to validate the generated application to ensure that it works and follows best practices.

What challenges do organizations face when implementing AI-driven low-code platforms?

There are a few things that organizations need to be aware of when choosing and implementing these low-code powered platforms. First, look for a platform that uses AI to enhance the entire SDLC, not only code generation. Second, think about how the tool can help change how we work. For instance, with Mentor, OutSystems aims to change the relationship between IT and the business, something that will have a much deeper impact on organizations beyond just increasing developer productivity.

Finally, staying compliant can be a challenge for organizations using AI-driven low-code platforms. Developer teams must remember not to speed past audits for compliance red flags or potential security vulnerabilities and always involve legal teams, particularly when working with customers or sensitive data. That’s why OutSystems has already adjusted for this, providing a framework that automatically ensures data governance and regulatory compliance.

What sets OutSystems apart from other low-code development platforms?

OutSystems is designed to deliver the best developer experience with the most sophisticated AI and generative AI toolset in the low-code market. The OutSystems platform powers AI-driven development for unparalleled speed and scale with AI tools to address security vulnerabilities, technical debt, and other maintenance issues. Our automated AI agent builder allows IT teams to easily build GenAI-infused apps without advanced GenAI expertise.

OutSystems is also the only LCAP platform that can be used in any use case, providing unparalleled performance and scale that can support even the most unpredictable and inconsistent traffic. When you build on OutSystems, you’re building apps that are —and will always be —yours, with easy integration with other technologies and existing infrastructures, and without walls or limitations on functionalities.

How does AI help enterprises resolve the ‘buy vs. build’ dilemma in software development?

AI and low-code platforms are making custom-built software more accessible, cost-effective and adaptable, giving enterprises new opportunities to build their own platforms at a fraction of the traditional cost. Furthermore, AI-powered low-code development platforms allow you to build your tech stack much faster using fewer resources.

The reality is that AI is shifting the balance of power here – companies that have previously had to invest in costly customizations of off-the-shelf software, often sacrificing control and visibility for financial reasons, now have access to new avenues to build software that works specifically for them.

What is OutSystems Mentor, and how does it leverage AI to automate the full software development lifecycle (SDLC)?

OutSystems Mentor is the industry’s first full software development lifecycle (SDLC) digital worker, enabling app generation, delivery, and monitoring, all powered by low-code and GenAI. Mentor introduces a true “shift-left” approach to app creation, enabling developers to start earlier in the process. Beginning with discovery and rapid prototyping, IT teams can validate ideas and refine initial designs before full-scale development. Users simply describe the app they need or their vision, and Mentor generates an initial version with front-end functionality, data models, and embedded business logic. By automating app prototyping and ensuring best-in-class code quality, Mentor redefines the SDLC.

What differentiates Mentor from other AI-powered low-code development tools?

Mentor transforms software development and management workflows into a major competitive differentiator. Using AI-driven app generation, optimization, automated quality checks, and agents all under the governance of centralized IT, Mentor boosts developer productivity while ensuring applications meet the highest quality standards. Furthermore, Mentor allows this to take place at a speed previously thought impossible, enabling teams to do more with their time and adjust as needed throughout development.

Unlike traditional code with generative AI, Mentor overcomes key challenges such as orphaned code, poor code quality, and lack of transparency and explainability. It ensures teams maintain control, reduce technical debt, and fully harness the potential of AI-driven software development, making it a smarter, more efficient choice for modern, rapid application development.

Mentor is secure by design to meet all data governance requirements and standards to ensure compliance and security. Its model-driven development allows for easier maintainability by focusing on models rather than code, ultimately empowering developers to focus on the projects at hand.

How does Mentor’s AI-driven approach improve governance and security compared to traditional GenAI tools?

With Mentor, teams can validate and maintain applications through AI-powered code reviews, ensuring all applications meet the highest possible standards for development, security, performance, architecture and long-term maintainability. By implementing these reviews from the beginning, developers can maintain data governance and visibility at every step of the process.

Mentor also proactively and regularly checks for issues that might suggest a compromise in quality or security once an app is in the production environment. All critical aspects of these applications – such as architecture, security, performance, and maintenance – can be closely monitored and checked for best coding practices and quality throughout the development cycle. At OutSystems, we place paramount importance on enterprise security and recognize how important it is to safeguard our platform and the universe of applications built by our customers, ultimately empowering our customers to build secure applications, leveraging OutSystems technology and cloud-based services without requiring deep technical expertise in security.

How does Mentor's AI architecture orchestrate multiple agents to accelerate application development?

Mentor is a digital worker: a non-human, AI-powered team member trained to complete or support sequential tasks and even entire processes. It uses a combination of generative AI prompts, natural language processing, leading AI models, and machine learning to automate tedious, disparate, and complex processes and augment the work of humans.

Mentor utilizes multiple agents, each specializing in a specific aspect of application development, to rapidly generate fully functional applications by collaborating on different parts of the project simultaneously, significantly reducing development time while maintaining quality by leveraging the strengths of each agent throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC).

How does OutSystems plan to evolve its AI capabilities in the coming years?

At OutSystems, our AI strategy is centered around using AI and machine learning to accelerate iterative application development, improving security, performance and agility, and building GenAI-powered applications to accelerate transformation. As we expand our product offerings through Mentor and our AI Agent Builder, we’ll continue to tap into GenAI and agentic AI to empower IT teams to innovate without limits.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit OutSystems.

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