Lavanda, the award-winning property management technology platform powering flexible rental strategies for the world’s leading operators of institutional real estate, today announced a major strategic investment in its Product and Engineering teams with the appointment of three senior technology leaders.
The move underpins Lavanda’s ambition to lead the industry into an AI-powered future, equipping operators with advanced automation and intelligence tools that transform how residential accommodation, and specifically student accommodation, is delivered and managed.
As part of this investment, Vicky Stephens joins Lavanda as Director of Engineering from Builder.ai, bringing deep technical leadership and proven expertise in scaling enterprise AI platforms. Alex Boyle also joins as Senior Product Manager, and Ed Lepedus as Senior AI Engineer. The new hires will be integrated into a specialist AI-focused product and engineering unit dedicated to building next-generation capabilities across the Lavanda platform.
This investment marks a significant expansion of Lavanda Labs, the company’s strategic innovation hub launched back in January 2025 to pioneer AI-first solutions for the global accommodation sector. Lavanda Labs unites engineering, product and data science teams to rapidly develop, test, and deploy cutting-edge technology that helps operators stay ahead in a fast-changing digital landscape.
“Our mission is clear: to become the leading PMS for accommodation operators across Europe, powering an agentic AI future.
“By investing in exceptional talent and building a dedicated AI innovation unit within Lavanda Labs, we’re putting this vision into action. This team will spearhead our development of new products, tooling and infrastructure that will enable Lavanda OpenPMS to fundamentally reinvent the resident experience and drive transformative operational efficiencies for our partners.”
Fred Lerche-Lerchenborg, CEO, Lavanda
This year, Lavanda celebrates ten years in business, and recently marked the milestone by sharing that it has achieved robust, sustainable profitability. The business is optimally positioned to double down on its commitment to technology innovation, customer value and enterprise scalability.
“Needless to say, the potential for AI to reshape residential real estate is absolutely immense resulting in more personalised and interactive digital experiences, smarter revenue management strategies, the radical automation of complex workflows, and an overall reduction in the cost-to-serve. The opportunity to build deeply integrated AI capabilities into a platform already trusted by the industry’s biggest players is extraordinary. I’m excited to lead this next chapter of Lavanda’s journey.”
Vicky Stephens, Director of Engineering, Lavanda
