Hi, I'm Dmitri. I design AI‑native products and then I build them.
I lead design at a 30-year-old retail tech company, co-founded a knowledge OS for founders that I'm shipping the front-end for, and orchestrated a multi-agent research platform in six weeks that I then chose to shut down. There's a story behind each of those. Scroll on.
- 23,521documents
- 18connected vaults
- 511agent runs
- 456UI states shipped
- 100%answers sourced
Three roles. One way of working.
Director of design by day. Co-founder by morning. The roles look different on paper, but they're the same instinct: design things that compound, then build the systems that make them compound.
I'm growing my replacements.
The systems are the visible part. The part I care more about is the bench — both of my current leads are being developed into roles bigger than the ones they hold now. If the work only scales while I'm in the room, I haven't really built anything.
Leads I'm developing into leadership
A product design lead I'm growing into a people manager, and a user research lead stepping up to run research as a function for the company. Both are being handed scope deliberately, not incidentally.
Designers led at Kroger — 100% retention
A team of four at any one time, five people through it over three years — 100% retention through multiple reorgs. During the credit reinvention I picked up another 2 designers and a researcher on dotted line, taking the working group to eight.
Hires into the design org
One designer hired and onboarded into a department that had a single person in it when I arrived. A second search is in flight now.
Built the function, not just the output
I inherited one designer, no process beyond accessibility, and a nascent component library. The process, the hiring bar and the research practice now exist without me holding them up.
I fixed the department, not just the projects.
High attrition and inconsistent delivery across a research and design organization. I journey-mapped our own onboarding, analyzed exit interviews, and synthesized the department’s pain points to find the systemic gaps — process, role clarity, project scoping. Then I led a cross-functional team to build the fix: a Center of Enablement with reusable templates, agile training, and modular project-planning tools.
- 2×sprint-one velocity
- −1 → +2employee satisfaction
- 1Center of Enablement, still in use
He gave me opportunities to practice team leadership, trusting me to guide projects and coach peers. He brought in frameworks and tools for growth that went far beyond the typical KPIs — it made me want to take ownership of my career in a way no other leader had inspired before.
Dmitri leads with a calm, steady presence that gives his team the confidence to take risks and grow. He invests deeply in coaching, and balances empathy with high expectations. Under his leadership, a young team quickly matured and began delivering at a higher level.
Five cases, strongest first.
Each one below runs in narrative order across three acts — Build, Think, Scale. If you only have a minute, start here: these are ordered by what I'd want you to see, not by when they happened.
I gave the company a brain.
A connected knowledge network for a 30-year-old retail platform — team vaults feeding a shared world model, with every answer traceable to a source document.
23,521 documents · 18 vaults · 511 agent runs Read the case 02Act I · BuildI made design AI-native.
Rebuilt the design process around provenance — an 8-phase pipeline where every screen shipped knows exactly where it came from, feeding a ~1,000-screen storefront redesign.
456 UI states · 82 logged decisions · ~30% dev time cut Read the case 03Act II · ThinkI led design for a $1.35B retail profit engine.
Principal design lead on Kroger's credit reinvention — research to strategy to blueprint, aligning 10+ teams on what problem was actually being solved.
150+ touchpoints · 9 blueprints · 8 designers & researchers led Read the case 04Act I · BuildI'm designing it. Then I'm building it.
Co-founded a local-first knowledge OS. I own everything you see and click — designing the front-end, then orchestrating the React and Electron build myself.
Concept to shipped MVP in ~2 months Read the case 05Act I · BuildI built it. Users loved it. I shut it down anyway.
A multi-agent research platform, shipped in six weeks with billing and onboarding. The users worked. The product worked. It was making people think less — so I killed it.
6 weeks to full SaaS · shut down on principle Read the caseBefore all that.
Consulting and enterprise service design. Shorter versions, same instinct — find the systemic problem, build the thing that fixes it for everyone.
Reimagining the experience for 300,000+ agents
Led a 16-week discovery with a team of five researchers, surfacing 126 pain points and 35 service gaps across frontstage and backstage operations. Journey mapping, service blueprinting and competitive audit fed a future-state experience, then aligned stakeholders on an MVP focused on onboarding.
Ethical GenAI workshop series
Led a team hosting a three-part workshop for 30 participants — demystifying generative AI, mapping where it actually helped, and writing an ethical roadmap for putting it into the product design process. This was the groundwork that made everything I’ve built since possible inside a large org.
Agile transformation after a public system failure
Co-created an Agile Transformation Accelerator supporting an at-risk legacy data migration, gave hands-on product and scrum leadership, built a reusable process library and coached teams toward autonomy. Outcome: improved velocity, an approved authority to operate, and a playbook now used across the organization.