Dealer Portal

Portfolio, Ventures & What I Build

Product/systems design that turns AI tech into business results

I'm Gil, an AI Product Design Engineer. I take complex workflows and turn them into AI-native systems, from discovery through shipped product.

My north star is the complete practitioner: the idea that the best AI-native products are shaped by one mind that can hold design, engineering, and AI logic simultaneously, not handed off through layers of interpretation.

When the same person who defines the workflow also builds the prototype and wires the AI, translation loss disappears. Teams move faster and the gap between what we designed and what shipped closes.

What I Bring

Enterprise Systems

Enterprise End-to-End Systems Builder

I've designed complex product ecosystems at enterprise scale — multi-product platforms, multi-role workflows, and long-running transformation initiatives as a solo designer. Systems thinking, not just screen design.

AI Product Engineering

AI-Native Product Design Engineer

I design and prototype AI-native product systems — RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, human-in-the-loop interfaces, structured outputs, and context-aware products. AI product work grounded in real systems, not demos.

Education & Evangelism

Technical Educator & Evangelist

I help people understand, adopt, and build with new technologies — through demos, workshops, tutorials, and product systems thinking. Teaching as adoption; adoption as product design.

A consistent practice across technology cycles

Tech Speaker Microsoft · 5,000+ developers

Co-founder 8th Light · Digital transformation

Startups + Enterprise Engine Yard · ThoughtWorks · Dev tools

Founder Skowak · Design engineering · Teaching

Enterprise Focus SunPower · Digital transformation · Ecosystems

AI Eng Focus Craftal · CareDash · Multi Agent Systems

Now Contextus · Craftal v.2 · AI-native systems

How I Work

I don’t start with AI. I start with how work actually happens.

The method works in cycles. Each one scoped small enough to prove value fast, wide enough to compound across the whole system.

Each cycle makes the next one faster, safer, and more valuable. Real workflows before AI use cases. No baseline, no proof. No proof, no scale.

01 — 03

Understand

Discover
Model
Baseline

Know before you build

04 — 06

Intervene

Design
Adapt & Script
Measure

Build small, prove value

07 — 08

Promote

Promote
Orchestrate

Make it durable and connected

09 — 10

Scale

Govern
Reuse & Expand

Govern and compound

Where most AI projects break down

Most AI failures aren't technical. They're structural: siloed teams, AI built without real workflows, ideas that can't survive contact with production. The method closes those gaps.

Design, engineering, and AI in separate rooms

Work lands in three different hands. Every handoff is a translation, and translation is where ideas lose fidelity.

One practitioner across all three layers

I lead design, write code, and wire the AI as one strategic partner across all three disciplines. No handoffs, no interpretation layers, no gap between what was designed and what shipped.

AI built without a workflow to plug into

Teams rush to launch LLM features with minimal ROI. Without mapping real workflows or solving real problems, the result is unused chatbots and shallow automation.

Bridge between LLMs and real work

I map how work actually happens first, then wire the AI stack into those real decisions. The result is automation that runs, not a chatbot no one uses.

Technical Toolkit

The full stack, from workflow model to deployed AI system.

My stack spans the full system: AI engineering (OpenAI & Anthropic APIs, LangChain, LangGraph, DSPy, RAG pipelines, vector stores, structured outputs, agent orchestration), frontend and prototyping (React, Angular, Vue, TypeScript, API-connected interfaces), backend and tooling (Python, FastAPI, Rails, PostgreSQL/pgvector, Docker), and product and design (systems modeling, workflow mapping, information architecture, interaction design, design engineering).

As a product generalist, I choose the right tool for each layer (design, front end, data, or model) so ideas travel from workflow model to shipped system without unnecessary handoffs.

Getting personal

Things I do when I'm not building

Still-life sketching, coastal hiking, PC teardowns, and slow travel through cities with good architecture.

I draw to stay sharp. I travel to stay curious. I take things apart to stay honest about how they work.

Back

A centralized dealer portal that connected announcements, accounts, opportunities, orders, resources, training, and sales operations.

Skills applied:

Visual Design Interaction Design Frontend Dev Research

SunPower dealers had to manage sales, accounts, resources, orders, training, and customer follow-up across fragmented tools and scattered information sources.

I helped design a centralized dealer portal that gave partners one place to manage pipeline activity, customer records, equipment orders, resources, and daily operational context.

The Problem

Dealers were selling solar through a fragmented operating model.

SunPower’s dealer network needed to move quickly, but their work depended on many different types of information: customer accounts, opportunities, order status, training materials, marketing resources, technical documents, and internal updates.

That work was not naturally contained in one place. Dealers had to jump between systems, documents, emails, internal references, and support channels to understand what needed attention.

The friction was not only about navigation. It affected confidence. When a dealer could not quickly find the latest resource, understand account status, check an order, or track pipeline progress, the experience felt slower and less reliable than the brand behind it.

diagram portal 01 — Dealer work was spread across too many disconnected operational touchpoints.

The core problem was that the dealer experience had grown into an ecosystem, but the interface still behaved like a collection of separate tools.

Solution

Designing the portal as a daily dealer workspace.

I approached the Dealer Portal as an operating workspace, not just a set of links.

The home screen needed to answer a practical question: “What should I pay attention to today?” That meant combining announcements, recent items, dashboards, marketing links, training, and useful shortcuts into a page dealers could use as a starting point.

sunpower dealer portal 01 — The home dashboard gave dealers one place to start each workday.

The important design decision was to make the portal feel useful immediately. Product announcements, recent records, marketing resources, dashboards, and training links were all surfaced without requiring the dealer to remember where each item lived.

This helped shift the portal from a static intranet page into a working surface for dealership activity.

Making performance visible without overwhelming the user

Dealers needed visibility into sales activity, but not every user needed a dense analytics tool.

The Sales Overview page translated performance into a few clear signals: active leads, closed deals, quarterly progress, pending versus closed activity, and upcoming tasks.

sunpower dealer portal 02 — Sales overview cards helped dealers track pipeline performance at a glance.

This gave dealers a fast read on momentum. The interface kept the reporting simple enough to scan, while still giving users a path to deeper reports when needed.

diagram portal 02 — The portal grouped dealer work into a clear, reusable product structure.

Turning account records into usable customer context

Account management was one of the most important portal workflows because it connected sales activity to real customer details.

The account list gave dealers a searchable, filterable way to find customer records by name, city, state, date, owner, and other operational details.

sunpower dealer portal 03 — Account lists made dealer customer records easier to search and manage.

The account detail view then brought together the information dealers needed to understand the customer relationship: account owner, status, email, appointment information, address, geolocation, and map context.

sunpower dealer portal 04 — Account details consolidated customer, appointment, address, and map information.

This mattered because dealer work often depends on context that is easy to lose. A customer record is not just a name. It carries sales stage, appointment timing, location, ownership, and follow-up history.

Supporting qualification and post-sale readiness

The qualification flow helped dealers capture whether a lead was ready to move forward.

It included customer motivation, how they heard about SunPower, property type, renovation plans, credit score, legal confirmation, stage, and other fields that shaped the next step.

sunpower dealer portal 06 — Qualification screens helped dealers capture customer readiness and sales context.

This was not glamorous UI work, but it was important. Qualification screens often determine whether downstream teams receive useful information or messy records that require cleanup.

The interface had to make structured data entry feel manageable while preserving the business logic needed by sales and operations.

Connecting pipeline, orders, and fulfillment visibility

The portal also needed to connect the sales pipeline to the operational work that followed.

Opportunities gave dealers visibility into deal stage, amount, close date, owner, contact, and account type. This helped sales teams understand what was moving, what was stuck, and what required follow-up.

sunpower dealer portal 08 — Opportunity tracking connected contacts, deal stage, ownership, and close dates.

Orders extended that visibility into equipment fulfillment. Dealers could track order counts, processing status, shipped orders, delivered orders, customer names, system details, dates, totals, and tracking information.

sunpower dealer portal 09 — Order tracking gave dealers visibility into equipment status and fulfillment.

Together, these views helped the portal connect the full commercial rhythm of dealer work: pipeline, customer records, opportunity movement, equipment orders, and follow-through.

Organizing resources around how dealers actually work

A dealer portal also succeeds or fails based on how easy it is to find supporting material.

The resources page grouped technical specifications, dealer program materials, marketing assets, financial products, and software help tutorials into clear visual cards.

sunpower dealer portal 10 — Resource cards organized sales, training, technical, and software materials.

This gave dealers a more reliable way to find the right reference at the right moment. Instead of hunting through scattered links or asking support for common materials, they could navigate by work category.

Outcome

The portal made dealer work easier to navigate and easier to trust.

The Dealer Portal gave SunPower partners a clearer operating layer for daily sales and account work. It reduced the feeling of fragmentation by bringing key dealer workflows into one branded, structured experience.

diagram portal 03 — Dealer activity moved from lead context to sales progress and fulfillment visibility.

Estimated impact based on project context:

Faster access to daily dealer information
Clearer account and opportunity management
Better visibility into orders and fulfillment
Easier access to training, marketing, and technical resources
Reduced dependency on scattered links and manual follow-up
Stronger continuity across the dealer sales ecosystem

The project was important because it treated the dealer experience as a product ecosystem, not a single workflow. It connected the everyday tools dealers needed into a more coherent operating environment.