Dominika Michalska

About

I help companies build AI that people can trust and that delivers measurable value. I care about what a system decides alone, what goes back to a person, and who owns the outcome when it’s wrong.

How I work

I learn by doing. I build working prototypes myself, run experiments side by side, keep what holds up, and ask people and models where I’m wrong.

What I bring

A view across product, design and operations. I started by founding a boutique e-commerce agency, where I built and launched two online stores from scratch and developed them after launch. Then I moved into UX research and design, and from there into AI product management. At an AI startup and at a high-tech software house with clients in San Francisco, I have built AI products using AI tools and led the teams behind them.

People who work on the same problems. Through Product Cafe I know many product people in Poland, and I talk with practitioners about how they really work with AI and what they measure.

Prototypes that produce evidence. I build to find out what works, record the results and publish what they show, including what they do not prove yet.

With people

I try to turn a conflict into an experiment: what would have to be true for someone to change their mind? A founder I worked with wanted to start selling first, for sound reasons: revenue pressure and fast validation. We tested a prototype with users instead, and it showed that the key feature was different from the one we had assumed. We built that feature before selling.

I bring designers and engineers in early, and I ask one question: what is the key user problem we are trying to solve? One of my sayings is: we need the cake before we can frost it. It is about priorities, and about starting from the essence.

Background

Five years in product. I have worked and experimented with AI since 2022, and I have been building AI products since early 2024. I founded a boutique e-commerce agency and worked there as a product manager, then worked in UX research and design, and then built AI products at an AI startup and a software house.

I am strongest in product judgment, evaluation and production delivery: LLM evaluation (the translation evals), eval-set design (the planner) and human-in-the-loop design (the grant verifier).

Outside work

I co-organise Product Cafe in Poznań: I find the speakers, work out the theme of each event and host it together with a panel. I also cook.

From people who worked with me

“She actively involved engineers in the product discovery process, valued technical input, and was always open to re-evaluating priorities when new information emerged.”
Working with engineers. Engineer on my team
“We completed everything the client asked for and even went beyond their expectations. Every milestone was delivered on time. […] Her communication was always clear and we always knew what was expected of us.”
Delivering an AI project. AI engineer on my team
“She has a great ability to steer the team in the right direction without letting us get lost in the details, while still making sure that the work gets done to a high standard.”
Steering the team. Front-end developer on my team

These are excerpts from recommendations on my LinkedIn profile, where you can read them in full.

Trust-Critical AI

Notes on building AI products, testing decisions and learning from what goes wrong. Sent when I have something worth sharing.

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