Turn a chaotic R&D team into predictable delivery.

He is an Engineering Director and Agile AI Practitioner who takes AI projects from demo to production: monitored, documented and honestly reported. He works as an interim engineering leader and as an independent auditor of AI delivery.

Organizations with capable engineering teams that keep missing dates; teams stuck in AI PoC purgatory; boards and investors who need verification before a funding tranche or go-live; and teams about to sign an AI or software vendor without a technical way to compare offers.

Regulated, high-stakes environments: banking and AML/KYC compliance, fintech fraud prevention, industrial machine vision (Industry 4.0), and Voice AI SaaS. Recent production work includes a greenfield AML platform, an MLOps platform for computer vision, sub-second fraud scoring, and a multi-tenant Voice AI platform.

Most engagements start with a Watermelon Check: a fixed-scope, 5-day independent read on whether your AI project is really on track. It is the low-threshold first step, and it often becomes the basis for an Interim Engineering Director engagement or an Agile AI Transformation if the project needs fixing. Book a 20-minute call and we scope the right entry point together.

Watermelon Check: 5 days. Vendor Due Diligence: 3–4 weeks. Interim Engineering Director: predictable delivery dates within 90 days. Agile AI Transformation: first model in production within 90–120 days.

A project reported as “green” (on track) on the outside but “red” (in trouble) on the inside. Bargiel's Watermelon Check delivers a concise written true status in 5 days, exposing the specific risks being hidden.

I diagnose, I don't fix: fixing is a separate Interim Engineering Director or transformation scope. It is not a full security audit or a penetration test. The read is based on conversations with the team and selected artifacts, not a full repository audit, and it carries no deployment commitments. A 5-day scope surfaces the material risks visible in metrics, artifacts and team interrogation; it is deliberately not exhaustive.

A Watermelon Check is a fixed-scope, 5-day diagnosis: it tells you the true status and the hidden risks, but it does not fix them. Fixing is a separate Interim Engineering Director or Agile AI Transformation engagement. The Check is the low-threshold first step, and it often defines the scope of the work that follows.

An Industrial Definition of Done from regulated, high-stakes environments (banking, fintech, Industry 4.0). “Done” is not an impressive demo. It is a model running in production, passing an EU AI Act review, and maintainable by someone other than its author.

A model is not done at 99% accuracy in a notebook. It is done when it is wrapped in a secure API, documented, monitored for drift, integrated into the production or factory process, and able to pass an EU AI Act review by someone other than its author. It is the bar I bring from regulated, high-stakes delivery.

AI is probabilistic, not deterministic, so sprints are structured to validate hypotheses and manage risk, not to ship features against a rigid plan. I use Agile as a risk-management tool that turns open-ended R&D experiments into a predictable delivery schedule, with a Definition of Done, monitoring and Quality Gates.

I handle the engineering side of readiness: logging and traceability, post-deployment monitoring, data lineage, Quality Gates, and human oversight built into the architecture. The legal classification of your system and the formal conformity assessment sit with your lawyer or compliance function. I make sure the architecture technically does what the regulation requires; I do not give legal opinions.

I don't replace them. I install delivery, enforce an Industrial Definition of Done, and hand the function back stronger than I found it. Where a lead already exists, I work with them on the system, not instead of them. A 5-day Watermelon Check is a low-cost way to check before you decide.

Engagements are time-boxed and documented, with handover built in, so the work survives the engagement, not just me. The Industrial Definition of Done and Quality Gates make delivery reproducible, not locked in one person's head. For continuity I draw on a vetted senior network and can bring in a qualified lead to take the project over.

Yes. Services are delivered worldwide, in English and Polish.