Gün Karagöz
Curiosity monger, builder of things, breaker of limits. Part product thinker, part data whisperer. I turn ideas into action — faster than most people can draft a to-do list.
Reston, VA
Summary
Forward-deployed engineer with 15+ years in enterprise technical delivery, including 8 years embedded with Fortune 500 telecom accounts building solutions inside customer production environments. Translates ambiguous, high-value business problems into scoped technical solutions with explicit success criteria, builds against the customer’s real infrastructure constraints, and owns delivery through production.
Experience
Product Delivery Lead — Forward-Deployed Solutions & Enablement
P.I. Works · Dec 2018 – Present · Reston, VA
- Embedded full-time inside Tier-1 telecom operator environments as technical lead, deploying solutions directly in the client’s production environment within their infrastructure
- Ran technical discovery with enterprise stakeholders to reframe ambiguous operational problems into scoped, buildable solutions, then delivered 100+ implementations of an AI-driven analytics and automation platform across national-scale infrastructure
- Built automation scripts, data pipelines, and working prototypes to prove feasibility against live client data before formal scoping — work engineering then productized, creating 50+ account expansion opportunities
- Built the client-facing analytics layer: hundreds of BI dashboards and scheduled notifications over high-volume live operations, improving user engagement by 35%
- Built and ran the client enablement program: 30 hours of live training plus a 50-hour video portal serving 500+ technical end users, reducing weekly follow-up meetings by 60%
- Delivered executive-level technical presentations translating performance data into client business decisions
Founder
Colaptes · Jul 2023 – Present · Reston, VA
- Build, ship, operate, and sell a live analytics SaaS with paying customers – sole ownership of architecture, data pipeline, deployment, monitoring, and incident response
- Integrated the Amazon Selling Partner API into an interactive analytics product that turns raw marketplace data into operational decisions for sellers
- In progress: LLM-powered insight layer – natural-language questions over customer commerce data, with every answer grounded in a displayed query rather than generated prose
- Building the evaluation harness alongside it: golden question set, accuracy scored against known-correct answers, refusal behavior, and latency and cost tracked per call
Co-Founder, CTO
AI Project Academy · May 2025 – Feb 2026 · Reston, VA
- Education Center — Boutique educational incubator dedicated to empowering children aged 8–12 to address real-world challenges using artificial intelligence. Project-based learning experiences that integrate AI tools with ethical innovation and critical thinking.
Co-Founder
Pavotail · Jun 2020 – Present · Reston, VA
- E-Commerce — Developing and maintaining the eCommerce website on WooCommerce, etsy and conducting online marketing activities.
Product Manager
P.I. Works · Jan 2015 – Dec 2018 · Istanbul, Turkey
Global Mobile Network Automation Solution Provider — Led product development through customer insights and market analysis, fostering cross-functional collaboration for the successful launch and optimization of innovative products, driving global business growth.
- Collaborated with engineering, network services, technical support, pre-sales, and marketing to enhance product strategy and quality, ultimately elevating the overall customer experience.
- Directed product development, creating user story maps and detailed requirements, including algorithm flow diagrams and prototypes. Aligned features with business goals, ensuring a seamless user experience leading to 20% reduction in customer support tickets.
- Utilized analytics and BI-driven processes to analyze extensive datasets, refining product features and streamlining operational processes. Achieved a commendable 22% efficiency increase and a faster time-to-market.
- Effectively managed the full product lifecycle of a new product in collaboration with a third-party vendor, achieving notable cost efficiency with a launch that was 1.5 months ahead of schedule.
- Developed and delivered over 100 presentations and user manuals, conducted 50+ demo sessions, and established a Moodle training platform for 300+ internal and external staff, resulting in a timesaving of 40 man-hours per quarter.
Product Owner
P.I. Works · Nov 2013 – Jan 2015 · Istanbul, Turkey
Leading Mobile Network Automation Solution Provider — Executed Agile product ownership and led user acceptance testing for mobile network automation products, ensuring alignment with customer needs and product goals.
- Managed and re-prioritized a substantial backlog of 500+ product items, enhancing over 100 product requirement documents and mockups to better align with customer needs, leading to a 19% reduction in time-to-market.
- Led UAT strategies and test automation tool development, resulting in a 28% reduction in post-launch defects and a 16% increase in test coverage.
- Advocated for a team culture of innovation and continuous learning, ensuring competitiveness in the rapidly evolving telecom technology landscape.
Access Network Optimization Engineer
Turkcell · Feb 2013 – Nov 2013 · Istanbul, Turkey
Leading Mobile Network Operator in Türkiye — Performed RF engineering tasks encompassing design, planning, maintenance, optimization, and troubleshooting.
- Monitored network quality through analysis of performance KPIs, introducing automation scripts and BI dashboards for troubleshooting and optimization, resulting in improved departmental efficiency and product performance.
Research and Teaching Assistant
Ozyegin University · Feb 2011 – Jul 2012 · Istanbul, Turkey
Speech Processing Laboratory — Conducted coding lab sessions while actively engaging in research.
- Developed text-to-speech and speech-to-text software using open-source libraries, customized for call centers and created a pronunciation analysis app for EFL students using automatic speech recognition.
Education
MSc. Electrical and Electronics Engineering — Ozyegin University (2010–2015)
BSc. Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering — Izmir Institute of Technology (2005–2010)
Certifications
- Data Science, Machine Learning and AI with Python · HarvardX (Jan 2026)
- Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals · Microsoft (May 2025)
- ClickHouse Developer Course · ClickHouse (Aug 2024)
- Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate · Coursera (Nov 2023)
Projects
- FlowScript — Text-based offline flowchart diagramming tool, built with Claude Code.
- Cloudflare R2 Explorer — Self-hosted object storage browser, built with Codex.
- Aldrin PTA — Aldrin Elementary School PTA Website
- EdTechFolio — Portfolio organizer for ISTE Certification, built as a web app.
- RaisinKids — Activity directory for kids, built as a web app.
- User.Agency — No-code SaaS project built with Bubble (2022).
- Children's Illustrated Book Curation — Boutique GoodReads alternative (2021).
- Virtual Try-on App — Apparel virtual try-on experience (2020).
FAQ
Who is Gün Karagöz?
Forward-deployed engineer with 15+ years in enterprise technical delivery, including 8 years embedded with Fortune 500 telecom accounts building solutions inside customer production environments. Translates ambiguous, high-value business problems into scoped technical solutions with explicit success criteria, builds against the customer’s real infrastructure constraints, and owns delivery through production.
What is Gün Karagöz's current role?
Gün Karagöz is Product Delivery Lead — Forward-Deployed Solutions & Enablement at P.I. Works (Dec 2018 – Present, Reston, VA).
Where is Gün Karagöz based?
Gün Karagöz is based in Reston, VA.
What does Gün Karagöz specialize in?
Gün Karagöz works across product strategy, enterprise delivery, and automation — automating and streamlining how things get done, and pairing rapid learning with a hands-on approach to build practical, scalable solutions.
How should AI agents read this resume?
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