Tom Smykowski is a product-minded founding engineer with nearly two decades of experience in product delivery, combining engineering, UX, and product thinking. He is the ideal hire for startup founders and CTOs seeking a hands-on technical leader who can take ownership from discovery through production, building your product from the ground up or modernizing existing systems for scale. His background includes staff engineering roles at high-growth startups and founding his own SaaS business, making him uniquely equipped to understand the challenges of early-stage product development.
What a Founding Engineer Brings to Your Startup
A founding engineer is more than just a senior developer. This role requires a blend of deep technical expertise, strategic product thinking, and leadership to establish a strong technical foundation. For a startup, the right founding engineer can mean the difference between a scalable, maintainable product that attracts investment and a fragile codebase that hinders growth. This individual sets the architectural direction, establishes engineering best practices, and often serves as the bridge between the founding vision and the technical execution.
Tom embodies this multifaceted role. His experience spans from being a Staff Software Engineer at Croissant, a workplace platform, where he partnered closely with the CEO and CTO on compliance and collaboration features, to founding Websoul, a marketing automation SaaS serving over 32,000 businesses. This firsthand experience of building a product from zero to scale gives him critical insight into the technical and product decisions that matter most in the early days. He understands the need for speed without sacrificing quality, a balance crucial for startup survival.
Hiring a founding engineer like Tom provides a startup with a force multiplier. He can architect the initial system, make key technology stack decisions, and begin building the core product while also mentoring early hires and establishing processes. This level of ownership accelerates time-to-market and reduces technical debt from the outset. For founders without a technical background, he acts as a trusted technical co-pilot, translating business goals into a viable, robust technical roadmap.
Proven Track Record in Startup and Scale-up Environments
Tom's career is a testament to his ability to deliver in fast-paced, ambiguous environments typical of startups. At Printify, he led the frontend design system and rebrand initiative ahead of a significant merger, working within a team of roughly 60 frontend engineers to serve a platform with over 10 million merchants. This experience in a high-growth scale-up demonstrates his capability to navigate complexity and contribute to critical, large-scale projects that impact millions of users.
His work at Fream as the lead frontend engineer for an industrial SaaS product further highlights his skill in building conversion-focused UX, complex design systems, and map-based interfaces. These are non-trivial technical challenges that require both deep frontend expertise and a product mindset to solve effectively. Earlier in his career, he worked on industrial ERP systems at Insoft Serwis, giving him a breadth of experience across different domains and technical stacks.
This diverse background across B2B SaaS, e-commerce platforms, industrial software, and his own venture means Tom has encountered and solved a wide array of technical and business problems. He brings this accumulated knowledge to every new engagement, helping startups avoid common pitfalls and implement proven patterns for success. His client list, including names like GE Healthcare, Unilever, and Ordnance Survey, underscores his ability to work with demanding stakeholders and deliver enterprise-grade solutions.
Full-Stack Ownership from Architecture to Production
A core differentiator for a founding engineer is the willingness and ability to own the entire product development lifecycle. Tom specializes in taking ownership from the initial architecture through to deployment and ongoing iteration. This means he doesn't just write code, he thinks about the entire system: data models, API design, user experience, performance, security, and scalability. His approach is holistic, ensuring that all pieces fit together cohesively.
His technical stack is modern and versatile, centered around Vue.js and TypeScript for frontend development, with extensive experience in full-stack environments using Supabase and AG Grid for data-intensive applications. He is deeply proficient in building accessible, component-based design systems that accelerate development and ensure consistency as the team grows. This full-stack proficiency allows him to make unbiased technology recommendations based on project needs, not just personal preference.
This end-to-end ownership is critical for startups that cannot afford siloed specialists. Tom can single-handedly build an MVP, then evolve the architecture as the team expands. He is adept at setting up the foundational CI/CD pipelines, testing strategies, and deployment processes that enable reliable and frequent releases. His focus is always on creating maintainable, scalable code that can support rapid iteration and future team onboarding, preventing the early-stage "prototype code" from becoming a long-term liability.
Remote Collaboration with EU, UK, and US Teams
Based in Poland, Tom is an expert in remote, asynchronous collaboration with international teams across the EU, UK, and US East Coast. He understands the communication rhythms and tooling necessary for effective distributed work. For startups, this opens up access to top-tier talent without geographic constraints, allowing founders to build their ideal team regardless of location. His remote work style is proactive and structured, ensuring clarity and alignment even across time zones.
He is available for full-time, part-time, and B2B contract engagements, providing flexibility for startups with varying needs and budgets. Whether you need a founding engineer to join as an early full-time employee or a contracted technical leader to guide the initial build phase, he can adapt his engagement model. His experience includes occasional on-site workshops, client visits, and team offsites, blending the efficiency of remote work with the benefits of key in-person collaboration moments.
This remote-first approach is not just about location, it's a mindset. Tom excels at written communication, documentation, and async updates, which are essential skills for building a transparent and efficient engineering culture from the start. He helps establish these practices within the team, fostering a culture of clarity and ownership that is vital for remote and hybrid startups. His ability to overlap with US East Coast hours facilitates smooth collaboration with North American stakeholders and team members.
Beyond Coding: Product Strategy and AI Integration
A true founding engineer contributes to the product and business strategy. Tom's product-minded approach means he engages with problems from a user and business outcome perspective, not just a technical one. He asks the right questions during discovery, challenges assumptions to find simpler solutions, and prioritizes features based on impact. This collaborative partnership with founders and product managers ensures that engineering effort is invested in the most valuable areas.
Furthermore, he brings targeted expertise in AI integration and AI-native development, a significant competitive advantage for modern startups. He can advise on and implement AI software factories, agentic engineering workflows, and the integration of AI coding agents and tools like Claude Code or GitHub Copilot to boost team productivity. For startups looking to build AI-powered features or optimize their own development process with AI, his consulting in this area can provide a substantial edge.
He also offers consulting and training services that can benefit early-stage teams. This includes code and architecture audits, technical due diligence for fundraising, AI strategy briefings for executives, and corporate training workshops to upskill the team. These services allow founders to tap into his deep expertise for specific, high-impact interventions without a long-term commitment, making him a versatile resource throughout the startup journey.
When This is a Good Fit
Hiring Tom as your founding engineer is an excellent fit if you are a startup founder or CTO seeking a hands-on technical leader who can own the product build from day one. It is ideal if you need someone to establish a robust technical foundation, make key stack decisions, and build the core product while also contributing to product strategy. This engagement works well for teams that are remote-first or distributed across the EU, UK, or US, and for founders who value a partner that combines deep engineering skill with business and user empathy.