Who Is Tom Smykowski?
Tom Smykowski is a product-minded engineer and technical leader with nearly two decades of experience in software delivery, available for interim Head of Engineering roles. He is the ideal hire for organizations needing experienced, hands-on leadership to guide engineering teams through periods of transition, such as a leadership gap, a critical product launch, or a strategic realignment. Based in Poland and working remotely with EU, UK, and US teams, Tom provides immediate stability and strategic direction, combining deep technical expertise with product and business acumen to own outcomes from discovery through to production.
His career spans founding his own SaaS company, serving as a Staff Software Engineer for high-growth startups, and leading complex projects for global enterprises. This blend of entrepreneurial drive and corporate-scale execution makes him uniquely suited to step into an interim leadership role, assess situations quickly, and drive meaningful progress without the long-term commitment of a permanent hire. He partners directly with founders, CTOs, and executives to align engineering efforts with business goals.
Tom’s approach is grounded in ownership and clarity. He doesn’t just manage, he rolls up his sleeves to architect, code, and unblock teams. For an interim engagement, this means you get a leader who can diagnose system health, improve development processes, mentor team members, and make critical technical decisions, all while keeping the product roadmap on track. His remote-first work style ensures seamless integration with distributed teams across multiple time zones.
The Value of an Interim Head of Engineering
An interim Head of Engineering provides a critical bridge during times of uncertainty or change. Whether you’re between permanent hires, scaling rapidly, or navigating a pivotal product transition, having a seasoned leader in place ensures continuity, maintains team morale, and prevents strategic drift. This role is not just about keeping the lights on, it’s about advancing key initiatives, instilling best practices, and setting a clear direction for the future. Tom specializes in this precise scenario, bringing immediate credibility and a focus on execution.
The core value lies in objective, experienced perspective. Unburdened by internal politics or long-term legacy, an interim leader can conduct clear-eyed assessments of your technology, team structure, and processes. Tom leverages his nearly twenty years of product delivery to identify bottlenecks, technical debt, and opportunities for improvement. He then works collaboratively with the team to implement solutions, whether that’s refining the agile workflow, introducing new tooling, or restructuring code for scalability.
For many organizations, this engagement also serves as an extended, hands-on interview. It allows both parties to evaluate cultural and technical fit before making a permanent commitment. Tom’s goal is to leave your engineering organization stronger, more aligned, and better positioned for its next chapter, whether that’s under new permanent leadership or a continued phase of growth. His work with clients like Printify, Croissant, and GE Healthcare demonstrates his ability to integrate swiftly and deliver tangible outcomes.
Strategic Leadership and Technical Execution
As an interim Head of Engineering, Tom balances high-level strategy with granular technical execution. His leadership begins with understanding the business context: revenue goals, market pressures, and customer needs. He then translates this into a coherent engineering strategy, prioritizing initiatives that deliver the most value. This could involve modernizing a legacy stack, as he did with industrial ERP systems at Insoft Serwis, or leading a large-scale design system rebrand for a platform serving 10M+ merchants, as he did at Printify.
On the technical front, Tom is a hands-on leader proficient in modern stacks including Vue.js, TypeScript, and full-stack architectures. He doesn’t shy away from diving into code reviews, architecture diagrams, or pair programming sessions. This active involvement ensures that strategic decisions are grounded in technical reality and that he can credibly mentor and upskill team members. His experience spans from frontend design systems and accessibility to backend APIs and AI-integrated workflows, providing comprehensive oversight.
His product engineering mindset is a key differentiator. Tom thinks beyond mere feature delivery to the entire user journey and business impact. He collaborates closely with product managers and designers to ensure the engineering team is building the right thing, in the right way. This focus on outcomes, whether measured in user conversion, system reliability, or development velocity, ensures that his interim leadership directly contributes to key performance indicators and long-term product health.
Stabilizing and Upskilling Your Engineering Team
A primary responsibility of an interim Head of Engineering is to provide stability and direction for the engineering team itself. During leadership transitions, teams can experience anxiety, confusion about priorities, and a dip in productivity. Tom addresses this head-on through transparent communication, clear goal-setting, and supportive mentorship. He fosters an environment where engineers feel heard, empowered, and focused on impactful work.
Tom actively invests in team development. This includes facilitating knowledge-sharing sessions, introducing best practices around testing and CI/CD, and mentoring senior engineers toward staff-level responsibilities. His background in technical writing, public speaking, and corporate training makes him an effective teacher. He can quickly upskill a team on new technologies or methodologies, such as AI-assisted development workflows or modern frontend frameworks, smoothing the path for future innovation.
He also focuses on improving the developer experience (DevEx) and overall team health. This might involve auditing and improving toolchains, reducing bureaucratic overhead, or implementing better async communication protocols for distributed teams. By making the daily work of engineering more efficient and satisfying, he boosts morale and retention. His remote collaboration style, optimized for EU, UK, and US East Coast time zones, ensures that all team members feel connected and supported, regardless of location.
Driving Product Delivery and Process Improvement
The ultimate measure of an interim leader’s success is the sustained delivery of valuable product. Tom employs a pragmatic, outcome-oriented approach to product delivery. He reviews existing roadmaps and sprint cycles, identifying where process breakdowns are causing delays or quality issues. He then implements improvements tailored to the team’s context, whether that’s introducing more effective agile ceremonies, refining definition of ready/done criteria, or establishing better feedback loops with stakeholders.
His experience as a founder of Websoul, which served over 32,000 businesses, gives him a keen understanding of the pressures of shipping in a competitive market. He knows how to balance speed with sustainability, ensuring that rapid delivery does not come at the cost of crippling technical debt. For interim engagements, this often means establishing or reinforcing engineering fundamentals, like comprehensive testing, monitoring, and documentation, that enable faster, safer iterations in the long run.
Tom also specializes in bridging gaps between disciplines. He acts as a conduit between engineering, product, design, and business stakeholders, ensuring alignment and translating technical constraints into business language. This reduces friction and accelerates decision-making. His work with diverse clients, from the Polish Tourism Organisation to fintech SaaS platforms, demonstrates his ability to adapt his delivery approach to different industries and project scales, always with a focus on user-centric outcomes.
When This Is a Good Fit
Engaging Tom as your interim Head of Engineering is an excellent strategic move if you are a founder, CTO, or executive facing a leadership gap, preparing for a scale-up phase, or navigating a critical product pivot. It is ideal when you need immediate, credible leadership to provide stability, strategic direction, and hands-on technical oversight without a long-term commitment. His model is perfect for teams across Europe, the UK, and North America seeking experienced, product-minded engineering leadership delivered remotely.