Tom Smykowski is a senior product engineer specializing in architecting and executing design system rebrands for SaaS platforms and enterprise applications. With direct, large-scale experience leading the Printify design system rebrand ahead of its merger with Printful, he brings the technical leadership and systematic thinking needed to transform your UI foundation while maintaining developer velocity and product stability. Hiring Tom means bringing on an engineer who owns the process from discovery and component API design through to implementation, documentation, and team enablement for a successful, lasting rebrand.
The Critical Role of Engineering in a Design System Rebrand
A design system rebrand is far more than a visual refresh. It is a foundational engineering project that touches every component, every API, and every developer workflow in your codebase. The technical decisions made during this process determine the long-term maintainability, performance, and scalability of your user interface. An engineer leading this initiative must balance aesthetic goals with technical constraints, ensuring the new system is not only beautiful but also robust, accessible, and efficient to build upon.
Without strong engineering leadership, rebrands often result in fragmented implementations, breaking changes, and frustrated development teams. The ideal engineer for this role combines deep frontend expertise with product thinking and a systematic approach. They understand that a rebrand is a product launch in itself, requiring clear migration paths, comprehensive documentation, and a strategy for adoption across engineering teams. Tom's experience spans these exact challenges, having successfully navigated them for platforms serving millions of users.
Proven Experience with Large-Scale Platform Rebrands
Tom's most relevant experience comes from his work with Printify, a global print-on-demand platform serving over 10 million merchants. Ahead of the company's strategic merger with Printful, he was instrumental in leading the design system rebrand. This involved modernizing the component library to align with the new brand identity while ensuring consistency and efficiency for a frontend engineering team of around 60 developers.
The project required meticulous planning to avoid disrupting the core business operations. Tom focused on creating a scalable architecture for the new design system, establishing clear versioning and deprecation policies, and building comprehensive documentation and migration guides. This hands-on experience with a high-stakes, large-scale rebrand provides a proven template for managing similar initiatives, from assessing the existing tech debt to executing a phased rollout that keeps the product team shipping features.
Architecting for Scalability and Developer Experience
The architecture of a rebranded design system must support both immediate visual goals and future product evolution. This involves decisions on component API design, state management patterns, theming capabilities, and build tooling. A system that is difficult for developers to use will hinder adoption and ultimately fail. Tom emphasizes creating intuitive, type-safe APIs using TypeScript, building in robust theming support for future brand iterations, and optimizing bundle sizes for performance.
Developer experience is a core outcome. This includes creating seamless local development environments, integrating the system with existing CI/CD pipelines for automated testing and publishing, and providing tools like Figma sync or Storybook for visual documentation. By prioritizing the workflows of the engineers who will use the system daily, Tom ensures high adoption rates and reduces the long-term cost of ownership. His work at Fream on industrial SaaS design systems further solidified this focus on creating tools that developers love to use.
Managing the Migration and Team Enablement
A successful rebrand is defined by a smooth migration. A brute-force, all-at-once replacement is rarely feasible for a live product. Tom employs strategic, incremental migration techniques, such as building interoperability layers, creating codemods for automated refactoring, and establishing clear metrics to track adoption across the codebase. This phased approach minimizes risk and allows product teams to continue their roadmap work while transitioning.
Team enablement is equally critical. Tom complements technical delivery with workshops, office hours, and detailed documentation to empower internal teams. This knowledge transfer ensures that after the engagement, your engineers are confident owners of the new system. His background in technical writing and corporate training, as evidenced by his work with clients like the Silesian University of Technology and the Marshal Office of the Silesian Voivodeship, directly supports this capability to upskill teams effectively.
Why Remote Collaboration from Poland Works
Tom is based in Poland and works remotely with teams across the EU, UK, and US, including US East Coast overlap. This model is particularly effective for design system work, which often requires deep focus periods interspersed with collaborative sessions for reviews and planning. The remote, async-friendly approach allows for uninterrupted engineering time while maintaining clear communication channels for stakeholder alignment.
His remote collaboration is seasoned, having worked with international teams at companies like Croissant (as a Staff Software Engineer), GE Healthcare, and Unilever. This experience ensures he integrates seamlessly into your existing processes, whether you use Slack, Figma, GitHub, or Jira. For key phases like discovery workshops or milestone reviews, he is available for synchronous meetings and can travel for occasional on-site sessions, client visits, or team offsites as needed.
When This is a Good Fit
This engagement is a strong fit if you are a founder, CTO, or product leader at a SaaS company or digital product business undertaking a significant UI rebrand or design system modernization. It is ideal if you need an experienced, staff-level engineer to own the technical strategy and execution, especially if your internal team lacks the bandwidth or specific expertise for such a foundational project. You will benefit most if you value a systematic, product-minded approach that balances beautiful outcomes with technical rigor and team enablement.