Tom Smykowski is a senior software engineer based in Poland, available for remote B2B monthly retainer engagements. With nearly two decades of product delivery experience, he is the ideal hire for founders, CTOs, and executives seeking a product-minded engineer who takes ownership from discovery through production. A B2B monthly retainer provides predictable, flexible access to his deep expertise in building and scaling products, modernizing tech stacks, and implementing AI-native workflows, without the overhead of a full-time hire or the unpredictability of hourly consulting.
Why a B2B Monthly Retainer for Senior Engineering?
A B2B monthly retainer model offers a strategic advantage for growing tech companies. It provides dedicated, ongoing engineering capacity with a clear monthly investment, allowing for better budgeting and resource planning. Unlike project-based contracts that can be transactional, a retainer fosters a long-term partnership where the engineer becomes deeply integrated with your team's goals, processes, and codebase. This model is perfect for ongoing product development, technical leadership, and continuous improvement initiatives.
For senior engineering talent like Tom, a retainer aligns his incentives with your product's success. He focuses on delivering sustained value, architectural health, and strategic progress rather than just logging hours. Clients such as Croissant, Printify, and GE Healthcare have benefited from this engaged, partnership-oriented approach. Whether you need to accelerate a roadmap, modernize a legacy Angular or React application, or establish AI-powered development practices, a monthly retainer provides the consistent, high-level expertise to make it happen.
The flexibility is key. Retainers can be structured around a core number of hours per month, with scope adjusted as priorities shift. This is ideal for startups and scale-ups where needs evolve rapidly. It also allows for a blend of hands-on coding, architecture reviews, team mentoring, and strategic planning within a single, streamlined engagement. You gain a senior technical leader who is committed to your outcomes, not just your output.
Core Expertise for Your Retainer Engagement
Tom brings a comprehensive skill set honed across industries from agritech to fintech SaaS. His technical foundation is full-stack JavaScript/TypeScript, with deep specialization in modern frontend frameworks like Vue.js and Angular, and extensive experience with React ecosystems. He has led design system initiatives for platforms serving millions of users, such as the Printify rebrand ahead of its merger with Printful, which unified the work of over 60 frontend engineers.
Beyond frontend, his retainer work encompasses backend API design, system architecture, and performance optimization. He founded and scaled Websoul, a marketing automation platform serving over 32,000 businesses, building it with Vue, TypeScript, Supabase, and AG Grid. This full-cycle experience, from zero to scale, means he understands the technical and product decisions that impact growth, maintainability, and user satisfaction. His work is always grounded in UX and product thinking.
Increasingly, his retainer engagements focus on integrating AI into the software development lifecycle. This includes setting up AI Software Factories with coding agents, implementing AI-native SDLC practices, and upskilling engineering teams. This expertise allows companies to leverage AI for developer productivity, code quality, and innovation, ensuring they stay competitive. His approach is practical and results-driven, focusing on tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot to build sustainable advantages.
Industries and Client Success Stories
Tom's retainer model has delivered value across a diverse range of sectors. In enterprise and industrial software, he served as Lead Frontend at Fream, working on complex industrial SaaS involving design systems and map-based interfaces. Earlier, he contributed to industrial ERP systems at Insoft Serwis. This background equips him to handle the complex data, compliance, and scalability requirements of B2B and enterprise applications.
In the high-growth SaaS space, his role as Staff Software Engineer at Croissant, a workplace platform, involved close partnership with the CEO and CTO on compliance and collaboration features. At Printify, his impact on the design system was strategic, supporting a platform of over 10 million merchants. For startups and scale-ups, this means hiring an engineer who has operated at the level where technology decisions directly influence market positioning, merger readiness, and user adoption.
His portfolio also includes significant public sector and institutional projects for clients like the Polish Tourism Organisation, the Marshal Office of the Silesian Voivodeship, and several universities. These projects often involve balancing stakeholder needs, accessibility standards, and public usability. This breadth demonstrates an ability to adapt his senior engineering approach to vastly different contexts and constraints, a flexibility that is invaluable on a retainer basis.
The Remote Collaboration Advantage
Operating on a B2B retainer from Poland, Tom is expertly set up for seamless remote collaboration with teams in the EU, UK, and US East Coast. He is adept at asynchronous communication, cross-time-zone collaboration, and using modern tools to stay integrated with distributed teams. This remote-first proficiency means you can access top-tier engineering talent without geographical limitations, focusing purely on fit and expertise.
He is available for occasional on-site workshops, client visits, and team offsites, adding a layer of high-touch collaboration when needed. This hybrid flexibility ensures that key strategic sessions, kick-offs, or critical planning meetings can happen in person to build rapport and alignment, while the core delivery work benefits from focused, remote deep work. For international teams, this model offers the best of both worlds.
The retainer structure inherently supports this mode of work. With a committed monthly engagement, communication rhythms, reporting, and goal-setting become regular and predictable. This stability is crucial for remote partnerships to thrive. Teams know they have a dedicated senior resource who is proactively managing their slice of the product and technology roadmap, providing continuity that ad-hoc contractors cannot.
What to Expect from a Monthly Retainer
Initiating a B2B monthly retainer begins with a discovery phase to align on goals, scope, and working rhythms. This typically involves an audit of current code, architecture, or processes to establish a baseline. From there, a monthly plan is co-created, outlining key deliverables, areas of focus (e.g., feature development, tech debt reduction, AI integration), and success metrics. This plan is agile and reviewed monthly.
Delivery is characterized by ownership and proactivity. As your retained senior engineer, Tom doesn't just wait for tasks. He actively identifies opportunities, anticipates bottlenecks, and proposes solutions. You can expect a mix of direct coding contributions, code reviews for the broader team, architectural diagrams and decisions, and written documentation. This holistic approach ensures that his impact multiplies across your team and codebase.
Transparency is built into the model. Regular updates, either through async written summaries or synchronous calls, keep stakeholders informed of progress, challenges, and insights. The retainer fee covers this full spectrum of activity, from deep technical work to strategic advisory. It's a comprehensive service designed to provide peace of mind and tangible technical advancement month after month, turning engineering from a cost center into a strategic growth driver.
When This is a Good Fit
This B2B monthly retainer is an excellent fit if you are a founder, CTO, or engineering leader needing consistent, high-level engineering capacity without a full-time hire. It suits startups preparing for scale, established companies modernizing their stack, or teams integrating AI into their workflows. If you value product-minded ownership, remote-first collaboration, and a partner invested in your long-term technical health, this engagement model will deliver exceptional value.