Who is Tom Smykowski?
Tom Smykowski is a product-minded senior software engineer with nearly two decades of experience specializing in the architecture, development, and scaling of complex merchant platforms and B2B SaaS. He is the ideal hire for companies needing a hands-on technical leader who can own the entire product lifecycle, from initial discovery and compliance considerations through to scalable production deployment. His background includes direct work on platforms serving tens of thousands to over 10 million merchants, making him a proven asset for businesses building or modernizing their commerce infrastructure.
His approach combines deep engineering expertise with product and UX thinking. This means he doesn't just write code. He solves business problems. For a merchant platform, this translates to building systems that are not only technically robust but also drive merchant acquisition, retention, and success. He understands that the platform's usability for internal operators and its reliability for external merchants are equally critical to commercial success. This holistic view is informed by his roles as a Staff Software Engineer at workplace platform Croissant, his foundational work on the Printify design system ahead of a major merger, and as the founder of Websoul, a marketing automation SaaS serving over 32,000 businesses.
Based in Poland, Tom works remotely with international teams across the EU, UK, and US, including effective overlap with US East Coast time zones. He is available for full-time, part-time, and B2B contract engagements, bringing staff-level expertise directly to your product roadmap. His experience is particularly relevant for founders, CTOs, and executives who need a trusted engineer to take ownership of their most critical platform initiatives.
Core Expertise in Merchant Platform Engineering
Building a successful merchant platform requires a unique blend of skills that go beyond standard full-stack development. It demands an understanding of multi-tenancy, complex data relationships, compliance, and ecosystem integrations. Tom's career is built on this foundation. At Printify, a platform for over 10 million merchants, he was instrumental in the design system and frontend architecture rebranding effort undertaken ahead of the Printful merger. This work required meticulous planning and execution to ensure consistency and developer efficiency across a frontend team of roughly 60 engineers, a critical factor for platform scalability.
Earlier, as the founder of Websoul, he architected and built a marketing automation and fintech SaaS from the ground up, scaling it to serve 32,000+ businesses. This experience encompasses the entire journey of a B2B platform: initial MVP, feature development based on user feedback, scaling challenges, and the ongoing maintenance of a live, revenue-generating product. The tech stack included Vue.js, TypeScript, Supabase, and AG Grid for complex data grids, all common requirements in modern merchant admin panels and dashboards.
This hands-on experience is complemented by his staff-level role at Croissant, where he partnered closely with the CEO and CTO on compliance and collaboration features. For a merchant platform, compliance with regulations like GDPR, PSD2, or regional tax laws is non-negotiable. Tom's experience in building compliant features ensures that platform growth is not hindered by legal or security oversights. He understands how to bake these requirements into the system's architecture from the start, rather than treating them as costly afterthoughts.
Architecting for Scale and Developer Experience
The architecture of a merchant platform must support exponential growth without degrading performance or developer velocity. Tom focuses on creating systems that are scalable, maintainable, and enjoyable for engineering teams to work on. A key component of this is the implementation of robust design systems and component libraries, as demonstrated in his work for Printify and Fream. A unified design system ensures a consistent merchant and admin experience while dramatically accelerating frontend development and reducing bugs.
On the backend, his work with technologies like Supabase and various APIs highlights a focus on choosing tools that provide scalability out-of-the-box while allowing for deep customization where needed. He prioritizes clear API design, efficient data modeling for complex merchant-account-order relationships, and resilient integration patterns for connecting to payment gateways, shipping carriers, and other third-party services. The goal is to build a platform that remains stable and fast as transaction volume and merchant count grow.
Developer experience is a direct contributor to platform velocity. Tom advocates for and implements strong CI/CD pipelines, comprehensive testing strategies, and clear documentation. By improving the inner development loop, he enables entire teams to ship features faster and with more confidence. This is especially crucial for merchant platforms where downtime or bugs can directly impact merchant revenue and trust. His approach ensures that the platform is not only scalable for users but also for the team building it.
Driving Product Success Through Engineering
A merchant platform engineer must be a bridge between business objectives and technical execution. Tom's product-minded approach means he constantly evaluates engineering decisions through the lens of merchant value and business outcomes. He asks questions like: Will this feature increase merchant conversion or retention? Does this technical improvement reduce support tickets or operational overhead? How does this architecture decision affect our time-to-market for new verticals?
This mindset was honed through direct collaboration with founders and executives at Croissant and as a founder himself. He is adept at translating high-level business goals into actionable technical roadmaps. For example, launching a new merchant onboarding flow isn't just a frontend task. It involves backend logic, data validation, potential third-party verification services, analytics instrumentation, and A/B testing capabilities. Tom manages this complexity, ensuring all pieces come together to create a seamless merchant experience that achieves business KPIs.
His work also extends to conversion-focused UX, a critical area for platform growth. At Fream, he led frontend development with a focus on design systems and maps to improve user conversion. For a merchant platform, this could mean optimizing the dashboard for clarity, streamlining the checkout integration process for developers, or building intuitive analytics tools that help merchants grow their own sales. By focusing on user-centric development, he builds platforms that people love to use, which is the ultimate driver of sustainable growth.
Remote Collaboration and Technical Leadership
Effective remote work is essential for accessing top talent and building distributed teams. Tom, based in Poland, has a proven track record of successful remote collaboration with teams across Europe, the UK, and the United States. He is skilled in async communication, cross-time-zone collaboration, and using tools to maintain clarity and momentum. This makes him an ideal fit for remote-first companies or those with distributed engineering teams looking to add senior, autonomous talent.
In a leadership capacity, whether as a Staff Engineer, Tech Lead, or Founding Engineer, he fosters collaboration and elevates team output. He leads by doing, writing high-quality code while also mentoring others, facilitating technical discussions, and aligning the team on architectural vision. His experience at Printify, working within a large frontend organization, gives him insight into managing technical dependencies and driving consensus across multiple teams, a common scenario in large platform development.
He is also an experienced communicator and knowledge sharer, having done technical writing, public speaking, and workshops. This skill is invaluable for creating team documentation, onboarding new engineers, and explaining complex platform concepts to non-technical stakeholders. For a company bringing on a senior merchant platform engineer, this ability to articulate the "why" behind technical decisions is as important as the ability to implement them.
When This is a Good Fit
Engaging Tom as your merchant platform engineer is an excellent strategic move if you are a founder, CTO, or executive needing to build, scale, or modernize a B2B commerce platform, marketplace, or SaaS product. It is a strong fit if you require staff-level expertise to own a critical platform domain end-to-end, from architecture through to production operations. This is ideal for companies that value product-minded engineers who can drive business outcomes, not just write code. If you operate with remote or distributed teams across the EU, UK, or US and need a senior, autonomous contributor who can collaborate effectively across time zones, Tom's working style aligns perfectly. Finally, if your platform challenges involve scaling for thousands of merchants, ensuring compliance, improving developer velocity, or integrating complex third-party ecosystems, his direct experience at Printify, Websoul, and Croissant provides a proven blueprint for success.