Tom Smykowski is a senior SaaS product engineer based in Poland, specializing in remote collaboration with EU, UK, and US teams. He is the ideal hire for founders, CTOs, and executives seeking an engineer who combines deep technical expertise with product and UX thinking to own the entire delivery lifecycle, from initial discovery through to production scaling and optimization.
With nearly two decades of experience, Tom has built and scaled SaaS products across diverse industries including healthtech, industrial IoT, e-commerce, and marketing automation. His approach is rooted in understanding business goals and user needs, ensuring that engineering decisions directly drive product success and customer satisfaction.
This blend of skills makes him uniquely suited for roles such as Staff Software Engineer, Principal Engineer, Tech Lead, or Founding Engineer, where strategic technical leadership and hands-on coding are equally critical. He thrives in environments that require ownership, clear communication, and a focus on delivering maintainable, user-focused software.
What a SaaS Product Engineer Brings to Your Team
A true SaaS product engineer moves beyond pure implementation to influence the product's direction, usability, and business impact. This role involves close collaboration with product managers, designers, and stakeholders to translate complex requirements into a coherent technical vision and executable roadmap. The engineer acts as a bridge, ensuring the feasibility of the product backlog while advocating for technical excellence and long-term maintainability.
For scaling SaaS companies, this means building systems that are not only functional today but are architected for growth tomorrow. It involves making informed decisions about technology stack, third-party integrations, data modeling, and performance optimization. A product engineer considers the entire user journey, from onboarding and daily use to support and expansion, designing systems that enhance the customer experience at every touchpoint.
Tom embodies this holistic approach. His work at Croissant as a Staff Software Engineer involved deep partnership with the CEO and CTO on compliance and collaboration features critical for a workplace platform. At Printify, he contributed to a major design system and rebranding initiative that unified the frontend for over 60 engineers serving 10M+ merchants. This experience in high-stakes, user-facing environments ensures he can handle the complexities of modern SaaS product development.
Proven Experience Scaling SaaS Products
Tom's career is a testament to successfully scaling SaaS products from early stages to serving massive user bases. As the founder of Websoul, he built a marketing automation and fintech SaaS platform that served over 32,000 businesses. This involved full-stack development with Vue.js, TypeScript, and Supabase, and complex data grid implementations with AG Grid, providing hands-on experience with the challenges of multi-tenancy, billing, and feature evolution.
His role as Lead Frontend at Fream focused on building an industrial SaaS application, where he developed design systems, integrated mapping solutions, and crafted conversion-focused UX. This project highlights his ability to tackle domain-specific complexity, such as visualizing industrial data, while maintaining a sharp focus on user outcomes that drive business value.
Earlier engagements, including work on industrial ERP systems at Insoft Serwis, ground his expertise in business logic and process automation. This diverse background across B2B, B2C, and industrial SaaS gives him a broad perspective on what makes products successful, whether serving individual merchants, large enterprises, or specialized industrial clients.
Technical Stack for Modern SaaS Development
Tom's technical proficiency is centered on modern, productive stacks that enable rapid iteration and robust applications. His core frontend expertise lies in Vue.js and TypeScript, complemented by strong experience with React and Angular, making him adaptable to your team's chosen framework. He is adept at building and maintaining design systems that ensure UI consistency and accelerate development across large engineering organizations, as demonstrated in his work at Printify.
On the full-stack side, he has extensive experience with Supabase for backend services, authentication, and real-time features, alongside crafting custom APIs. For data-intensive applications, he leverages powerful tools like AG Grid to build enterprise-grade interfaces. His skill set also encompasses accessibility, mobile-responsive design, and performance optimization, ensuring products are inclusive and fast.
Increasingly, his work incorporates AI-assisted workflows and tools to boost developer productivity and product capabilities. This includes practical experience with AI coding agents, AI-native SDLC practices, and integrating LLMs into applications. This forward-looking expertise allows him to help teams adopt AI effectively, from improving internal development processes to building AI-powered features for customers.
Remote Collaboration with EU, UK, and US Teams
Based in Poland, Tom is expertly set up for seamless remote collaboration with teams across Europe, the UK, and North America. He is accustomed to working in distributed, asynchronous environments and is proactive in communication, ensuring alignment and transparency despite distance or time zone differences. He maintains overlap with US East Coast hours, facilitating real-time collaboration when needed for meetings, pair programming, or critical decision-making.
His remote work style emphasizes clear documentation, structured async updates, and effective use of collaboration tools. This disciplined approach minimizes friction and keeps projects moving forward efficiently. He is also available for occasional on-site workshops, client visits, and team offsites, understanding the value of in-person connection for strategic planning and team building.
This flexibility makes him an ideal partner for remote-first companies, hybrid teams, or organizations looking to tap into top-tier European engineering talent. He has a proven track record of delivering for marquee clients like GE Healthcare, Unilever, Bunge, and Ordnance Survey through remote engagement models.
From Technical Leadership to Hands-On Implementation
Tom operates effectively at multiple levels of the engineering organization. As a technical leader, he can define architecture, establish best practices, mentor team members, and guide technical strategy in partnership with engineering management. He is skilled at breaking down large, ambiguous problems into actionable plans and communicating technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders, including founders and executives.
Concurrently, he remains a deeply hands-on engineer who enjoys writing code, reviewing pull requests, and solving complex technical challenges. This dual capability is particularly valuable for startups and scale-ups where the line between leadership and individual contribution is fluid. He can act as a force multiplier, both by directly building critical path features and by elevating the entire team's output through coaching and process improvement.
His services extend into consulting and training, including code and architecture audits, AI software factory setup, and corporate AI training for engineering teams and executives. Whether engaged as a full-time staff engineer, a part-time technical lead, or a fractional CTO, he brings a product-centric, results-oriented mindset to every collaboration.
When Hiring a SaaS Product Engineer is a Good Fit
Engaging a SaaS product engineer like Tom is an excellent strategic move when you need more than just a coder. It is the right fit if you are a founder or CTO who needs a trusted technical partner to own a product area or an entire platform from conception to launch and beyond. It is ideal for teams undergoing rapid scaling who need to modernize their architecture, establish a design system, or improve developer experience without slowing down feature delivery.
This model works well for companies building complex, data-rich applications in sectors like healthtech, fintech, industrial SaaS, or enterprise marketplaces. If you are looking to integrate AI capabilities into your product or development process, his combined engineering and AI expertise provides a significant advantage. Ultimately, if your goal is to build a better product faster, with a focus on long-term maintainability and user satisfaction, a product engineer is the key hire to make it happen.