Your Next Software Developer Hire
Tom Smykowski is a senior software developer for hire, bringing nearly two decades of hands-on product delivery, technical leadership, and user-focused engineering to your team. He is the ideal hire for founders, CTOs, and executives who need an engineer who can take full ownership from initial discovery and architecture through to production deployment and scaling. Based in Poland, Tom works seamlessly with remote teams across the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, offering deep expertise in modern web stacks, design systems, and AI-native development.
His career is defined by a blend of engineering rigor and product thinking, having built and scaled systems serving thousands of businesses and millions of users. Whether you need to build an MVP from scratch, modernize a legacy Angular or React codebase, integrate AI capabilities, or establish robust engineering practices, Tom provides the experienced, senior-level expertise to drive your project forward. He operates as a staff or founding engineer, ensuring technical decisions align with business goals and user needs.
Engagement models are flexible, including full-time employment, B2B contracts, and project-based consulting. His remote-first approach is complemented by availability for occasional on-site workshops, client visits, and team offsites, making him a connected and collaborative partner for distributed teams.
Proven Track Record with Marquee Clients
Tom's work has directly impacted leading organizations and high-growth startups. His portfolio includes significant contributions to companies like Croissant, where he served as a Staff Software Engineer focused on compliance and collaboration features for a workplace platform. At Printify, he led frontend efforts on the design system and rebrand ahead of a major merger, supporting a platform used by over 10 million merchants and a frontend engineering team of around 60.
Beyond these, his experience spans diverse industries from industrial tech to public sector. He has delivered projects for DeLaval, Ordnance Survey, GE Healthcare, Unilever, and Bunge, demonstrating an ability to navigate complex domains. In the public and academic sphere, he has worked with the Silesian University of Technology, the Polish Tourism Organisation, the Institute of National Remembrance, the University of Silesia, and the Marshal Office of the Silesian Voivodeship. This breadth showcases his adaptability and skill in translating complex requirements into functional software.
As the founder of Websoul, he built a marketing automation and fintech SaaS from the ground up, scaling it to serve over 32,000 businesses. This entrepreneurial experience gives him unique insight into the pressures of product-led growth, resource constraints, and technical debt management, making him an invaluable asset for startups and scale-ups.
Full-Stack Technical Expertise
Tom's technical proficiency is centered on modern JavaScript ecosystems. He is highly skilled in Vue.js and TypeScript, having used them extensively in production environments at Printify and Websoul. His work with Supabase for backend services and AG Grid for complex data interfaces underscores his full-stack capabilities. He is equally adept with React and Angular, making him a versatile hire for teams using any major frontend framework.
His expertise extends beyond writing code to encompass the entire software development lifecycle. He has deep experience in building and governing design systems, ensuring UI consistency and developer efficiency at scale. He is passionate about accessibility, performance, and creating APIs that are both powerful and intuitive. Furthermore, he integrates AI-assisted workflows and tools like AI coding agents into the development process to boost team productivity and code quality.
This comprehensive skill set allows him to contribute meaningfully across the stack, whether optimizing a database query, architecting a microservices backend, crafting a responsive and accessible user interface, or setting up AI-powered development pipelines. He brings a holistic view of system architecture and user experience to every project.
Product Engineering and Ownership Mindset
What distinguishes Tom is his product engineering mindset. He does not view his role as merely implementing specs, but as a partner in discovering and defining what should be built. He asks the right questions to uncover user pain points, business objectives, and technical constraints before a single line of code is written. This approach, refined over nearly twenty years, ensures that the final product delivers real value and aligns with strategic goals.
He thrives in environments where he is given ownership. This means taking responsibility for the entire feature lifecycle: collaborating with stakeholders on discovery, designing the technical architecture, writing and reviewing code, setting up monitoring, and iterating based on user feedback. This end-to-end ownership reduces handoff friction, accelerates delivery, and results in more coherent and maintainable systems. It's a style perfectly suited for lean teams where each member's impact is maximized.
His background includes founding his own company and working in close partnership with CEOs and CTOs, such as at Croissant. This experience means he understands the commercial and strategic pressures facing leadership. He can communicate effectively with non-technical stakeholders, translate business requirements into technical plans, and make pragmatic trade-offs between perfection and speed to market.
AI and Modern Engineering Practices
Tom is actively engaged in the frontier of AI engineering and its application to software development. He offers specialized services in setting up AI Software Factories, which involve integrating agentic engineering, AI coding agents like Claude Code and Cursor, and AI-native practices into the software development lifecycle. This includes implementing AI testing, quality gates, and automation to significantly boost developer productivity and code quality.
For teams looking to adopt AI, he provides corporate training, executive briefings, and hands-on workshops. He can guide engineering teams through the upskilling process, from introductory webinars to deep-dive coding sessions on AI tools. His consulting covers AI strategy, technical due diligence for AI projects, and the practical integration of large language models into existing products and workflows.
Beyond AI, he is a strong advocate for modern engineering excellence. He conducts code and architecture audits, performance and security reviews, and helps teams establish robust CI/CD pipelines and test automation. His focus on Developer Experience (DevEx) ensures that teams can ship features faster and with higher confidence. He also offers technical mentoring and leadership to help grow junior and mid-level engineers.
Remote Collaboration and Communication
Operating remotely from Poland, Tom is adept at asynchronous communication and cross-time-zone collaboration. He has a proven track record of successful projects with teams in the EU, UK, and US East Coast, effectively managing the overlap in working hours. He is a clear and proactive communicator, ensuring that stakeholders are always informed of progress, challenges, and decisions.
His skills extend to formal knowledge sharing. He is an experienced technical writer, having authored a book, and a confident public speaker who has presented at conferences and webinars. This ability to articulate complex technical concepts clearly makes him an asset for internal documentation, client-facing explanations, and team mentoring. He can foster a culture of learning and transparency within distributed teams.
While fundamentally remote-first, he values and is available for periodic in-person collaboration. This includes on-site workshops, client visits, team offsites, and business travel as needed. This hybrid approach combines the efficiency of remote work with the relationship-building benefits of face-to-face interaction, making him a fully integrated team member regardless of geography.
When This is a Good Fit
Engaging Tom as your software developer for hire is an excellent fit if you are a founder, CTO, or engineering leader needing senior-level, hands-on technical talent combined with strategic product thinking. It is ideal for projects requiring ownership from concept to production, whether that's building a new SaaS product, modernizing a legacy system, or integrating AI capabilities. If you value clear communication, a remote-friendly workflow with EU/UK/US overlap, and a partner who invests deeply in your product's success, then this collaboration will deliver significant value.