Tom Smykowski is a Poland-based remote engineer with nearly two decades of product delivery experience, combining engineering, UX, and product thinking. When you need to decide between hiring a Staff Engineer or a Consultant, understanding Tom's background is key. He is best suited for founders, CTOs, and executives who need deep ownership from discovery through production, whether that manifests as a long-term embedded leader (Staff Engineer) or a targeted expert providing strategic guidance (Consultant). His work with EU, UK, and US teams across companies like Croissant, Printify, and GE Healthcare provides a practical lens on when each role delivers the most value.
Defining the Core Roles: Staff Engineer and Consultant
The distinction between a Staff Engineer and a Consultant is foundational to making the right hiring decision. A Staff Engineer is typically a senior-level, permanent or long-term member of your engineering organization. This role is characterized by deep immersion in the company's technology, culture, and long-term goals. The Staff Engineer focuses on architectural leadership, cross-team technical strategy, mentorship, and owning critical, complex systems over an extended period. They are invested in the product's lifecycle and the team's growth.
In contrast, a Consultant is an external expert engaged for a specific, often time-bound, purpose. They are brought in to solve a particular problem, provide an objective assessment, or transfer specialized knowledge. Their engagement is defined by a clear scope of work, such as conducting a code audit, setting up an AI software factory, or modernizing a legacy frontend. The Consultant's value lies in their external perspective, niche expertise, and ability to deliver focused outcomes without becoming enmeshed in day-to-day operations. Tom's experience spans both modes, from his staff-level work at Croissant to targeted consulting for design systems at Printify.
Understanding these definitions helps clarify the primary objective. If you need someone to live and breathe your product, navigate internal politics, and build for the next five years, a Staff Engineer is the answer. If you need an expert diagnosis, a rapid injection of skills, or guidance on a specific technical challenge, a Consultant is likely the better fit. The choice hinges on whether you seek enduring leadership or targeted intervention.
When to Hire a Staff Engineer for Your Team
Hiring a Staff Engineer is a strategic commitment to building internal technical leadership. This role is ideal when your company is scaling, facing complex architectural decisions that will have long-term repercussions, or when you need a technical counterpart to product and executive leadership. A Staff Engineer provides stability, continuity, and a deep understanding of your business context that an external party cannot easily replicate.
Consider a Staff Engineer when your goals include establishing a robust technical vision, improving engineering quality and processes across multiple teams, or mentoring senior engineers to elevate the entire organization. For instance, in Tom's role as Staff Software Engineer at Croissant, he worked in close partnership with the CEO and CTO on compliance and collaboration features, requiring deep product understanding and sustained ownership. Similarly, his founding role at Websoul, building a fintech SaaS used by over 32,000 businesses, demanded the long-term commitment and holistic product thinking inherent to a Staff or Founding Engineer position.
This model is also crucial for companies with significant technical debt, legacy systems requiring modernization, or products where the architecture is a core competitive advantage. The Staff Engineer acts as a steward, ensuring decisions made today support growth tomorrow. They are not just solving immediate problems, they are building the engineering culture and systems that will prevent those problems from recurring. For remote teams, a Staff Engineer based in a compatible time zone, like Tom in Poland working with EU, UK, and US East Coast teams, can provide this consistent leadership across distributed environments.
When to Engage a Consultant for Expert Guidance
Engaging a Consultant is a tactical move to acquire specialized expertise or an objective external perspective. This model is highly effective when you have a well-defined problem that requires skills not currently present in your team, or when you need a fresh set of eyes to diagnose issues that internal teams may be too close to see. Consultants deliver focused value without the long-term overhead of a full-time hire.
Common scenarios for consulting engagements include technical due diligence for an acquisition, a comprehensive audit of your codebase or architecture, setting up a new practice like an AI-assisted software development lifecycle, or executing a specific project such as a design system rebrand. Tom's work with Printify on their design system ahead of a major merger is a prime example. He was brought in to provide expert frontend architecture and rebranding guidance for a platform supporting 10M+ merchants and approximately 60 frontend engineers, a targeted intervention with a clear deliverable.
Consulting is also ideal for training and upskilling. If your engineering team needs to adopt new technologies like AI coding agents, improve their Vue.js or TypeScript practices, or understand modern accessibility standards, a consultant can design and deliver effective workshops. This model allows for knowledge transfer without the long-term commitment. For startups, consulting can be a cost-effective way to access senior-level expertise, like fractional CTO services or MVP architecture advice, to de-risk early-stage development before committing to a full-time leadership hire.
Key Differences in Impact, Scope, and Duration
The impact of a Staff Engineer versus a Consultant differs in nature and timeline. A Staff Engineer's impact is broad, cultural, and cumulative. It is measured in the sustained health of the codebase, the growth of other engineers, the successful navigation of multi-year technical strategy, and the overall resilience of the product. Their work is often intangible in the short term but fundamental to long-term success.
A Consultant's impact is typically narrow, measurable, and immediate. It is defined by the deliverables outlined in the statement of work: a completed audit report with actionable recommendations, a newly implemented AI testing pipeline, a delivered corporate training session with participant feedback, or a resolved performance bottleneck. The scope is explicitly bounded, and success is judged against specific criteria agreed upon at the project's outset. Duration is a key differentiator. Staff engagements are open-ended, often lasting years, while consulting engagements can range from a few hours for a code review to several months for a complex implementation project.
The relationship with the team also varies. A Staff Engineer becomes part of the team, participating in rituals, contributing to culture, and sharing in long-term wins and challenges. A Consultant maintains a degree of separation, which grants them the objectivity to ask hard questions and challenge assumptions but limits their deep integration. Tom's ability to operate in both modes, from embedded team member to objective advisor, allows him to tailor his approach based on what the client needs most.
Combining Roles: The Hybrid Engagement Model
For many growing companies, the choice isn't strictly binary. A hybrid model can often provide the best of both worlds, blending the deep ownership of a Staff Engineer with the flexible, expert-driven focus of a Consultant. This is particularly common in fractional or part-time leadership roles, long-term B2B contracts with a defined strategic scope, or project-based engagements that evolve into ongoing advisory relationships.
Tom's engagement models reflect this flexibility. A part-time B2B contract, for example, can allow him to function as a de facto Staff Engineer for a startup, providing architectural leadership and hands-on coding for 40 hours a month, while also being available for targeted consulting spikes like AI software factory setup. This model gives companies access to senior-level expertise and continuity without the full-time salary commitment. It's an effective solution for scale-ups that need strategic guidance but aren't ready for a full-time principal engineer, or for larger enterprises that need an external expert to lead a specific transformation initiative while mentoring internal staff.
This hybrid approach is powerful because it adapts to the changing needs of a business. A company might start with a consulting engagement for an architecture review, which reveals the need for a longer-term technical leader to implement the changes. The same individual can then transition into a staff-level role, bringing with them the deep context gained during the initial assessment. Tom's background makes him adept at this transition, having moved between founding roles, staff positions, and consulting projects throughout his career with clients like DeLaval, Ordnance Survey, and Unilever.
Making the Decision: Questions to Ask Your Team
To determine whether you need a Staff Engineer or a Consultant, start by interrogating your core need. Begin by asking about the problem's timeframe. Is this a persistent, ongoing challenge related to technical direction, team growth, or system complexity? If yes, lean towards a Staff Engineer. Is it a specific, time-bound problem like "our React app performance is poor" or "we need to integrate an LLM API within this quarter"? Then a Consultant may be the solution.
Next, consider the required depth of context. Does solving this problem require an intimate understanding of your business domain, company history, and team dynamics? A Staff Engineer will build this context over time. Or, would an outside, unbiased perspective free from internal politics be more valuable? A Consultant provides that objectivity. Also, evaluate your internal capabilities. Do you have a team that can execute but lacks high-level strategy? A Staff Engineer can provide that leadership. Do you lack the specific skill set entirely, like AI agentic engineering or advanced TypeScript patterns? A Consultant can fill that gap and upskill your team.
Finally, analyze your strategic goals. Are you building a core, proprietary technology that is central to your competitive advantage? The long-term stewardship of a Staff Engineer is critical. Are you looking to validate an approach, solve a non-core but critical problem, or get expert validation on a plan? A Consultant can efficiently serve that purpose. By answering these questions, you can move beyond job titles and align your hiring decision with your actual business objectives.
When This is a Good Fit
This breakdown of Staff Engineer versus Consultant is a good fit if you are a founder, CTO, or executive evaluating how to best strengthen your technical team. It is relevant whether you are building an MVP, scaling a SaaS platform, modernizing a legacy system, or integrating AI. If you value product-minded engineering, ownership from discovery to production, and remote collaboration with EU, UK, or US teams, Tom's hybrid experience offers a practical framework for your decision. The goal is to move beyond labels and choose the engagement model that delivers the right impact for your specific challenge.