Who is Your Test Automation Lead?
Tom Smykowski is a product-minded senior engineer with nearly two decades of delivery experience, specializing in leading test automation initiatives from strategy to production. He is the ideal hire for founders, CTOs, and technical leaders who need to establish or scale a robust, maintainable automation framework. He combines deep hands-on engineering with technical leadership to build quality gates that accelerate development, not hinder it.
His approach is holistic, integrating test automation seamlessly into the product development lifecycle. He understands that effective automation is not just about writing scripts, but about creating a sustainable system that improves developer experience, provides fast feedback, and protects the user journey. With a background spanning staff engineering roles and founding his own SaaS, he brings an ownership mindset to every engagement, ensuring the automation strategy directly supports business goals.
Based in Poland, Tom works remotely with international teams across the EU, UK, and US, adept at cross-time-zone collaboration. His experience with distributed teams at companies like Croissant and Printify means he is proficient in async communication and can effectively lead and mentor remote engineering teams in adopting best practices for test automation.
Architecting Scalable Test Automation Frameworks
The foundation of reliable software is a well-architected test automation framework. Tom designs and implements frameworks that are scalable, maintainable, and integrated into CI/CD pipelines from the start. He avoids brittle, flaky tests by focusing on clear patterns, separation of concerns, and leveraging the right tools for unit, integration, and end-to-end testing. His work ensures that your team can confidently ship features with speed and quality.
He has extensive experience selecting and configuring the appropriate technology stack, whether it's for web applications, mobile apps, or complex SaaS platforms. His technical expertise includes modern JavaScript/TypeScript ecosystems, and he stays current with tools like Playwright, Cypress, and Jest. For Tom, the tool is a means to an end; the primary goal is creating a framework that developers enjoy using and that provides undeniable value to the product lifecycle.
At Printify, while leading frontend initiatives for a design system used by over 60 engineers, ensuring automated visual and functional regression testing was paramount for a smooth rebrand ahead of a major merger. This experience in high-stakes, large-scale environments informs his approach to building automation that can handle complexity and scale alongside the engineering organization.
Leadership in Test Strategy and Process
A Test Automation Lead must define and evangelize the overall testing strategy. Tom works with engineering and product leadership to establish a balanced test pyramid, determining what to automate, when, and at which level. He champions a shift-left mentality, advocating for quality to be built in from the earliest stages of development through practices like test-driven development (TDD) and behavior-driven development (BDD).
His leadership extends beyond code to process and culture. He mentors developers in writing testable code and effective automation scripts, fostering a collective ownership of quality. He establishes clear metrics and reporting so the team and stakeholders have visibility into test coverage, build stability, and defect trends. This data-driven approach helps justify investment in automation and continuously improve the process.
In his role as a Staff Software Engineer at Croissant, a workplace platform, he partnered closely with the CTO on compliance and collaboration features. This required a rigorous approach to testing to ensure reliability for enterprise clients. He understands how to align test automation with business-critical requirements like security, compliance, and data integrity.
Integrating AI and Modern Tooling
The landscape of test automation is rapidly evolving with AI-assisted tools and agentic workflows. Tom is actively engaged in integrating AI into the software development lifecycle to enhance test creation, maintenance, and analysis. He can advise on and implement AI coding agents, AI-powered test generation, and intelligent quality gates that go beyond traditional rule-based checks.
He offers consulting on setting up an AI Software Factory, where test automation is a key component of an AI-native SDLC. This includes leveraging tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot to boost developer productivity in writing and maintaining test suites. By automating repetitive aspects of test upkeep, teams can focus on more complex testing scenarios and exploratory testing.
For teams looking to upskill, Tom provides corporate AI training and workshops specifically focused on AI for testing and quality assurance. He helps engineering teams adopt these modern practices responsibly, ensuring they complement and enhance existing expertise rather than replace critical thinking.
From MVP to Enterprise Scale
Tom's experience is uniquely broad, covering the entire spectrum from zero to one to scaling for millions of users. As the founder of Websoul, he built a marketing automation SaaS serving over 32,000 businesses, where a reliable, automated test suite was essential for rapid iteration and stability. This MVP and scaling experience is invaluable for startups that need to build a quality foundation from the outset without over-engineering.
Conversely, his work with enterprise clients like GE Healthcare, Unilever, and Bunge involves modernizing legacy systems and introducing test automation to complex, industrial-scale applications. He is skilled at navigating large codebases, incrementally introducing automation, and creating business cases for test investment that resonate with executive stakeholders. He has delivered for a diverse portfolio including the Polish Tourism Organisation, Silesian University of Technology, and the Marshal Office of the Silesian Voivodeship.
This dual perspective allows him to tailor the automation strategy perfectly to your company's stage. Whether you are a pre-seed startup needing a lean, effective setup for your founding team or an established enterprise looking to overhaul a monolithic test suite, he provides the right level of architecture and guidance.
Driving Developer Experience and Productivity
Great test automation improves Developer Experience (DevEx). Tom focuses on creating automation that is fast, reliable, and provides clear, actionable feedback. He integrates testing seamlessly into local development environments and CI/CD pipelines, reducing friction and context-switching for developers. The goal is to make running tests the easiest and most natural part of the development workflow.
He optimizes test suites for execution speed, parallelization, and intelligent test selection, ensuring that feedback loops are tight. He also advocates for and implements tools that improve the debugging experience when tests fail, saving valuable engineering time. His work on developer productivity extends to CI/CD pipeline optimization, tooling standardization, and fostering a culture of quality ownership.
His background in technical writing and public speaking translates into clear documentation, runbooks, and training for the team. He ensures that the *why* behind the automation strategy is communicated as effectively as the *how*, securing buy-in and enabling the entire team to contribute to and benefit from the automated testing ecosystem.
When This is a Good Fit
Hiring Tom as your Test Automation Lead is an excellent fit if you are a founder, CTO, or engineering leader who needs to establish a new test automation practice, rescue a failing or flaky test suite, or scale your existing automation to meet the demands of a growing team and product. It is ideal for companies that value strategic technical leadership combined with hands-on implementation, and who want a partner who will own the quality outcome from discovery through to production. If you have a distributed team across the EU, UK, or US and need a senior remote engineer who can lead by example and mentor your developers, this engagement will deliver immediate and long-term value.