Tom Smykowski is a Vercel Serverless Engineer with nearly two decades of experience in product delivery, combining deep engineering with UX and product thinking. He is the ideal hire for founders, CTOs, and executives looking for ownership from initial discovery through to production deployment, especially for projects leveraging Vercel's serverless platform for performance and scalability.
Why Hire a Vercel Serverless Engineer?
In today's fast-paced digital landscape, leveraging a platform like Vercel for serverless architecture can drastically reduce infrastructure complexity and accelerate time-to-market. However, maximizing its potential requires specialized expertise. A Vercel Serverless Engineer doesn't just write code, they architect solutions that are inherently scalable, cost-effective, and performant from day one.
Tom brings this expertise, having worked on high-scale projects like the Printify design system rebrand, which served a platform for over 10 million merchants. His approach integrates Vercel's edge functions, serverless compute, and seamless integrations to build applications that are both robust and maintainable. Hiring a dedicated engineer for this stack ensures your project avoids common pitfalls and leverages best practices in deployment, caching, and global distribution.
For teams across the EU, UK, and US, Tom's remote setup from Poland facilitates effective collaboration across time zones. His experience working with international teams at companies like Croissant, GE Healthcare, and Unilever means he is adept at async communication and cross-time-zone workflows, ensuring project continuity and momentum.
Architecting Scalable Applications on Vercel
Building on Vercel is more than just deploying a Next.js application. It involves a holistic strategy encompassing serverless functions, edge middleware, static and dynamic rendering, and integrated tooling. Tom's engineering methodology focuses on creating architectures that scale elegantly with user demand while optimizing for developer experience and operational costs.
His work often involves designing API routes as serverless functions, implementing incremental static regeneration (ISR) for dynamic content, and utilizing Vercel's analytics and monitoring suites. This ensures applications are not only fast but also observable and easy to debug in production. For product teams, this translates to reliable user experiences and efficient development cycles.
Tom's background includes leading frontend and full-stack initiatives at Fream and founding Websoul, a marketing automation SaaS serving over 32,000 businesses. This product-centric experience means he architects systems with the end-user and business goals in mind, ensuring the technical solution directly supports product growth and stability.
Full-Stack Product Delivery with Serverless Backends
A Vercel Serverless Engineer often operates across the entire stack. Tom's proficiency extends to backend-as-a-service platforms like Supabase, crafting REST and GraphQL APIs, and managing data persistence, all within a serverless paradigm. This full-stack capability is crucial for taking a product from concept to launch without dependency silos.
He has hands-on experience with technologies frequently paired with Vercel, including TypeScript for type-safe development, Vue.js and React for frontend interfaces, and AG Grid for complex data presentations. This toolkit allows him to build cohesive, full-featured applications where the frontend and serverless backend are perfectly aligned.
For companies looking to modernize existing systems, Tom applies this full-stack, serverless mindset to incrementally refactor legacy monoliths, breaking them into independently deployable, scalable services hosted on Vercel. This reduces technical debt and improves team agility, a process he successfully navigated in earlier roles involving industrial ERP systems.
Integrating AI and Modern Workflows
The modern development lifecycle is increasingly augmented by AI. Tom specializes in integrating AI-assisted workflows and tools like AI coding agents, Claude Code, and Cursor into the development process on Vercel projects. This focus on a modern, AI-native Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) boosts team productivity and code quality.
He can help set up what he terms an "AI Software Factory", a structured environment where AI tools assist in coding, testing, and generating quality gates. This is particularly valuable for teams building on Vercel, as it accelerates the development of serverless functions and UI components while maintaining high standards.
Beyond implementation, Tom offers corporate AI training and workshops, helping engineering teams and leadership adopt these tools effectively. This combination of hands-on engineering and upskilling support ensures that the benefits of AI integration are sustained and scaled across your organization.
Collaborating with Founders and Technical Leaders
Tom's best fit is working directly with founders, CTOs, and executives who need a trusted technical partner. His nearly twenty years of experience mean he can operate with a high degree of autonomy and ownership, translating business vision into technical execution. He thrives in environments where he can contribute to product strategy, technical architecture, and team leadership.
His client list, including marquee names like DeLaval, Ordnance Survey, and the Polish Tourism Organisation, demonstrates his ability to navigate complex stakeholder landscapes and deliver results. He is comfortable with both greenfield projects and modernizing legacy systems, making him a versatile asset for startups and established enterprises alike.
Communication is a cornerstone of his work style. As a technical writer, book author, and conference speaker, he excels at documenting decisions, mentoring team members, and ensuring knowledge transfer. This makes him an effective remote team member who strengthens the collective capability of any engineering organization he joins.
When This is a Good Fit
Hiring Tom as your Vercel Serverless Engineer is an excellent fit if you are a founder, CTO, or technical leader seeking a staff or senior-level engineer to own the delivery of a modern web application. It is ideal if your project requires deep expertise in Vercel's platform, serverless architecture, and full-stack TypeScript development, coupled with a strong product mindset. This engagement works best for teams that value remote, async collaboration and need a partner who can drive projects from discovery through to production and scaling.