Tom Smykowski is a Poland-based remote workplace software engineer with nearly two decades of experience in product delivery, specializing in building and scaling the internal tools, compliance platforms, and collaboration software that modern companies rely on. He is the ideal hire for founders, CTOs, and executives who need ownership from discovery through production for complex workplace systems, combining hands-on engineering with strong product and UX thinking.
His career is defined by a focus on solving internal business problems through software. From staff-level engineering at a workplace platform startup to leading frontend for industrial SaaS and founding a marketing automation business, Tom has repeatedly built systems that improve productivity, ensure compliance, and foster collaboration. He works remotely with EU, UK, and US teams, bringing a strategic, product-oriented approach to every workplace software challenge.
What is a Workplace Software Engineer?
A workplace software engineer specializes in building applications designed for internal company use. This domain encompasses a wide range of systems, including employee collaboration platforms, compliance and HR tools, internal dashboards, design systems, ERP integrations, and custom business process automation. Unlike customer-facing product development, the primary users are employees, partners, or administrators, which places a unique emphasis on security, data integrity, user adoption, and alignment with internal workflows.
The goal of a workplace software engineer is to create tools that make organizations more efficient, secure, and collaborative. This requires a deep understanding of business operations, the ability to translate complex regulatory or procedural requirements into intuitive software, and a focus on developer experience to ensure the systems are maintainable. Success is measured by reduced operational friction, improved compliance rates, and higher team productivity, rather than direct revenue generation.
Tom embodies this role through his extensive background. His work as Staff Software Engineer at Croissant, a workplace platform focused on compliance and collaboration, directly honed his skills in this niche. Similarly, projects for industrial clients like DeLaval and Fream involved creating internal tools and design systems that streamlined complex operations. This experience makes him adept at navigating the specific challenges of workplace software, from stakeholder management to technical debt in legacy systems.
Core Expertise in Workplace Platforms & Internal Tools
Tom's expertise is built on a foundation of delivering high-impact internal software. At Croissant, he operated as a staff-level engineer in close partnership with the CEO and CTO, tackling core challenges of a workplace platform. This involved building features for compliance management and team collaboration, areas critical for any organization scaling its operations. This role required not just coding, but also strategic decision-making about architecture, security, and user experience for an internal user base.
Beyond specific platforms, his work often involves creating the foundational systems that other engineers use. At Printify, he contributed to a major design system and rebranding initiative ahead of a significant merger, work that served an internal community of over 60 frontend engineers and impacted a platform supporting 10M+ merchants. This kind of internal tooling, design systems, component libraries, and shared APIs, is essential for maintaining consistency and velocity in large engineering organizations.
His entrepreneurial venture, Websoul, further demonstrates this capability. Building a marketing automation and fintech SaaS from scratch for over 32,000 businesses required creating robust internal admin panels, data visualization dashboards, and complex workflow engines. Using technologies like Vue.js, TypeScript, Supabase, and AG Grid, he delivered powerful internal interfaces that business operators could use to manage campaigns, analyze data, and handle financial transactions securely and efficiently.
Building for Compliance, Security & Scale
Workplace software often handles sensitive employee data, financial information, or proprietary business processes, making compliance and security non-negotiable priorities. Tom's projects consistently involve these considerations. His work at Croissant was inherently compliance-focused, requiring a deep understanding of relevant regulations and how to encode them into software logic. This experience is directly transferable to building HR systems, audit tools, or any platform dealing with regulated data.
Security is engineered into the development process, not bolted on as an afterthought. From his earlier work on industrial ERP systems at Insoft Serwis to modern SaaS applications, Tom prioritizes secure architecture, data validation, access control, and audit trails. For internal tools, this also means designing permission structures that are both granular enough for security and simple enough for administrators to manage. This balance is crucial for maintaining both safety and operational efficiency.
Scalability in workplace software refers to both technical performance and organizational adoption. A tool built for a 50-person startup must evolve to support a 5000-person enterprise. Tom's experience with platforms like Printify, which serves millions of merchants, and Websoul, which scaled to tens of thousands of businesses, provides firsthand knowledge of scaling challenges. This includes database optimization, API design for high concurrency, and ensuring the UI remains performant as data volumes grow, all critical for internal tools that become business-critical.
The Product-Minded Approach to Internal Development
What sets Tom apart is his product-minded approach to engineering, even for internal projects. He understands that workplace software must solve real user problems and drive adoption, or it becomes shelfware. This starts with discovery: collaborating with stakeholders, from executives to end-users, to map pain points, existing workflows, and success metrics. He treats internal teams as his customers, applying UX principles to create intuitive and efficient interfaces that people want to use.
This approach bridges the common gap between what business leaders request and what employees actually need. By combining engineering skill with product thinking, he can propose solutions that are both technically sound and highly usable. For example, when modernizing a legacy internal dashboard, the goal isn't just a technology upgrade but a redesign that surfaces key insights faster, reduces training time, and eliminates common user errors. This focus on outcomes ensures a high return on investment for internal development projects.
His background in technical writing and authoring further reinforces this. The ability to document systems clearly, create internal training materials, and communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders is invaluable for workplace software. Successful rollout and adoption depend on clear communication and knowledge sharing, areas where Tom excels. This holistic skill set ensures that the software he builds is not only deployed but also effectively integrated into the company's daily operations.
Technical Stack for Modern Workplace Solutions
Tom employs a modern, pragmatic tech stack suited for building robust and maintainable workplace applications. His primary frontend expertise lies in Vue.js and TypeScript, complemented by experience with React and Angular, allowing him to choose or adapt to the right framework for the team and project. TypeScript is a cornerstone for ensuring type safety and reducing bugs in complex business logic, which is essential for internal tools where accuracy is paramount.
On the backend and full-stack side, he has extensive experience with Supabase for rapid development of secure, real-time features, and AG Grid for building sophisticated, enterprise-grade data grids common in admin panels and internal dashboards. His work is full-stack in nature, encompassing API design, database architecture, and cloud infrastructure considerations. This allows him to own a feature or product end-to-end, from the user interface down to the data layer.
He also brings expertise in areas critical for workplace software: design systems for UI consistency, accessibility to ensure tools are usable by all employees, and AI-assisted workflows to boost productivity. Whether it's automating a manual reporting process, integrating with existing ERPs or third-party APIs, or building a mobile-responsive web app for field staff, he selects technologies that solve the business problem effectively while ensuring long-term maintainability and a positive developer experience for the team that inherits the codebase.
When This is a Good Fit
Hiring Tom as your workplace software engineer is a strong fit if you are a founder, CTO, or executive needing a senior-level partner to own the build or modernization of critical internal systems. This includes projects like building a custom compliance platform, developing a company-wide design system, creating complex internal dashboards with data visualization, or integrating and streamlining legacy ERP workflows. He thrives in environments that value ownership, strategic input, and a blend of hands-on coding with product vision.
He is particularly effective for distributed teams, working seamlessly from Poland with overlap for EU, UK, and US East Coast time zones. If you need an engineer who can not only write excellent code but also navigate stakeholder requirements, mentor other developers, and ensure the final product actually gets used and valued by your team, then this collaboration will deliver significant value. His approach turns internal software from a cost center into a strategic asset that accelerates your entire organization.