A bobble head of myself that my team at Cake gave me as a going away present

Hi, I'm Thomas.

You should hire me!

What I can do for you

In exchange for money

Startup CTO

I'm an experienced startup CTO, and I absolutely love working for small companies where you have to wear many hats and work closely with other teams. Whether you're looking for a full-time or partial CTO, or if you just want to talk to someone for a few hours who's done this before - I can help you with that.

Engineering Team Lead

With more than 10 years of experience leading, hiring and mentoring developers, my primary goal is to remove obstacles for my team so, we can all work more efficiently and still have a good work/life balance. Investing in developers means they get better and happier over time, and that you get to keep them!

Software Developer

I'm a full-stack developer with over 20 years of experience building complex web applications in tightly regulated industries. Check out some of my previous roles, and the list of technologies I use.

Career Highlights

See my life flash before your eyes!

CTO
at Cake (2016-2023)
With over 40m visitors a year looking for help, Cake is the world's leading end-of-life planning website. I joined as the first hire in 2016 an helped develop the product from the ground up. After the company secured funding, I trained and managed a team of full-time developers to implement new product features and make sure that each page is optimized for SEO. I created and maintained Cake's scalable and HIPAA compliant hosting and software architecture, and interfaced with European B2B customers to implement their special compliance and security needs.

Principal Software Developer
at UnifySquare (now Unisys) (2010-2016)
I was responsible for the creation of a new product to add to the company's suite of Unified Communications products. Together with the product team, we built the solution from the ground up and deployed to over 100k seats at several Fortune 50 companies.

Development Team Lead
at Netbiscuits (for eBay, 2006-2009)
My team and I created the official mobile websites for eBay in most European countries. We also created an innovative bidding-by-SMS solution for eBay, that was pre-installed on over 1m Vodafone devices.

Senior Web Hosting Consultant
at Planet (for Microsoft, 2005)
I travelled across Europe on behalf of Microsoft to educate web hosters on the benefits of the Microsoft hosting platform

Windows System Developer
at Ionos (2000-2004)
The team I joined was responsible for creating the first version of managed Windows and Exchange hosting for the company. We worked very closely with Microsoft's internal IIS team to launch the first version of IIS6 hosting in Europe. The platform grew to over 100k hosted websites and 60k hosted mailboxes within a few years.

Technologies and Tools

Some of the languages, tools and products I use regularly

Software Development
  • ASP.NET MVC, WebAPI, Razor
  • .NET Core, .NET Framework
  • EntityFramework, MS SQL, NoSQL
  • ASP.NET Identity, SSO, OAuth, SAML
  • C#, VB.NET, LINQ
  • HTML, CSS, SCSS, Bootstrap
  • React, AngularJS, jQuery, Javascript
  • webpack, vite, npm
Microsoft Azure
  • Compliance and Security
  • SOC2, HIPAA, GDPR, CISPA
  • Azure App Service, Functions
  • SQL, Data Explorer, CosmosDB
  • Entra, Vault, Defender
  • Application Insights, Blob Storage
  • Azure Front Door, CDN
  • Azure Data Factory
And much more
  • SEO optimization, Core Web Vitals
  • Software Architecture and Design
  • Team lead, hiring
  • Azure DevOps, git, TFS/TFVC
  • CI/CD and ETF pipelines
  • Mailchimp, SendGrid, Twilio, Stripe
  • Headless CMS (Contentful, Sanity)
  • Okta/Auth0

Years of Experience

Let's talk about it

Why are you here? How can I help you?

Reviews and Feedback

What other people say about me

Thomas possesses a rare talent for making even the most complex technical subjects accessible to all stakeholders, which greatly facilitated communication and decision-making processes within our team.

- Ariel Sherry, Product Manager @ Cake

Thomas was a great boss and a solid developer. I worked with him for over 5 years at Cake, where he played a crucial role in the company's growth, particularly in building the application from the ground up when Cake was in its infancy.

- Annette Arabasz, Software Developer @ Cake

[Thomas has the] excellent ability to explain and present technology in lay terms, as well as excellent client facing skills.

- Duncan Hallas, Client @ eBay

Thomas is one of the best developers I have worked with in the last 10+ years.

- Rohit Jhangiani, Project Manager @ Unisys

[Thomas has the] innate ability to translate complex scenarios in something anyone can understand. But more importantly, it always felt like [he] had our backs and genuinely cared about our well being.

- Tommy Rosario, Software Developer @ Cake