About
I'm Arkadiusz, a product engineer and tech lead based in Poland. For ten years I've worked on products where figuring out what to build was part of the engineering job. Most recently for VC-backed US startups, where I own builds from founder discovery through architecture to launch, mentor the engineers around me, and stay in the code.
2016 — 17Backend
2017 — 20Full stack
2020 — 25Product engineering
2025 — ongoingTech lead
- Years shipping production software
- 10+Years shipping production softwareBackend PHP in 2016 through to product engineering and technical leadership today.
- Products shipped since 2025
- 5+Products shipped since 2025Web and mobile for VC-backed US startups, in Next.js and React Native.
- Concurrent engagements
- 12+Concurrent engagementsThe studio's active client portfolio across an 8+ engineer team.
How I got here.
Background
- 01From backend to product engineeringI started in 2016 writing backend PHP, moved into full stack, and spent the last five years owning frontend-heavy product work. Every step moved me closer to the same place: the point where a product decision and a technical decision turn out to be the same decision.
- 02Where engineering meets productThe work I'm best at starts before the ticket exists. Sitting with founders and stakeholders, mapping user stories, prototyping the parts nobody has agreed on yet, then turning that into an architecture and a plan a team can actually build against.
- 03Leverage over outputThe work I'm proudest of made other people faster. A project boilerplate that became an agency's delivery standard. A design system that replaced scattered values with shared foundations across two products. A modern frontend stack introduced into a codebase that had none.
- 04Leading without leaving the codeI mentor engineers, set delivery standards, and serve as a technical counterpart to clients on the products I lead. Staying close to production code keeps my technical judgment grounded in the systems the team actually has to build and maintain.
Ten years, role by role.
Experience
- 01Tech LeadA product studio building for VC-backed US startups, from financial analysis platforms to multi-tenant device management. I've shipped 5+ web and mobile products here, including greenfield builds I owned from the first user-story mapping session with the client through architecture, implementation, deployment and the iteration after launch. On other engagements I join products that already exist, to raise engineering quality or deliver the work that matters most. I mentor three engineers directly, set the quality and delivery standards the wider team works to, and serve as the technical counterpart for founders on the engagements I lead.
- 02Senior Software DeveloperAcross three client engagements, my deepest platform work was on a US translation-management SaaS, where I became lead developer in the platform foundations team and drove its internal design system. I standardized dozens of components across multiple UI libraries, replaced hardcoded colors and one-off values with shared foundations, and carried the legacy product onto the same implementation while feature delivery kept running. Alongside it I delivered frontend and backend work in TypeScript and Node.js for a Swiss document-management product and a Finnish event-management platform.
- 03Frontend DeveloperMy first startup, and the first time an entire frontend domain was mine. Two React and Next.js applications carried customers from health-data collection through to buying a personalized supplement, and by the end I was the only engineer responsible for either of them. That meant setting technical direction, rebuilding core product surfaces in TypeScript, and living with those decisions as the product changed around them.
- 04Full Stack DeveloperJoined as a PHP developer on an information and marketing platform serving millions of students, teachers and parents across Poland. Midway through I introduced React, TypeScript and Material UI to a codebase that had none, and led the first module built on the new stack — the point where the company's frontend modernization actually started. I also mentored the team's first intern, which was my first taste of being responsible for someone else's growth.
- 05Full Stack DeveloperAn agency, US clients, and my first experience of building something the whole team would use. I led the adoption of Laravel and Vue.js and co-created the project boilerplate that became the standard starting point for every client engagement that followed, taking repeated setup off the front of each new project.
- 06Junior Backend DeveloperMy first commercial role. An internal product on a custom PHP framework, and the first code I wrote that other people depended on.
How I build now.
Working with AI
AI changed how much software I can produce. It did not change who answers for what reaches production. Generating an implementation is cheap now; deciding whether it is the right one, whether it survives contact with the rest of the system, and whether it solves the problem the user actually has is the part that still takes judgment. More of my time goes there than it used to.
- 01Understand before decidingI use AI to widen what I can look at before committing to anything: mapping an unfamiliar codebase, reconstructing the reasoning behind code I did not write, reading into an API I have not used, pulling apart an approach before I build on it. More ground covered per hour, and fewer calls made on a guess.
- 02Turn ambiguity into something buildableBetween a founder's brief and an architecture sits a lot of unresolved product. I use AI to break requirements into flows, challenge the assumptions behind my user stories, surface what nobody has decided yet, and compare approaches while changing my mind is still cheap. It widens the decision space. The decision stays mine.
- 03Delegate the predictable partWhen a task is well understood I hand over a lot of it: scaffolding, repetitive changes, refactors, tests, migrations, the surface of a library I am meeting for the first time. What I keep is what outlives the task: architecture, interfaces, boundaries, how the thing sits in the system around it, and how it behaves for the person using it.
- 04Generated is not the same as readyI read AI output the way I read a pull request from anyone else: correctness, security, performance, complexity that did not need to exist, whether it matches the conventions already in the codebase, whether the behaviour is right. A generated interface adds a layer traditional code review can easily miss, because it can be technically correct and still be wrong: hierarchy that guides nobody, states nobody considered. AI helps here too, as an adversarial reviewer that finds edge cases and argues with my diff. The review that decides whether it ships is mine.
What I work with.
Stack
01Core
TypeScriptJavaScriptReactNext.jsReact NativeNode.js
02Backend & Data
PostgreSQLRedisSupabaseSQL
03Frontend & UI
Design SystemsTailwind CSSStorybookMaterial UIReduxThree.js
04Testing & Delivery
PlaywrightJestReact Testing LibraryCypressDockerVercelRailwayGit
05Product & Engineering
System designProduct discoveryUser-story mappingTechnical directionCode reviewMentoringAI-assisted developmentStakeholder communication
06Current setup
Claude CodeMCP toolingAgentic delivery workflows
07Currently exploring
Context engineeringEval-driven development
Where I studied.
Education
BSc in Computer Science
2025
University of Economics in Katowice
Part-time, alongside full-time engineering work · AI & Programming specialization
I went back for the degree to put formal computer science underneath a decade of hands-on product work. The program deepened my grounding in mathematics, algorithms and AI fundamentals while I kept building and leading production software.