Software engineer with 20+ years building products, infrastructure, and open source software. Founder of JSON Resume and co-founder of cdnjs. Currently working across AI agents, programming languages, compilers, GPU computing, model training, and formal verification. I enjoy building complex systems from first principles.
May 2021 — Oct 2026
Principal-level engineering across AI, product development, and full-stack architecture. Most recently led production AI capabilities for an HR-tech SaaS, from agentic features to the underlying services.
Highlights
- Built production AI copilots with tool calling over customer data, response evaluation, and streaming interfaces.
- Developed autonomous agent workflows for generating reports, presentations, and PDFs from live business data.
- Shipped high-scale analytics and real-time collaboration systems, including server-side compute, caching, and concurrent-edit integrity testing.
May 2020 — May 2021
Built the frontend of an Electron-based Bitcoin wallet for issuing, managing, and trading digital tokens.
Highlights
- Developed React and Redux interfaces for secure wallet operations.
- Implemented local key-management and transaction-signing workflows, keeping private keys on the user's device.
Mar 2018 — Jan 2020
Full-stack engineering and technical leadership for an Australian cryptocurrency exchange.
Highlights
- Built trading interfaces and exchange services using React, Apollo, Node.js, and Rails.
- Integrated liquidity providers and optimized SQL queries across tens of millions of market records.
- Worked across infrastructure, product design, and deployment on Docker, Heroku, and GCP.
Jan 2016 — Jan 2018
Developed a cross-platform React/Redux application for web, iOS, and Android using a shared application architecture.
Highlights
- Built a PWA with React Native wrappers for mobile platforms.
- Worked with PostgreSQL, Redis, DynamoDB, AWS, Heroku, Fastly, and Cloudflare.
Apr 2014 — Jan 2016
Developed digital campaigning infrastructure and civic participation tools.
Highlights
- Built a Ruby on Rails action centre for contacting elected representatives.
- Developed campaign tools and integrations that lowered barriers to public participation.
Mar 2013 — Jan 2015
Joined as a frontend engineer and became CTO, leading product engineering, infrastructure, and a small development team.
Highlights
- Built a Backbone.js single-page application backed by Rails and MongoDB.
- Managed developers and designers and migrated infrastructure from Heroku to AWS.
Jun 2013 — Jan 2016
Developed civic technology and online campaigns opposing mass surveillance.
Highlights
- Helped build The Day We Fight Back and related campaigns.
- Campaigns generated 37 million banner views, 100,000 phone calls to Congress, 500,000 emails, and 250,000 signatures.
Jan 2011 — Jan 2014
Created a widely read educational resource for JavaScript and Backbone.js.
Highlights
- Reached over two million unique visitors annually.
- Generated 25,000+ ebook downloads and 300,000+ YouTube views.
Jan 2011 — Jun 2012
Developed frontend applications and widgets for enterprise editing software, including API design, documentation, and UI/UX work.
MobTranslate Jan 2020 — Oct 2026
Open-source language revitalization platform for Aboriginal Australian languages, combining dictionaries, community recordings, translation, and speech technology.
Highlights
- Built neural TTS and ASR pipelines for low-resource languages using VITS, wav2vec2, phonemic dictionaries, and fine-tuning.
- Developed language datasets, translation experiments, evaluation tools, and an Android keyboard.
- Designed consent-first, community-governed workflows where real speaker recordings take precedence over synthetic speech.
The University of Queensland Feb 2008 — Dec 2009
Defender of the Internet
AI, Agents & Machine Learning
Compilers, GPU & Formal Methods
Frontend
Backend
Cloud & DevOps
Architecture & Engineering
Programming Languages & Computer Science
- Compiler Design
- Formal Methods
- GPU Computing
- Experimental Computing
Open Source
- Developer Tools
- Open Standards
- Community Infrastructure
Languages & History
- Linguistics
- Language Revitalization
- Genealogy
- Historical Research
Gardening
- Lazy Gardening
Music
- Guitar
- Singing
- Dancing
Books
- Reading
- Writing
- History
- Science Fiction
Thomas was hired as a lead developer and, upon the leaving of our co-founder took over as CTO of Earbits. Thomas is, hands down, one of those A Players you hear of companies dying to hire. He is incredibly smart, not just at code but about everything from classical music to Chinese language and culture. Thomas is great to work with and, as a well established contributor to open source projects and several successful ventures, commands the respect of engineers at all levels. I would suggest doing anything you can to have him on your team.
— Joey Flores, Co-founder and CEO of Earbits, Inc.
I've had the great pleasure of working with Thomas for the past three years at Earbits, and on a few side projects. Two years ago our CTO left on a moment's notice, Thomas saved our company by quickly stepping up to fill this role. He has been with our company through thick and thin and made serious personal sacrifices in order to help the company during tough times. He is a phenomenal hacker and a true team player. Highly recommended!
— Yotam Rosenbaum, SVP of Operations, Earbits, Inc.
Thomas is an extremely talented engineer with a very broad range of skills and experience. From being a thought leader in the front-end community via backbonetutorials.com and cdnjs.com, to designing and implementing the API for cdnjs.com, working with Thomas has been fantastic learning experience. Thomas is truly a full stack develop, and his work output is incredible. If there is any opportunity to work with Thomas, I take it. He is the definition of an A player.
— Ryan Kirkman, Senior Software Engineer at Nerdwallet