Thomas Davis

Full Stack Developer & AI Engineer

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.

Education

Software Engineering (incomplete)

Feb 12, 2008Dec 12, 2009BachelorsThe University of Queensland

Employment

Principal Engineer — AI (contract)

May 5, 2021Independent (contract & advisory)Melbourne

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.

  • 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.

Senior Javascript Developer

May 5, 2020May 5, 2021TokenizedMelbourne

Built the frontend of an Electron-based Bitcoin wallet for issuing, managing, and trading digital tokens.

  • 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.

Senior Javascript Developer

Mar 1, 2018Jan 1, 2020BlockbidMelbourne

Full-stack engineering and technical leadership for an Australian cryptocurrency exchange.

  • 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.

Developer

Jan 1, 2016Jan 1, 2018Listium

Developed a cross-platform React/Redux application for web, iOS, and Android using a shared application architecture.

  • Built a PWA with React Native wrappers for mobile platforms.
  • Worked with PostgreSQL, Redis, DynamoDB, AWS, Heroku, Fastly, and Cloudflare.

Developer

Apr 1, 2014Jan 1, 2016Electronic Frontier Foundation

Developed digital campaigning infrastructure and civic participation tools.

  • Built a Ruby on Rails action centre for contacting elected representatives.
  • Developed campaign tools and integrations that lowered barriers to public participation.

CTO

Mar 8, 2013Jan 9, 2015Earbits

Joined as a frontend engineer and became CTO, leading product engineering, infrastructure, and a small development team.

  • Built a Backbone.js single-page application backed by Rails and MongoDB.
  • Managed developers and designers and migrated infrastructure from Heroku to AWS.

Developer

Jun 1, 2013Jan 1, 2016Taskforce.is

Developed civic technology and online campaigns opposing mass surveillance.

  • 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.

Founder

Jan 1, 2011Jan 1, 2014BackboneTutorials.com

Created a widely read educational resource for JavaScript and Backbone.js.

  • Reached over two million unique visitors annually.
  • Generated 25,000+ ebook downloads and 300,000+ YouTube views.

Front-end Developer

Jan 1, 2011Jun 1, 2012Ephox

Developed frontend applications and widgets for enterprise editing software, including API design, documentation, and UI/UX work.

Volunteering

Creator & Maintainer

Jan 1, 2020MobTranslate

Open-source language revitalization platform for Aboriginal Australian languages, combining dictionaries, community recordings, translation, and speech technology.

  • 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.

References

Joey Flores, Co-founder and CEO of Earbits, Inc.

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.

Yotam Rosenbaum, SVP of Operations, 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!

Ryan Kirkman, Senior Software Engineer at Nerdwallet

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.