Thomas Findlay

Engineering leader and hands-on CTO with 13+ years of experience building SaaS platforms and the engineering teams behind them. Author of React - The Road To Enterprise and Vue - The Road To Enterprise. Speaker at React Summit, React Advanced London, and Vue Amsterdam.

I'm currently contracting as Engineering Lead at Kaya AI, an AI-powered construction supply chain platform, where I lead 12 engineers and client-facing leads and own the product and client roadmaps. I made a core product that stalled on large data sets respond in under a second (key actions from 10+ seconds, data loading, search and filtering from ~15-20 seconds to ~1 second), cut data loading for non-English users from 30+ seconds to under one, and built a shared library of AI development workflows (spec review, multi-agent implementation and PR review, ticket creation) that 17 engineers adopted within two months, raising per-engineer delivery throughput by ~25%. I also shipped Amber Insights, an AI risk-analysis feature for clients, and designed an enterprise-grade, policy-based permissions system.

Before that I contracted as CTO for IQONICS in the energy sector. I built the engineering function from zero, consolidated three separate codebases into a single multi-tenant white-label platform (tenant-isolated data, custom domain routing, and an RBAC permissions system built from scratch), found and fixed SQL injection and path traversal vulnerabilities in production, moved PDF generation that blocked the whole server for 60+ seconds onto background workers, and halved feature delivery time with AI-assisted development.

I still work hands-on across the full stack, but what I bring beyond it is the ability to make hard architectural calls, turn business needs into a plan a team can deliver, and follow through on it in production.

Credentials

I'm the author of "React - The Road To Enterprise" and "Vue - The Road To Enterprise," covering advanced patterns, scalability, and best practices for building production-grade applications (https://theroadtoenterprise.com/)

I've spoken at and led workshops at major international conferences including:

• React Summit — Composition vs Configuration: How to Build Flexible, Resilient and Future-proof Components (https://portal.gitnation.org/contents/composition-vs-configuration-how-to-build-flexible-resilient-and-future-proof-components)

• React Advanced London — Advanced Patterns for API Management in Large-Scale React Applications (https://portal.gitnation.org/contents/advanced-patterns-for-api-management-in-large-scale-react-applications)

• Vue Amsterdam — Vue Experts Panel & The Case Study of Findlay Web Tech (https://www.youtube.com/live/El8Jw2CFj7g?si=EUVzHQgAbtPNUAwq&t=5507)

• React Wednesdays — Best Practices for Testing React Apps (https://www.telerik.com/react-wednesdays/react-wednesdays-best-practices-for-testing-react-apps)

• GDG React Workshop — How to Handle APIs in React Applications

I've also written 50+ in-depth technical articles for the Telerik/Progress blog. I hold an MSc in Advanced Computer Science (Distinction) from the University of Exeter and a First-Class BSc in Web Design & Development from Northumbria University.

Technical Stack

• Leadership: Team leadership, hiring, product and client roadmaps, PRDs and technical specs, QA process, engineering standards

• AI: Claude Code, Cursor, multi-agent development workflows, LLM integration, AI-assisted code review

• Frontend: React, Next.js, Vue, Nuxt, React Native, TypeScript, TanStack

• Backend: Node.js, Express, Fastify, Python, FastAPI, PHP

• Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Firebase, Supabase

• Infrastructure: AWS (incl. Lambda), Kubernetes, Docker, Celery, BullMQ, GitHub Actions, Datadog, PostHog, VPS

• Testing: Playwright, Vitest, Cypress, E2E & API test automation

• Security: Penetration testing, RBAC and policy-based permissions design, SQL injection & path traversal remediation

Who I Work With

Open to remote full-time and part-time contract roles as CTO, Head of Engineering, Engineering Lead, or Tech Lead, as well as senior full-stack engagements. Also available for architectural consulting, technical due diligence, and mentoring.