# Tomasz Michalik

> Senior Software Engineer

Location: Greater Chicago Area, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/tomaszmichalik

## Work Experience
### Senior Software Engineer @ RockItCoin, LLC
Jan 2024 – Present | Chicago, Illinois, United States
Led modernization of the transaction platform supporting 3,000+ kiosks, processing ~$30M/month across multiple cryptocurrencies, while meeting compliance and security requirements in a regulated fintech environment

Migrated from a licensed transaction backend to in-house, event-driven services, reducing per-transaction fees by 15% and improving platform control, extensibility, and vendor independence
Architected and shipped distributed transaction services on GCP using Node.js and containerized microservices, enabling consistent APIs and secure processing across kiosk, mobile, and in-store channels

Built a production-grade delivery pipeline with Terraform (IaC), automated CI/CD, and blue/green deployments, improving release cadence bi-weekly → intra-weekly and reducing production incidents by 40% through safer rollouts and standardized controls

Provided senior technical and product leadership, guiding cross-functional engineering teams and collaborating with executives to align technology strategy with business priorities. Established engineering quality gates (secure coding standards, required reviews, automated tests, CI checks), reducing regression risk and improving deployment confidence for mission-critical financial workflows

Introduced AI-assisted development workflows (templates, tooling, review automation), improving team throughput by ~25% and increasing consistency across service patterns and code quality expectations
Provided senior leadership across engineering and product teams, aligning software delivery with business strategy and maturing the organization’s ability to rapidly innovate in a highly regulated crypto-fintech space

Implemented observability across critical transaction flows (metrics/logs/traces, alerting, runbooks), shortening incident response cycles and reducing MTTR from ~45m to ~20m

### Senior Software Engineer @ Thoughtful
Jan 2021 – Jan 2025 | Chicago, Illinois, United States
Senior backend engineer at fast-growing tech startup. We are building a world class platform for software automation. Led products from ideation to deployment in production. Contributed to all products developed at the firm including developer tools for automation, serverless & containerized backends, custom automation orchestration service, and nextjs frontend application

Owned technical direction and delivery for the core automation platform powering primary business applications, balancing reliability, roadmap priorities, and extensibility for next-gen agentic solutions across multiple industries

Built AI-generative automation product (“Foundry”) leveraging shared libraries and prior patterns to generate new automation code; extended core infrastructure to support AI-agent workflows and cut time-to-prototype by ~50%

Partnered with business leaders to translate operational workflows into automation products (packaging, premium features, ROI-driven prioritization), leading cross-org delivery into human + machine processes

Contributed to a custom orchestration runtime capable of executing long-running automations across AWS ECS containers, AWS Batch, and AWS Lambda, supporting hundreds of agents and distributed workflows 

Designed and delivered event-driven monitoring/telemetry services using EventBridge + SQS + Lambda, handling thousands of events/hour to report agent status, capture workflow telemetry, and enable operational alerting

Authored a Python telemetry SDK embedded in automations to capture step-level execution metrics and end-user signals, turning “black-box runs” into actionable analytics, proactive client alerting and reducing issue resolution time by ~30%

### Principal Data Engineer @ Sagence, Inc.
Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | Chicago, Illinois, United States
Led migration of an on-prem EDW to a cloud-native Azure lakehouse, enabling scalable ingestion and curated analytics for BI and Data Science while improving reliability and auditability

Architected multi-source ingestion across structured and unstructured inputs (APIs, FTP/file drops, and external feeds including web/social signals), supporting incremental refreshes and near-real-time updates across a growing enterprise dataset

Built Spark-based ETL/ELT pipelines on Azure (PySpark / Scala / SQL) processing multi-TB datasets for batch transformations and refresh cycles; improved pipeline runtime by up to ~80% via parallelism, partition strategy, and format/layout optimizations

Delivered a graph-based MDM capability using Neo4j/Dgraph + GraphQL and a React web app; implemented probabilistic entity resolution across sources to generate versioned “golden records,” improving match quality (precision/recall) to ~90% and reducing duplicates by ~20–40%

Implemented lakehouse zoning (raw → processed → curated) using Parquet + Delta, enabling ACID-style reliability, dataset versioning/time travel, and bi-temporal analysis; improved query performance by ~30–60% for analytics workloads and simplified audit/compliance reporting

Tuned and operated Spark infrastructure (autoscaling, partitioning, caching, file sizing, shuffle tuning), improving stability (failed jobs down 40%) through right-sizing and performance optimization

Provisioned and governed secure Data Science environments using Databricks / MLflow / Azure ML / VMs, implementing fine-grained access controls for internal + external teams; reduced environment setup time from days to hours while maintaining compliance controls

Implemented MLOps patterns for production ML pipelines: dataset/model versioning, containerized deployments, and promotion workflows; reduced model release cycle time by 50% and enabled consistent rollbacks/traceability for regulated workloads

### Implementation Engineer @ Hyatt Hotels Corporation
Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | Greater Chicago Area
Joined Hyatt Mobile First program : a redesign of current World of Hyatt mobile application to implement new in-stay functionality to improve guest experience and increase digital revenue share
-System design and solution architecture - defining architecture, sequence diagrams, process flows for new features such as two-way live chat, feedback, housekeeping, and enhanced check-in 
-Wrote API adapter services for legacy java services to connect to new Mobile and web backend REST API
-Web services for new mobile application needs (enablement of legacy backend services with Wrapper API to enable calling these services - Java)
-Acted as technical liaison between development teams and Hyatt functional teams. Worked closely with product and Operations teams to define and drive solutions to deployment
-Conducted technical investigation into internal Hyatt systems and external vendor products; defined dependencies, gaps, data flow, service integration for smooth integration of required API & middleware
-Analyzed key performance indicators from Splunk and generated app usage reports

### Program Manager @ Optum (formerly Alere Wellbeing)
Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Schaumburg, IL
Worked across multiple departments and cross functional teams to minimize risk when implementing solutions that impact service, data, application layers for Mobile.
Responsibilities:
Manage portfolio in agreement with Finance, IT and Business Stakeholders to scope the opportunity, determine benefits, and obtain sign-off by all impacted parties for developed features
Implemented process and quality improvements through a planned Process Improvement Plan- outlining a streamlined communication plan, divisions of responsibility, method-tailored agile release cycle for Mobile app releases and the change management process that locks in scope for each release
Design and implement availability, scalability and performance plans for AWS managed service environment between Mobile & Portal teams
Develop plans for deliverables, measure and track performance, forecast and predict costs, and analyze program data in order to enhance performance, achieve targets/benefits and identify opportunities to improve efficiency and effectiveness

### Product Owner/ Project manager @ United Airlines
Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | Chicago
Worked on Mobile Agent Platform (MAP) initiative at United Airlines, an enterprise wide program aimed at mobile enablement of front line employees with mobile phones allowing operational flexibility and efficiency
Responsibilities:
Worked with vendors from RFP process to defined project work with in-house development and design staff to properly deliver features needing cooperation with service and data layer teams at United
$20 million enterprise wide project directed by United leadership
Software implementations:
Mobile Agent: Application leveraging current and new United web services infrastructure integrated with Reservation system. Allows agents to query, update, change passenger and flight information
My Schedule: app manages agent's schedule and intraday functions linked to United timekeeping, scheduling and payroll systems
Implemented Bag algorithm: predictive algorithm for quantity of gate-checked bags using historical data elements, seasonality/schedule , and current passenger load as input parameters
Full scale deployment: tiered deployment to all United Hubs. Weekly deployment to every airport culminating in 6000+ iPhones, 1000 mobile printers and accessories distributed to Agents
Data analysis of key KPI’s for operational efficiency built in to mobile usage reporting tool

### Technical Project Manager @ RDIA Digital
Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | Chicago, IL
Joined project to build new learning management system for edTech client (Web Application). Reverse engineered current system to provide blueprint for MVP product. Made core decisions on technologies used, modules built, system design.
Responsibilities:
Worked with client to help determine best fit for all of their needs based on old and desired system functionality. Planned releases based on logical system design and specific features needed for MVP
All requirements of system tracked in traceability matrix; added hourly cost to prioritize release plan f or deliverables with client. Features were mapped to general ‘old’ features in old system or ‘new’
Managed project budget, allocation of resources, and client management: invoice processing outlined in SOW, subsequent change requests for features, changes in schedule or direction
Transitioned project team from waterfall to Agile methodology. Created new improved processes for gathering and finalizing requirements with client, developing features, and testing functionality to accommodate for extremely aggressive timeline for delivery

### Senior Technical Business Analyst @ US Foods
Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | Rosemont, IL
US Foods was amidst integration following agreement to merge with Sysco Foods. I worked on multiple projects relating to integration as well as managing a lift and shift enhancement of product called “Punch Through/Punch Out.” This application integrates with third party vendors and allows their customers to order products via XML and EDI requests. I managed my team through change management when merger talks stalled after FTC overruled merger propositions. Managed scope and product backlog through organizational changes after merger was put on hold. Delivered fully functional application that will be launched in Summer 2015 

Responsibilities:
Worked in Agile Scum Framework. Worked as a team estimating development time and managed scope in each sprint with a retrospective after each sprint to improve productivity
Worked with various data types for EDI and XML transmission and translation. HTTPS and SSL added to provide security layer for ordering based on these methods
Tracked, monitored and communicated project progress against the project plan, quality measures, standard processes, milestones and budget
Analyzed business and technical processes with Architect to choose optimal solution, leveraging choose the right web services and reducing our impact on Portal 
EDI translation into XML before submitting order to BE and Response XML translated back to EDI 855 for order confirmation
Worked with UI component for Visual Punch Through, Virtual Log on (silent logon), and Punch Out products. Products impacted regular order flow and needed to follow a new restricted workflow when ordering
Delivered enhanced application that is ready to deploy and start on boarding customers and third party partners once improved FE Portal deploys (our product is dependent on new technology stack’s web services)
Constantly evolving and improving scrum team resulted in over 85% code coverage for our application with minimal high severity defects

### Systems Analyst @ McDonald's
Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | Oakbrook, IL
I was brought on to lead the design, development, and implementation of an offer engine, mobile ordering and enablement of NFC and EMV payments at Drive-Thru
Responsibilities:
-Worked with design groups and architects to write logic for business offers generation tool
-Subscribed to event logic as trigger to push to APN servers to facilitate notification messages to customers. Tested functionality in 3 test markets
-Schedule project target dates and divided work units and deliverables between functional areas -involved in project (Testing, Hardware integration, Restaurant Design, Operations)
-Maintained Issue/Risk log, worked through the mitigation process with the project team
-Interacting with business stakeholders to determine project scope thus defining key challenges, risks and project deliverables

### Pricing Analyst @ United
Jan 2011 – Jan 2013 | Willis Tower
Analyzed markets, competitor/seasonal/economic conditions, price elasticity per available seat mile (ASM), and modeled strategies to maximize and forecast revenue
Developed and implemented pricing initiatives and projects to optimize operational efficiency and revenue performance.  Price scraping tools and automatic calculates
SQL queries, Manipulated  data tables in Access/excel. Created and ran calculates for automated pricing adjustments based on available assets (seats), seasonality, competitor prices, and variety of other factors
Automated processes/scripts created for pricing based on ASMs in market (available seat miles)


## Education
### Masters in Computer Science
University of Chicago
Jan 2016 – Jan 2018

### Bachelors in Business Administration
Northern Illinois University
Jan 2010


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tomasz-michalik-25a04530

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Source: https://flows.cv/tomaszmichalik
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/tomaszmichalik/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-23