Tom Regan

High-Scale Backend Systems, Developer Enablement, & Full-Stack Shipping.

Location

London Area, UK / Remote

Availability

Up to 5 days a week

Type of work

Contract, full-stack, fractional, or targeted project engagements

I am a Staff Software Engineer with over 10 years’ experience designing and building high-scale systems, from high-throughput trading platforms and automated logistics to shipping my own cloud-native applications. I specialise in backend infrastructure for larger enterprises, but I am equally comfortable stepping in as a full-stack engineer for small businesses and founders looking to build, scale, or optimise their products.

How We Can Work Together

High-Scale Backend Systems: Architecture, performance tuning, and event-processing pipelines for complex enterprise infrastructure. I reduce latency, eliminate bottlenecks, and lower cloud infrastructure spending.

Full-Stack & MVP Shipping: End-to-end product delivery using React Native, TypeScript, and lightweight cloud backends. Getting mobile and web apps built, deployed, and onto the App Store efficiently.

Developer Enablement & Workflows: Streamlining CI/CD pipelines, modularising codebases, and establishing clear onboarding runbooks to turn multi-day developer setup into hours.

Pragmatic Modern Tooling: Treating modern engineering tools (including AI-assisted development platforms, IDE workflows, and automated testing) as standard, essential components of a sharp development process.

What I Can Do

Building Software

My primary expertise is in Java, Typescript, Python, Go, and C. I have extensive experience building scalable systems, REST APIs, and event-driven architectures running on AWS, Cloudflare, and Docker. On the frontend and mobile side, I work across React, Next.js, Astro, and Expo / React Native.

Architecture & Systems Optimisation

I investigate and resolve performance bottlenecks, optimise database queries, and cut infrastructure overhead. From processing thousands of messages per second in trading systems to dropping per-event latency by 95% in automated fulfillment control loops, I build systems that are reliable under pressure.

Developer Experience & Team Support

Having led cross-functional engineering initiatives and mentored developers, I focus on building systems that other engineers love working on. I introduce reproducible build environments (Ansible, Docker), write clean documentation, and set up clear Apdex metrics and SLO monitoring.

Tech & Skills

Languages: Java, Typescript, Python, Go, C

Frameworks & Web: Spring Boot, React, Next.js, Astro, Expo / React Native

Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS, Cloudflare, Terraform, Docker, Ansible, PostgreSQL, CI/CD

Technical Standards: HTTP & Internet RFCs, REST, HATEOAS, OAuth2, OIDC, SQL, UUIDs, ULID, POSIX

Practices & Soft Skills: System Architecture, Performance Tuning, Mentoring, Developer Onboarding, Accessibility

What Sets Me Apart

I Build Software Engineers Love to Maintain: I focus on maintainable, low-friction systems with fast onboarding, automated tooling, and clear documentation.

Pragmatic Tooling Mindset: I don’t treat developer tooling or AI assistance as optional trends; they are part of a modern engineer’s baseline toolkit, just like a modern IDE or continuous integration pipeline.

I See Both Big Infrastructure and Product Realities: Having operated as both a Staff Engineer across multi-site automated facilities and a Company Director shipping an app end-to-end, I know how to balance long-term system stability with lean delivery.

Sample Projects

While much of my enterprise work lives in private repositories, here are a few open-source tools and projects:

Nutshell: An ultra-low-cost, cloud-native web and mobile application distributed on the App Store.

UUIDs: Utilities and implementations focused on unique identifier generation and RFC standards compliance.

ISBN: Utilities for validating, formatting, and parsing International Standard Book Numbers.

Comparator Verifier: Tooling to verify and enforce consistent mathematical properties in custom comparator and sorting routines.

Roots: An e-book library manager.

Get in Touch

If you need a senior backend specialist for an enterprise initiative, or a full-stack engineer to help ship a product, let’s talk.

Email me directly at tom@mustardcustard.uk,check out my CV, or connect via LinkedIn and GitHub.