Dawid Tomkalski, independent consultant

Senior architecture and technical leadership for SaaS teams, without a full-time hire.

For the last eight years I’ve designed trust accounting ledgers, payments and channel integrations for Australian property SaaS. I bring the same care to your platform as a fractional architect or tech lead.

Get in touchSee services

Remote across Australia and New Zealand. On-site in South East Queensland.

  • 18years building software
  • 12years independent, as DaTom
  • 25+LinkedIn recommendations
    • Homtrust trust accounting
    • Homhero holiday-rental channel management
    • Hompay payments
    platforms I’ve architected

Where I help

Most teams call me in one of these situations. Each page shows how I approach it and the work behind it.

  • You need senior technical leadership, but not a full-time CTO

    I own the architecture, set engineering direction and back up your developers a few days a month.

    Fractional CTO and tech lead

  • You want an outside view before you scale, raise or rebuild

    I review the system, code and AWS setup, then tell you plainly what will hurt first and what to do about it.

    Architecture review

  • Your software holds client money in trust

    Ledgers, bank feeds and reconciliation that stay correct under retries, failures and audits. I’ve built one from scratch.

    Trust accounting software

  • You’re adding payments or another gateway

    Gateways behind one interface, card data kept out of your PCI scope, and payments that can’t be taken twice.

    Payments integration

How engagements work

You work directly with me, from the first call to the last commit. No account managers and no hand-offs to juniors.

Architecture review

I review your system, codebase or AWS setup against where the business is heading.

Length
Fixed scope, 1–3 weeks.
You get
A written report with risks and recommendations ranked by impact, and a walkthrough with your team.

Design and build

I work alongside your team, own the architecture and build the critical parts myself: ledgers, integrations, infrastructure and APIs.

Length
Typically 2–6 months.
You get
The architecture designed and the critical parts built, with your team working on them from day one.

Fractional architect or tech lead

Ongoing architectural ownership and technical leadership, without a full-time hire.

Length
2–8 days a month. Three-month minimum, then month to month with a month’s notice.
You get
A senior lead in your planning, design and code reviews, and on Slack or Teams between days.

Every engagement starts with a short call about the problem. I quote once we’ve agreed the scope.

Recent work

Two platforms where I owned the architecture. Both move real money for businesses across Australia and New Zealand.

Homtrust · HombalanceSolution Architect / Project Lead2023 – 2026

Trust accounting SaaS platform

Multi-tenant platform that Australian agencies use to hold and account for client money (rent, bonds and sale proceeds) in regulated trust accounts.

  • Domain-driven GraphQL API on schema-per-enterprise PostgreSQL, with ledger posting, bank feeds and reporting running asynchronously on AWS.
  • Owned the double-entry ledger, with ACID online mutations and dedicated ledger processors with dead-letter handling.
  • Idempotency keys and unique constraints so a double-submit or crash can never double-debit a ledger.
HomheroSolutions Architect (from Senior Software Engineer)2018 – 2026

Property & channel management platform

Platform for professional holiday-rental managers across Australia and New Zealand: reservations, OTA distribution, portals, field apps and payments.

  • Designed the serverless platform (DynamoDB, Lambda, EventBridge, CDK) while the legacy PHP system stayed live.
  • Channel integrations with Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, Expedia, Google Hotels and Marriott.
  • Shaped Hompay: tokenised cards, a separate PCI vault and multiple Australian gateways behind one interface.
Full experience

What colleagues say

From the people I’ve reported to, worked beside and led. Read all 25+ recommendations on LinkedIn

  • Dawid has been extremely methodical in his planning, execution and testing of the Homtrust system… I very highly recommend Dawid to anyone who needs a senior, experienced, diligent and meticulous team member.

    Craig McIntoshInterim CEO, Homhero

  • He has a great ability to go deep into technical topics, understand the underlying problems and think through solutions carefully rather than settling for the easy answer… I’d happily recommend Dawid to any team looking for a thoughtful, technically strong and dependable Software Architect.

    Dominik WilkowskiCTO, Homhero

  • Dawid… has helped us grow and scale our business from startup thanks to his extensive knowledge in technology and systems architecture… [He understands] a project not only from a technological perspective, but from the business’ and users’ as well.

    Hayden D’ArcyCo-Founder & Director, Homhero

  • I’ve worked with him and contracted him myself… Any business that has a chance to utilise him can expect to be revolutionised.

    Vincent ButtigiegPrincipal Engineer, AI tech specialist

  • He brings a lot of technical knowledge and experience, and he’s always approachable and happy to talk things through… He cares about the quality of the work and the people doing it.

    Damian MatkowskiSoftware Developer in Dawid’s team

  • His dedication to the craft and attention to detail is admirable and he is an important piece of the puzzle to any project he is involved in.

    Kim RichardsonWorkflow Automation

Latest insights

Notes from my own projects on architecture, AWS and software that handles money.

All insights

Tell me what you’re building.

A few lines about the platform, where it hurts and your timeline are enough to start. Email and LinkedIn both reach me directly.

Email meConnect on LinkedIn