Tom Beckenham, Developer in Forestville, New South Wales, Australia
Tom is available for hire
Hire Tom

Tom Beckenham

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Full-stack Developer

Location
Forestville, New South Wales, Australia
Toptal Member Since
August 10, 2020

Tom has a wealth of experience in multiple disciplines and has been coding since he was a teenager. He began with C++, creating game engines, and was an early adopter of AI, studying animation at the university. He built image processing and graphics products at Adstream before starting Specle, his first web business. In 2017, he moved to JavaScript. With years of coding experience, Tom is a highly proficient React/Node.js engineer with experience in user UI/UX, graphics, and financial data.

Portfolio

Comma
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Auth0, Amazon DynamoDB, Node.js, Material UI...
Murphycobb & Associates
React, Node.js, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, PostgreSQL
Specle
C++, MySQL, CSS, HTML, REST APIs

Experience

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Airtable, CircleCI, GitHub, Material UI, Node.js, Firebase, React, JavaScript, MongoDB

The most amazing...

...project I ran was Comma Payments where we pioneered the use of open banking APIs to drive bulk payouts in the UK.

Work Experience

Founder

2019 - 2023
Comma
  • Developed a new type of payment rail based on open banking bulk payments in the UK that forever changed how AP and payroll software companies implement payout features.
  • Engineered the early product for the first 18 months, bootstrapping via Toptal at the same time to fund the business. The back end was Node.js and front end was React. Originally Lamda and Dynamo based, we moved to Mongo and Express later.
  • Raised over $6 million of funding for the business from top VCs. We became a talent magnet, building and retaining an exceptional engineering team. I hired an amazing CTO and moved to CEO. We built a team of close to 40 people within 12 months.
  • Connected, together with the team, 31 banks via API for bulk payments. This was particularly painful as they were slow to resolve issues, and it was important to provide workarounds and validate payments at all points. A key aspect was to establish trust.
  • Designed, together with the team, an API and brand-able UX to build complex bulk payments into software products with minimal effort. This shortened the sales cycle.
  • Developed a secure sharing system to securely share payment runs with minimal user interaction, much like how DocuSign shares legal documents. This made it easy for one party to create a payment run and another who had bank access to execute it.
  • Achieved that the system was processing over £16m of payments per month within 12 months of launch.
  • Sold the business in March 2023 to a larger embedded finance business that was keen to combine our open banking payment technology into their stack.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Auth0, Amazon DynamoDB, Node.js, Material UI, Material Design, Google Material Design, React, JavaScript, MongoDB, Stripe, MERN Stack, Express.js, Next.js, Lambda Functions, CSS, HTML, AWS Lambda, CI/CD Pipelines, APIs, REST APIs

Head of Technology

2017 - 2019
Murphycobb & Associates
  • Recruited an engineering team and led the product development of a global cost control system for Colgate Palmolive's global marketing procurement.
  • Developed project management of an estimate bidding tool that is now used internationally by 1,000 agencies for one of the world's largest brands.
  • Developed new operational processes and technology to streamline billing across the business saving the business thousands of British pounds.
  • Passed Colgate Palmolive's rigorous IT security process.
Technologies: React, Node.js, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, PostgreSQL

CEO and Founder

2007 - 2017
Specle
  • Developed the UK's first centralized ad specification website, which became known as the 'Google of ad specs' and was used throughout the media industry.
  • Led the development of sophisticated portals for Condé Nast UK and Economist globally.
  • Entered the ad delivery market against two strong incumbents. Through the elegance of our product and approach to our customers, we took 60% of the market within 18 months.
Technologies: C++, MySQL, CSS, HTML, REST APIs

Senior Full-stack Developer and Manager

1999 - 2006
Adstream
  • Developed an entire PDF library from scratch. The library worked independently without Adobe technology.
  • Developed pioneering color technology used to automate the color conversion of advertising.
  • Managed a team of five engineers to develop the company's leading product that generated millions of dollars of revenue.
Technologies: MacOS, C++, C, CSS, HTML

Comma Payments

https://www.usecomma.com/
I started working on ideas for Comma Payments out of an interest I had for solving problems in billing and payments.

Through previous experience, I'd seen the process of billing and paying large amounts was incredibly antiquated. The name Comma came from the idea that we would solve problems for payments of any amount with a comma separator (in the UK and the US). i.e., anything over £1,000.

I built the first version of the product with my brother Nick who later pulled out of it during the pandemic. The back end ran on AWS Lamda functions and Dynamo, and the front end was React. Once we had a larger team, we found Lamba's an unnecessary complexity and moved back to Express and MongoDB.

Over the course of 2020, we realized the key was to target accounts payable and enable businesses to initiate payments in bulk. We targeted new Open Banking APIs and focused on an area no one had targeted - bulk payments.

We soon found out how complex it was to connect to banks, and in essence, we were developing a new payment rail. The project taught me a lot about complex integrations. During 2021 we raised funding and built a team of incredibly talented engineers (we contracted Toptal for a couple). I finally sold the business in March 2023.

Condé Nast UK Ad Portal (Specle)

http://adportal.condenast.co.uk/
This was a Ruby on Rails (RoR) application based on the main Specle codebase. The requirement was to develop a system that removed the need for teams of people at Condé Nast to verify and process advertising internally manually. The system would guide even inexperienced designers by creating high-quality print and interactive mobile advertising. It needed to connect to internal flat plan systems and integrate with Adobe Digital Publishing System. It also needed to connect to local proofing systems, which required us to install a Lightway server within their network that was managed securely through the primary RoR app. We worked with the head of production and the head of digital to reduce as many action steps as possible until we had automated receiving ads to minutes rather than days.

Orbiit Front End

https://orbiit.ai/
Orbiit was an AI community matching system that primarily connected together venture capital portfolio company founders and teams. I was responsible for developing the front end of the community tool.

Venture Data Management Chrome Extension

I developed a Chrome extension that helped a venture capitalist collect and track data on prospective investments. The extension connected to an Airtable database which was the only back end for the project. The UI for the extension was dynamically created based on the fields in the Airtable database.

Languages

JavaScript, CSS, HTML, TypeScript, C++, C, GraphQL

Libraries/APIs

React, Node.js, REST APIs, Firebase Web SDK, Stripe, Chart.js

Tools

Balsamiq, Auth0, Sketch, Slack, Jira, Bitbucket, GitLab, GitHub, CircleCI, Figma, Affinity Designer, Zapier

Platforms

Google Chrome, MacOS, AWS Lambda, Firebase, Mixpanel, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Visual Studio Code (VS Code)

Other

Product Management, APIs, Airtable, Web Extensions, User Experience (UX), Firebase Cloud Functions, SaaS, MERN Stack, CI/CD Pipelines, User Interface (UI), Segment, Google Material Design, Material Design, Chrome Extensions, Integromat, 3D Animation, Lambda Functions, Open Banking APIs

Frameworks

Next.js, Express.js, Jest, Material UI

Storage

Cloud Firestore, MongoDB, MySQL, Amazon DynamoDB, PostgreSQL

1993 - 1995

Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts

College of Fine Arts - Sydney, Australia

Collaboration That Works

How to Work with Toptal

Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.

1

Share your needs

Discuss your requirements and refine your scope in a call with a Toptal domain expert.
2

Choose your talent

Get a short list of expertly matched talent within 24 hours to review, interview, and choose from.
3

Start your risk-free talent trial

Work with your chosen talent on a trial basis for up to two weeks. Pay only if you decide to hire them.

Top talent is in high demand.

Start hiring