Thomas Hines
Full-stack engineer who ships AI-native consumer products end-to-end — design, code, deploy, and maintain — as a solo builder. Over the past year, designed and launched 8 web and mobile products (6 live in production / app stores), integrating LLMs (Claude and OpenAI APIs), vector embeddings (Voyage AI), and AI-assisted development to compress build cycles dramatically. Operate as the AI orchestrator and problem-domain expert across React/Next.js, React Native, Node.js, and Swift. 15+ years across IT, software, and live-production technology.
Products Built & Shipped
Dual online/local freelance marketplace with escrow, milestone payments, dispute resolution, and AI Smart Matching (vector embeddings + cosine similarity). Built solo, front to back.
Location-based social discovery — real-time venue check-ins, proximity chat, and live presence. Shipped to both app stores.
Dating product built around real, in-person plans rather than endless messaging. Live on Google Play (iOS in review), with Firebase phone auth across web and mobile.
AI wellness app that turns lab bloodwork into plain-English biomarker insights and estimates your biological age from published research — powered by Claude, built on Expo and Supabase Edge Functions. Concept to both app stores in ~4 weeks. Marketing site at synthri.com (Next.js).
Professional Experience
- Build consumer web and mobile products from concept to launch — owning product definition, architecture, full-stack implementation, deployment (VPS + Nginx + PM2, Cloudflare), and support.
- Integrate AI across the stack: Claude and OpenAI APIs for generation and tie-breaking logic, Voyage AI embeddings for semantic matching, plus AI-assisted development to accelerate iteration.
- Ship payment, auth, and messaging systems end-to-end: Stripe Connect / PayPal escrow and milestones, Firebase phone auth, RevenueCat subscriptions, and lifecycle notifications.
- Define and track growth metrics — acquisition, activation, engagement, retention — and prioritize iteratively from data.
- Develop and maintain internal tools and system integrations that automate manual workflows across operations and production teams.
- Build automation and reporting that replaces repetitive manual processes, improving team throughput and reducing errors.
- Partner with engineering, operations, and stakeholders to ship and support internal platform features across software and hardware systems.
- Directed hardware/software platform integrations for live productions, coordinating cross-functional teams of 50+.