Tuomas Hatakka

Professional experience

1. Present Feb 2026

   CTO & Principal Engineer GlobalLegalCheck

   CTO and principal engineer leading technical strategy and hands-on development of an AI-native legal-compliance SaaS, running entirely on a self-managed VPS with zero cloud-platform dependency.

   • Own the architecture end to end — a three-repo codebase (Docker, the Next.js 16 / React 19 app, a Payload CMS site), CI/CD and delivery — co-developed with Claude.
   • Built the AI contract interpreter — clause extraction, risk scoring, key-date and missing-clause checks — reducing manual review time by approximately 70% via a private OpenAI-compatible endpoint and a Qdrant embedding and reranking pipeline.
   • Multi-tenant data model with audit logging, OAuth/SSO and SSE-streamed analysis; GDPR- and EU AI Act-aligned by keeping inference and data on EU, self-hosted infrastructure.
2. Jan 2011 present

   Freelance Web Designer & Developer Hummingbird Design (Tmi)

   An independent practice run continuously alongside employment — the studio behind the Hummingbird Design and MONO design systems.

   • Worked in the practice full time between Easywaste and GlobalLegalCheck — a project-partitioned RAG system and Claude Code plugin, self-hosted LLM infrastructure, and the design systems since carried into production work.
   • Delivered numerous client sites and web apps end to end — including custom course-enrolment software and social-media integrations.
   • Built with PHP, jQuery, WordPress, Django and MySQL.
3. Sep 2025 Feb 2024

   Full-Stack Developer Easywaste Oy & Freelancing

   Rebuilt Easywaste's digital waste-management platform on Next.js, starting as sole developer, with a Gemini-powered AI invoice-analysis engine.

   • Led the full-stack reconstruction of the platform from a legacy v1 onto a modern Next.js 14 / RSC / Supabase / Vercel stack, improving load times and developer velocity.
   • Built a Gemini-powered invoice-analysis engine — multimodal extraction, Finnish Finvoice/Peppol XML parsing and custom OCR, reducing manual data entry by 80% through a 4-phase pipeline with NDJSON streaming.
   • Shipped the business logic — automated tendering with algorithmic commission pricing, subscription billing and CSRD reporting — plus freelance AI features for clients (OpenAI and Claude, function calling).
4. Dec 2023 Feb 2022

   Software Consultant HiQ Finland

   Full-stack consultant leading front-end architecture on international projects, and a contributor to the Helsinki Design System.

   • Led front-end architecture on European-market projects serving over 100k+ users with React, TypeScript and GraphQL.
   • Contributed development and accessibility (WCAG 2.1) fixes to the Helsinki Design System, named Best Design System at Grand One 2023.
   • Guided teams on scalable front-end patterns and gave internal front-end lectures.
5. Jan 2022 May 2016

   Front-End Developer Nordhealth

   Front-end lead on healthcare triage products, building robust React / TypeScript apps with GraphQL and Django / Node back-ends — in direct contact with the clients using them.

   • Led front-end architecture on healthcare triage products for international clients, reducing triage processing time by 30% across 5+ core medical products.
   • Ran client communication first-hand — gathered requirements, demoed builds and took feedback straight from customers such as the veterinary group Evidensia and the Finnish National Audiovisual Institute (KAVI), with no account manager in between.
   • Built with React, TypeScript and GraphQL over Django/Django REST and Node/Express, on PostgreSQL and MySQL.

Project history

1. GlobalLegalCheck

   • Architected and built solo an AI-native legal-compliance SaaS — an LLM contract interpreter with clause extraction, risk scoring, key-date detection and missing-clause checks, backed by a private OpenAI-compatible endpoint and a Qdrant embedding and reranking pipeline.
   • Stood up the entire stack on a single self-managed €10/month Hetzner VPS — Docker Compose, Traefik + Let's Encrypt, Postgres 16 / Drizzle, MinIO, self-hosted Documenso e-signing and Umami analytics — with zero AWS / GCP / Azure dependency.
   • Designed a multi-tenant, organisation-scoped data model with audit logging, OAuth/SSO (Google, Microsoft Entra), SSE-streamed analysis, and custom MCP servers for VPS / deploy and CMS tooling — GDPR- and EU AI Act-aligned by keeping inference and data on EU, self-hosted infrastructure.

2. Easywaste Digital Waste-Management Platform

   • Architected and built from the ground up a comprehensive AI-powered invoice-processing system integrating the Google Gemini API, Finvoice/Peppol XML parsing, and custom OCR for automated waste-fraction categorisation and cost calculation.
   • Developed a complete business platform — an automated tendering engine with algorithmic commission pricing, contract management, equipment tracking, subscription billing, and CSRD compliance reporting — using Next.js 14, TypeScript, Supabase, and Vercel.
   • Implemented a 4-phase extraction pipeline with async batch processing, NDJSON streaming, intelligent fallback detection with Finnish/English keyword mappings, and comprehensive weight/amount estimation algorithms.

3. Modern AI-Powered Freelance Projects

   • Delivered modern web applications with AI capabilities — OpenAI and Anthropic Claude, streaming multimodal responses and function calling.
   • Architected full-stack solutions using Next.js 15, React 19, Supabase, serverless edge functions, and comprehensive infrastructure including DNS, SSL/TLS, CDN optimisation, and cloud architecture.

4. Helsinki Design System

   • Contributed to the City of Helsinki's design system — named Best Design System at Grand One 2023 — building accessible (WCAG 2.1) components in TypeScript, React and GraphQL.

5. Telia B2B E-Commerce

   • Participated in the development of a microservice-based B2B webstore, using TypeScript, React, and GraphQL.

6. HiQ's Internal E-Commerce Triage

   • Architected and implemented front-end solutions for an e-commerce service using TypeScript, React, and GraphQL.

7. Wattivahti

   • Developed features for a real-time electricity-consumption monitoring app using React, Redux, and Express.js.

8. Navisec Health

   • Owned the application architecture — component and state design, API contracts against Django REST, and the real-time layer — and implemented notable features including a Form Builder tool and websocket chat using Django REST, React, and Redux.
   • Back-end development with Django REST, high-quality ORMs, PostgreSQL, and Google Cloud Platform.

9. Viivi Health

   • Owned the architecture of both the mobile and web applications for a veterinarian video-reception triage service — shared domain model, API design and the booking flow — and implemented them using React Native, React, and Express.js.
   • Included a real-time reservation system with Stripe integration on Google Cloud Platform.
   • Worked directly with the customer throughout — the veterinary clinics adopting the service, Evidensia among them — turning their reception workflows into product requirements.

10. Provet Cloud

    • Contributed to agile development for multinational clientele as the first front-end developer for the company, implementing features such as a form-builder tool and websocket chat using React, Redux, Django, Django REST, and multi-tenant PostgreSQL.
    • Spoke directly with the clinics running the product — including the veterinary group Evidensia — gathering requirements and demoing releases to their staff myself.

11. KAVI Elonet

    • Overhauled the Finnish National Audiovisual Institute movie-archive web application (elonet.fi) and designed a new interface for it.
    • Implemented video streaming with captions using PHP and Finna.
    • Worked directly with the customer throughout — agreed scope and interface decisions face to face with KAVI's archive staff, acting as the single point of contact for the institute.

12. Freelancing Projects

    • Tens of website-development projects and multiple web-application implementations. Clients included Suomen Talousverkko, Tuusulan seurakunta, Nurmijärven seurakunta, UP Suomi Oy, Villa Tammikko, and others.
    • Notable features: custom course-enrolment software with live enrolment and multiple social-media integrations.

13. Project-Partitioned RAG System & Claude Code Plugin

    • Designed and built an open-source, project-partitioned retrieval-augmented generation system packaged as a Claude Code plugin — FastMCP server, CLI, embedding index with cross-encoder reranking, browser-based viewer, and an automated test suite.
    • Integrated into Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and OpenCode, using Python, FastMCP, the Model Context Protocol, and TypeScript.

14. Self-Hosted Autonomous AI Infrastructure

    • Provisioned and operate self-hosted LLM infrastructure on Linux VPS and ARM64 cloud instances — remote RAG SQL endpoints and an OpenAI-compatible local LLM query API, built on Ollama, llama.cpp, and Node.js.

15. Design Systems & Creative Front-End

    • Author and maintain personal design systems (Hummingbird Design, MONO) applied across web, Electron desktop, and Android (Jetpack Compose) applications — token architectures and hand-written CSS with zero utility-framework dependencies.
    • Built advanced WebGL/Three.js experiences — procedural 3D generation, vertex and fragment shaders, custom post-processing chains (depth of field, god rays, CRT), and real-time audio visualisation with the Web Audio API.
    • Publish and maintain the shared ESLint configuration @tuomashatakka/eslint-config on npm.