Tom Rhodes

About

Hello, I'm Tom.

A British developer and designer living in Albano Laziale, just south of Rome. I've been building for the web for more than twenty years.

I started in London as an interactive developer, in Flash: at Silverskin, mostly on internal communications for Accenture, then at Wheelhouse Creative. From 2007 I went freelance, building rich-media campaigns, games and microsites for agencies such as Clicked, Traffik, Last Exit and Exposure, for brands including The Body Shop, the BBC, Samsung, Jimmy Choo and Heineken.

In 2015 I started running an email service in Italian prisons, which became Inkiostro: ten years of software, mail servers and the daily reality of working with prison administrations. Alongside it I've designed and built for small businesses such as Squirrel Design, and in 2026 I co-founded Locro.

I like to look after the whole of a project: the idea, the code, the server it runs on and the people who use it. I use AI coding tools every day, and I own the architecture, the review and the deployment. I keep code readable: short functions, no repetition, comments that say why.

The path so far

  1. 2026 – now

    Locro

    Co-founder and lead developer. Scheduling for Cambridge exam centres.

  2. 2016 – now

    Squirrel Design

    Identity, websites, hosting and a play-area planning tool.

  3. 2015 – 2026

    Inkiostro

    Founder and lead developer of a prison email and print service, run in three Italian prisons.

  4. 2007 – now

    Freelance

    Rich media, games and microsites for London agencies until 2016; since then, identities, websites, web apps and hosting for my own clients.

  5. 2003 – 2007

    Wheelhouse Creative, London

    Interactive developer.

  6. 2000 – 2002

    Silverskin Creative Consultants, London

    Lead interactive developer, mainly for Accenture.

  7. 1997

    Middlesex University

    BA.

Skills

Code
JavaScript, Haxe, PHP, Python, SQL, HTML, CSS
Back end
Node.js, Express, PHP, MySQL, SQLite, REST APIs, WordPress, WooCommerce
Front end
Vanilla JS, CSS, Canvas, GSAP, Tailwind, Vite, responsive and accessible layouts
Servers
Linux (Ubuntu), nginx, PHP-FPM, PM2, Postfix, Dovecot, OpenDKIM, DNS
Design
GIMP, Inkscape, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects; identities, interfaces, motion
Languages
English (native), Italian (bilingual)
Certificates
DeepLearning.AI TensorFlow courses (2022): AI, ML and deep learning; convolutional networks; natural language processing

Outside work

Music (from a Linux home studio), photography, creative coding, cycling, paddleboarding, walking, travel, and making things by hand.