Senior Product Engineer

Michael Boutin

Intro

Michael Boutin. Product engineer in Montreal, shipping product for clients I truly care about: Flinks and Zumrails in fintech, Takeup in hospitality, Humanly in AI hiring, ComfyUI in open-source generative AI, Afi Expertise in professional training, and more.

I split my attention two ways. There is what I cannot control: AI is the biggest shift white-collar work has seen in a generation, and I would rather meet it early and use it as leverage. And there is what I can control: my health, my relationships, my head. I optimize everything I touch.

I write here every week about the work and what it teaches me.

Experience

Founder & Senior Product Engineer
Aug 2020 — Present
Concreo · Remote, Canada & USA
My independent consultancy: I source clients directly and deliver senior product, design, and engineering on AI-native products under the Concreo banner. Separately, a Toptal network member since 2021, through which the Toptal-sourced engagements below flow.
- Work in a forward-deployed model: embed with each client's leadership, map the business problem, and own delivery from prototype to production.
- Lead AI product engagements end-to-end for selected clients: design, frontend, backend, and the production craft around AI features.
- Ship full-stack products in Next.js, React, and Server Actions, integrating Python and FastAPI services and AI APIs.
- Run product ownership and hands-on engineering on every engagement, not one or the other.
1. Afi Expertise · Senior Full-Stack Engineer & Architect
  2026
  Architected and rebuilt afiexpertise.com from scratch as a bilingual (FR/EN) training platform with a 360+ course catalog and in-app checkout.
  Owned the architecture review, the choice of services, and the end-to-end rebuild in Next.js, Sanity, and Tailwind CSS, replacing the legacy platform.
  Worked forward-deployed with the client: learned how AFI runs its training and enrollment operations, then shaped the platform and its integrations around that workflow.
  Integrated the Administrate training management system to power the 360+ course catalog with faceted filtering by faculty, subject, and certification.
  Built in-app course checkout with Stripe, turning the site from a brochure into a transactional platform.
  Migrated content into Sanity so the content team self-serves in both languages.
  Preserved and improved SEO through the migration while leaving a markedly more maintainable codebase.
  Delivered the rebuild with my own AI development workflow built on Claude Code, combining custom and existing agent skills to ship faster.
  Next.js
  Sanity
  Tailwind CSS
  Stripe
  Administrate
  HubSpot
2. Humanly · Senior Full-Stack Engineer
  Jun 2024 — Present
  Built and maintained Humanly's multi-page marketing website with a CMS-driven content pipeline.
  Built a reusable component layer in Next.js and shadcn/ui that shortened time-to-feature on later pages.
  Wired Sanity content modeling so non-technical teammates ship copy edits without engineering.
  Shipped animated, responsive experiences with WCAG accessibility on desktop, tablet, and mobile.
  Next.js
  Sanity
  Tailwind CSS
  shadcn/ui
  GitHub
3. Teamable · Front-End Developer
  Nov 2022 — May 2024
  Designed and shipped Teamable.com's UI in Next.js and React, optimizing for performance, accessibility, and component reuse.
  Built a reusable React component library that shortened time-to-feature on later pages.
  Deployed and maintained the platform on Vercel.
  Shipped responsive, WCAG-accessible UI across desktop, tablet, and mobile.
  Next.js
  React
  Vercel
  Tailwind CSS
  GitHub
4. Wearesky · Full-Stack & 3D Developer
  Jul 2022 — Apr 2024
  Designed and built a 3D-centric web experience as the brand's primary visual differentiator.
  Optimized loading for heavy 3D assets and deployed on Vercel.
  Built a reusable Vue component library for 3D-driven, responsive layouts.
  Nuxt.js
  Vue
  Tailwind CSS
  Vercel
  Three.js
  GitHub
5. Grics · Front-End Developer
  2021 — 2022
  Built a reusable component suite for an internal admin dashboard, with Storybook documentation and Jest test coverage.
  Built a reusable component suite with Storybook docs that became the team's component reference.
  Wrote Jest test suites that hardened component-level QA.
  Vue 3
  Nuxt.js
  Vuetify
  Storybook
  Jest
  Microsoft Azure DevOps
6. Takein · Full-Stack Developer
  Aug 2020 — Jun 2021
  Refactored core portions of Takein's codebase and built backend handling for concurrent order processing.
  Refactored core code paths in user and order systems for performance and maintainability.
  Built data-model handling for concurrent user and order state.
  Built backend handling for high-concurrency food orders, including payment gateway integration.
  Shipped customer-facing ordering flows.
  Nuxt.js
  Vue
  Firebase
  Stripe
  Docker
  GitHub
Senior Front-End Engineer
May 2026 — Sep 2026
ComfyUI · San Francisco Bay Area · Remote
San Francisco startup behind the leading open-source platform for node-based generative AI, backed by $48M in venture funding at a $500M valuation, with 4M+ users worldwide.
- Forward-deployed with the marketing team: learned how they publish, then built a Slack-to-Claude agent pipeline around their workflow so non-engineers ship production pages.
- Designed a Claude Code chat workflow for page creation: anyone on the team creates a production page through chat alone, no code and no UI, with Vercel preview URLs and an approval workflow gating the merge to production.
- Integrated PayloadCMS as the structural backbone of that workflow: chat-created pages assemble existing, structured content blocks instead of generating one-off code, keeping the site's architecture consistent and letting marketing update pages without engineering.
- Built and maintained features in ComfyUI's complex, high-performance web application, a platform with 150K+ daily downloads and 60K+ community-built nodes.
Senior Full-Stack Developer & Product Manager
Dec 2024 — May 2026
Takeup · Remote
Shipped product UI for an AI-powered pricing platform managing live room rates for hotels, boutique hotels, and B&Bs.
- Rebuilt the web application from the ground up, migrating a live product with a paying customer base from Bubble.io to Next.js with zero downtime.
- Built pricing workflows in Next.js, React, shadcn/ui, and Server Actions, designing how operators preview, edit, and approve AI-driven rate recommendations.
- Wired org-based authentication with Clerk for multi-property access patterns.
- Connected front-end flows to Python and FastAPI services running pricing logic and AI inference, owning the latency and error-handling story across the boundary.
- Worked as the client's forward-deployed engineer: embedded with the founders and data science team, writing the specs and roadmap that turned AI rate recommendations into workflows operators trust.
- Sole developer of the web application, acting as de facto product manager: decided which features to build, owned the architecture, and shipped from spec to production.
Product Owner & Front-End Developer
Jan 2020 — May 2021
Zumrails · Montreal, Canada
Joined Zumrails at its founding stage, shaping the initial product definition for its fintech payments platform.
- Shaped the initial product mockups that defined what the platform would become.
- Drafted the initial marketing proposal alongside the founding team.
Business Analyst & Product Owner
Mar 2019 — Nov 2019
Flinks · Montreal, Canada
Owned the PLG initiative and the Wealth Data product expanding Flinks' coverage from banking to wealth accounts.
- Started as a business analyst, mapping, cleaning up, and automating internal processes, which built the end-to-end understanding of the platform I later relied on as Product Owner.
- Built the PLG (Product-Led Growth) initiative: a platform letting customers self-onboard and start using the product without talking to a sales rep.
- Owned the Wealth Data product, expanding Flinks' data coverage from banking to investment and wealth accounts.
- Drove roadmap, prioritization, and release planning across both initiatives, aligning stakeholders end to end.
Business Intelligence Consultant
Jun 2017 — Mar 2019
CGI · Montreal, Canada
Joined as a Business Analyst, moved into Business Intelligence work for CGI's executive team and the BI unit of a major Canadian bank.
- Worked directly with CGI's executive team to build their reporting and forecasting in Tableau and Power BI.
- Embedded in the business intelligence unit of a major Canadian bank, delivering reporting for the entire bank, which meant learning how complex banking processes work end to end before reporting on them.
- Designed scenario and sensitivity models to predict financial outcomes and pressure-test strategic initiatives.
- Built management dashboards that became the source of truth for executive KPI monitoring.
- Translated ambiguous business questions into rigorous analytic frameworks under tight timelines.

Tech Stack

AI
- Claude Code
- MCP
- OpenAI
Frontend
- TypeScript
- React
- Next.js
- Server Actions
- Tailwind CSS
- shadcn/ui
- Vue
- Nuxt
- Three.js
Backend
- Node.js
- Python
- FastAPI
Data
- PostgreSQL
- Neon
- Drizzle
- Firebase
Infrastructure
- Vercel
- Docker
Tooling
- GitHub
- Better Auth
- Clerk
- Sanity
- PostHog
- Storybook
- Jest
- Azure DevOps