James Slater

First-Class Honours Software Engineering graduate and full-stack .NET developer, that is comfortable working the way real teams do, picking up Azure DevOps tickets, branching, raising pull requests, dealing with merges, and shipping through code review in an Agile/Scrum life cycle. I have built and deployed e-commerce solutions, including a multi-tenant booking platform and a novelty gift site, using C#, .NET Core and .NET Framework, SQL Server, JavaScript and CSS. My dissertation examined the potential of AI and LLM's in enterprise software development.

I bring a problem-solving mindset, quick adaptability, enthusiasm and a drive to keep learning and, as a fluent English and Spanish speaker, I can integrate easily into international teams.

.NET Developer at MerlinJS (2026-07 – Present)

Designed and built a full stack AI-powered flashcard generator integrating Claude API to generate contextual flashcards from any user defined topic. Engineering a prompt pipeline with constraints to enforce consistent outputs, with server side input validation and character limitations before the API is reached.

• Implemented clean architecture with layered separation of concerns, presentation, business logic, and data access layers, following SOLID principles for maintainability across the application.
• Engineered secure JWT authentication with hashed password storage, protected API endpoints, and user request tracking to enforce usage limits and maintain data isolation between accounts..NET Developer at MerlinJS (2025-03 – 2026-06)

Designed and built a multi-tenant SaaS booking platform supporting the full lifecycle resource setup, availability scheduling, customer booking, check-in/out, and cancellation with all data isolated per tenant organisation.

• Engineered a real-time availability engine that scans the day in 15-minute increments and allocates the best fit resource per slot using a priority and capacity weighted SQL query, preventing double-bookings across concurrent requests.
• Delivered a drag-and-drop floor-plan designer and a live front-of-house view with colour-coded, real-time booking status the two largest and most interactive components of the system.
• Automated customer email and SMS confirmations, including queued messaging and shortened one-click cancellation links.
• Made the booking form embeddable in any external site via a single line of HTML (iframe widget with configurable client, location and booking-type parameters).

Academic Software Project at Cardiff Metropolitan University (2024-11 – 2025-03)

Built a full-stack task management platform with role-based dashboards, task workflow state mechanism, and full async/await implementation throughout, using ASP.NET Core MVC and Entity Framework Core with SQL Server.

• SOLID principles and Dependency Injection applied throughout, with a clean service layer, claims based authentication and a role/policy based authorisation for specific controller access across the admin and user roles..NET Developer at MerlinJS (2020-06 – 2021-01)

Designed and built an end-to-end e-commerce platform (novelty gift "name an Exoplanet") from scratch front end, data layer, payments and back-office automation deployed to IIS on a production SQL Server.

• Integrated PayPal checkout with a server-to-server IPN verification callback, including transaction validation, idempotency checks to prevent double-processing, automatic stock updates and SMTP order confirmations to customer and admin.
• Wrote a nightly data pipeline that pulls the full NASA IPAC Exoplanet Archive (thousands of planets) over its TAP/JSON API, deserialises and upserts it into SQL Server, keeping the catalogue current with zero manual effort.
• Engineered a self-scheduling background job using the ASP.NET cache-expiry mechanism no external cron or scheduler required to trigger the nightly import and maintenance tasks.

BSc in Software Engineering – Cardiff Metropolitan University

A-Level in Maths, Computer Science, Spanish – Exeter College