Hello! I am

James Lieu

Full Stack Web Developer

About Me

Who Am I?

A software developer with 10+ years of professional experience. I've worked with a variety number of programming languages and technologies and have a strong work ethic.

I have experience leading a team, mentoring, coaching and driving continuous growth.

I work very well within a team, and strive to be reliable and consistent in the work I deliver, and to a high standard.

See my recommendations/testimonials on my LinkedIn Profile

💻 Tech Stack

Back end technologies:

csharp logo golang logo SQL logo

Front end technologies:

I also have professional experience in the following:

Programming concepts:

  • S.O.L.I.D principles
  • Design Patterns
  • Object Oriented Programming
  • Microservices
  • MVC
  • ORM - EF Core, Eloquent, ActiveRecord
  • API development and design
  • Relational database design
  • Micro frontend
  • RESTful conventions

Experience

10+ years of Professional Experience

Senior Software Engineer

Experian

Aug 2024 - Present

  • Senior developer within the team
  • ReactJS and .NET development

Senior Software Engineer

MHR

Sept 2022 - Aug 2024

  • Technical Lead - Leading a team of 6.
  • Extremely high sprint success rate since the team's inception in Sept 2023
  • Suggested high-impact department-wide changes such as removing PR reviewer restrictions to junior API developers and work processes which contributed to our high sprint success rate
  • Mentoring, one of my "mentees" had been promoted twice in the same year and is on track for further progression
  • Highly active in wider tech lead meetings to encourage change and improvements in work processes

Senior Software Developer

Kinetic Software

June 2019 - Sept 2022

  • Team lead - Mentoring and coaching - Planning, managing and delegating
  • API Development across numerous microservices in C#, .NET Core and Golang
  • Micro Front-end development using ReactJs and Redux Toolkit
  • Contributed to architectural change for microservices to utilize the event-carried state transfer model
  • Contributed to validation middleware used across each service with NodeJS and Extensive feature testing with CucumberJS

Software Developer Special Projects (.NET)

TISSL LTD

February 2019 - June 2019

  • Integration with Fiscal receipt Printer using SOAP/XML
  • Integration with third-party API using C# / .NET to generate, submit and print Fiscal Invoices and its Fiscal Receipt counterpart. The integration was certified and approved by the third-party.
  • Maintenance of third-party card payment integration and maintenance of legacy POS integration
  • Create and generate bespoke Excel and CSV reports using SQL and in-house report generator

PHP Developer

TwentyCI

October 2016 - January 2019

  • Active Development of greenfield project built with PHP, Laravel, JavaScript, Angular 5, Html CSS
  • Side project to be written specifically in C# and .NET Core to build a prototype which assists with collecting and structuring data for the company in a more efficient and effective way than our existing solutions
  • Replaced the existing authentication logic with OAuth2 and authorisation codes (access/refresh tokens)
  • Maintained and contributed to unstable legacy application built with Ruby on Rails until it was built to a stable state

Software Engineer

Rentify

January 2015 - September 2016

  • Full stack development on the Rentify web application built with Ruby on Rails
  • Involved in creation of pdf exports of multiple terms and conditions including versioning
  • Created the initial prototype for the property search feature using ReactJS
  • Built the digital signiture feature for signing tenancy agreements using 2-factor authentication with jQuery and Ruby on Rails

Junior Ruby Developer

mGage LLC

January 2015 - September 2016

  • Contributed to the development of an asynchronous API for billing, refunding and crediting with Ruby on Rails
  • Assisted with infrastructure of billing API for multiple providers had different template structures
  • Maintaining legacy project 'Zaypay' which enables secure mobile payments for virtual goods also built with Ruby on Rails

Junior Developer

LoyaltyLion

November 2013 - February 2014

  • Creating email-templates, graphic design features, Christmas e-card, banners and flyers for print.
  • Creating and animating slides for a presentation using keynote
  • Opportunity to write unit tests

Creative/Developer

PSYT - Psychological Technologies

September 2013 - November 2013

  • Studied the Rubymotion framework and help with design.
  • Assisted with building the homepage using HTML and CSS
  • Learned some proto.io to create the prototype app for mobile devices.

Web Development Student

Makers Academy

May 2013 - August 2013

  • Built a prototype project with a team which is designed to integrate with a users FB account and donate to charity with each FB post with Ruby on Rails
  • Created a Sudoku game with HTML, CSS, Ruby and Ruby on Rails
  • Created a simulated interative graphical editor program in Ruby

Interests

More about me

💻 Programming

I enjoy solving programming problems in C#. Here is a repository of some examples.

I also try to participate in Code War Katas:

💬 Programming Communities

I'm very active on Twitter , primarily Tech Twitter where I can give back to the community. There are a lot of people trying to break into tech and so I share my past experiences and mistakes to help people.

I enjoy and participate on some programming communities on Slack, primarily the Makers Alumni channel where graduates from Makers (formally known as Makers Academy) join at the end of the course to discuss various topics, ask career related questions and share experiences working in the industry.

I try to contribute to Stack Overflow questions where I can.

And I try to respond to posts on Reddit when I feel I can help or support other people learning to code.

📝 Blogging

I write in this blog from time to time, occasionally about programming related topics. Doing my best to share knowledge or re-enforce my own learning by writing blog posts on a topic.

I've sinced moved my blog to Hashnode for greater visibility

📚 Reading

I enjoy reading when I find time. See my Goodreads profile to see which books I've read and recommend.

My favourite genres are:

  • ⚔ High fantasy
  • 🧘 Personal Development
  • 📈 Productivity
  • 💻 Programming
    •
    🕹 Gaming

    I also enjoy video games. These are the games I highly recommend:

    • 🐉 Dragon Age: Origins
    • 🛡 Final Fantasy X
    • 👨‍💼 Yakuza 0
    • 🗡 Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
    • 📜 The Elder's Scroll VI: Oblivion
    • 🪖 Metal Gear Solid Series