James Macmillan

01 - BLOG

Writing

How This Site Works Mar 2026

02 - CONNECT

Where to find me

03 - ABOUT

cOnTaCt

Phone +44 7736 667115
Email james@codesthings.com
Location Midlands, UK.
Availability
1 Month

Cover Letter

Hey, I'm James, a Senior Software Engineer based in the Midlands, and I appreciate you taking the time to check out my CV.

I'm currently seeking full-time remote opportunities as a Senior Developer. With over 10 years of commercial web development experience and more than 5 years building cross-platform mobile applications, I bring a deep and well-rounded skill set to any team.

Over the past two years, I have built and operated multiple production applications across both AWS and GCP, gaining solid cross-cloud experience in real-world environments.

My preferred stack includes Node.js or .NET Core on the backend, paired with React and Tailwind on the frontend. That said, I've worked extensively across a broad range of frontend and server-side technologies, and I'm quick to adapt where needed.

I started building for the web at age 12, growing my skills alongside the evolution of the web itself, from desktop to mobile and beyond. Today, I specialise in full-stack development within the JavaScript ecosystem, but I also bring experience in a wide range of team environments, workflows, and technical architectures.

I'd be a strong addition to any dev team looking for a seasoned, pragmatic engineer with a passion for clean code, great UX, and effective collaboration.

Thanks again for your time,

James Macmillan

04 - EXPERIENCE

Where I've Worked

I'm a friendly and passionate Full Stack Developer with a strong background in Agile delivery, design, UX/UI, and application architecture. I love working across the full stack; from front-end and mobile apps to cloud-native serverless apis and data stores. I have a particular focus on building robust hybrid mobile and progressive web apps.

Over the years, I've worked closely with teams of all experience levels, helping to bring ideas to life and solve tricky business problems with practical, well-designed solutions. I'm at my best when I'm collaborating with others who love technology as much as I do, and when we're building something meaningful, together.

01 Mar 2023 - Present

Songtradr

Ingesting the world's music one release at a time.

AWS GCP Node.js .Net Terraform

I joined the Media Delivery and Ingestion team, where I worked on building and maintaining large-scale, serverless applications that handled the ingestion, processing, and global distribution of music and its metadata.

I contributed to re-platforming key parts of the output pipeline, including pricing logic and global availability handling, and helped implement a scalable document store to support responsive release ingestion.

The role gave me deep exposure to fast-paced, pragmatic development using XP practices and TDD.

The team focused on using the right tool for the job, delivering robust, high-performance solutions while cutting unnecessary complexity and waste.

We made it a priority to empower business users with fast, reliable access to the data they needed, supporting both internal goals and growing client demands.

02 Jul 2020 - Feb 2023

Engineius

Overhauling, updating, and improving Mobile and Web apps.

Typescript .net core Angular

Nativescript MySQL

I was tasked with overhauling the Engineius mobile app, while transitioning its development in house.

I significantly improved the performance, UX/UI, stability and maintainability of the app.

I also worked to significantly improve the architecture and performance of the company's main web app.

I delivered multiple business derived projects working closely with the end users involved.

I also lead and mentored new employees on the mobile app's development.

03 Nov 2017 - Jan 2020

Packt

Shipping the mobile app for the Subscription platform and going Serverless.

Node.js AWS

Serverless Angular

Cordova Postgres

I worked with Packt for 2 years on the Subscription platform.

I was initially hired to expand the web application into a cross platform mobile app.

I was also instrumental in migrating the API to use the Serverless framework on AWS.

I worked with a team of developers with varying skill sets, helping to upskill and train new members of the team.

My development career became very focussed on Javascript stacks, writing brilliant code to solve complex solutions on a variety of platforms.

During my time with Packt I endeavoured to improve code quality across the stack, helping develop and implement the code style used in house.

04 Sep 2012 - Oct 2017

Severn Trent

Delivering web and mobile apps to drive the business forward.

.Net SQL Server

Cordova Angular AWS Java Bootstrap

I worked with Severn Trent PLC for 5 years developing a multitude of software solutions deployed to a wide variety of platforms.

Later in the role my forté was developing brilliant PWAs and Hybrid Mobile apps for use throughout the company.

During my time with Severn Trent I developed solid, maintainable applications in the correct technology for the solution.

I worked with an ever changing tech stack to improve speed of delivery, starting with a Java & Spring backend, moving through .Net and landing on Node.js

All the time improving my core skills in Design, Prototyping, Testing, Computer Law, Security, and implementing best practice.

I jumped at the opportunity to lead my team, train our new starters, and suggest the ideal solution to complex software problems.

05 - SKILLS & EDUCATION

What I Work With

My favourite stack these days is Node.js running on Lambdas or containers, backed by a solid RDS and object storage setup. On the front end, I enjoy working with React (or similar component-based frameworks), styled with Tailwind and bundled up nicely. For mobile, I've been a long-time fan of Ionic but I'm open to exploring other frameworks like React Native or Flutter, depending on the project requirements.

That said, I've worked across a range of setups; from traditional stacks with Node and .NET Core APIs deployed on AWS (via containers, EC2s, and Lambdas), to static and server-side rendered sites. Recently I've enjoyed working on cloud-native applications in AWS and GCP, leveraging the power of serverless architectures and microservices to build scalable and efficient systems.

HTML 5

CSS 3

Javascript

NodeJS

.net core

AWS

GCP

C#

Serverless

AWS Lambda

Stencil JS

Capacitor

Ionic

iOS

Android

Webpack

SQLite

SQL Server

MySQL

Photoshop

Sketch

git

Angular

Typescript

React

Tailwind

EDUCATION

Where I Studied

Coventry University

Sep 2009 - Jun 2012

BSc Computer Science G400, 2.1 with Honors

Caroline Chisholm School

Sep 2002 - Jun 2009

3 A Levels Including Computing

11 GCSEs

06 - PROJECTS

Things I've Built

Engineius Jan 2021

Portal Architecture

Updated the Web Portal's architecture to split front end and api.

Typescript .net core Angular

The customer facing web portal was serving via. an old Angular .net core template's architecture. Each client route returned an angular app as a page.

In this project I extracted the front end Angular apps into their own project, bootstrapped webpack and switched all routing to the angular front end.

This involved overhauling routing, the webpack build, and the angular project as a whole.

As a part of this project I also identified that the vendor bundle had been misconfigured, serving node_module dependencies twice.

Fixing this, implementing Lazy Loaded routing and separating the front end server from the back-end server resulted in significant performance improvements.

This also had a significant impact on development turnover, prior to these changes the rebuild cycle was well over a minute on most developer's machines.

Engineius Jan 2020

Mobile App

Bringing a third party development in house

Engineius originally outsourced their app development as is common in early startup phase.

This project involved bringing the functioning production app development in house and up to a long term maintainable standard.

My initial work here was to take stock, and roughly plan the necessary changes to ensure long term maintenance.

There was also a looming deadline of an iOS upgrade deprecating the old Web View.

I started by implementing some node best practices; dependency pinning, auto formatting & linting with CI layer build checks.

I then upgraded the underlying frameworks to their latest stable versions, this included bringing Nativecsript to v7+ and Angular to 12+.

As these were significant major version releases there was lots of in depth analysis and retest work along with the development.

Once this work was complete and functioning I then focused on outstanding production app issues.

In particular there were multiple memory leaks, performance drags and the app's styling had not been completed or branded.

I feel like you're just here for the campsnap filters