Who I Am
About Me
Developer, Veteran, Builder
I'm a full-stack developer based in Belo Horizonte, Brazil with a background that bridges military logistics and modern software engineering. After 5 years in the U.S. Air Force supporting global operations across 24 countries, I transitioned into tech — and haven't looked back.
I specialize in building scalable back-end systems and polished front-end interfaces using Node.js, TypeScript, Vue, and React. Python is my go-to for automation, scripting, and AI projects — from inventory tracking in the military to building voice-enabled assistants with LLMs. At Clube Certo, I've architected microservices, payment integrations, and enterprise dashboards from the ground up.
U.S. Citizen
Trilingual (EN/PT/ES)
Air Force Veteran
B.S. in IT — 4.1 GPA
Career
Experience
Clube Certo
Full-Stack Developer
Belo Horizonte, MG
- Built and deployed 8+ RESTful microservices and 432+ Vue/React front-end components for a loyalty SaaS platform, architecting 281 database models across 32+ domain-driven feature modules.
- Integrated 5+ payment providers (Asaas, EFI, Vindi, GalaxPay) for PIX/Boleto transactions and external APIs for Firebase, telecom (IXC), and healthcare (Hinova).
- Developed 5 AWS SQS worker pipelines handling associate onboarding, lead management, WhatsApp messaging, and bulk Excel imports processing 50K+ rows.
- Implemented JWT auth with multi-role RBAC, Zod validation, real-time Socket.io, and an automated financial recovery system with multi-channel collection drivers.
- Built reusable front-end component systems including a 1,100-line dynamic AutoForm generator (16+ field types), enterprise DataTable, and real-time financial dashboards.
Comfortly Travel
Software Engineer (Back-end)
- Built and maintained Node.js/Express REST APIs deployed on AWS EC2 with Docker containerization for a travel booking platform.
- Optimized PostgreSQL queries and indexing strategies, reducing API latency by 25% and improving data access speed by 30%.
- Implemented CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions, reducing deployment errors by 80% and enabling reliable continuous delivery.
UpwardTech
Software Engineer (Consultant)
- Designed and built Flask + PostgreSQL CRM APIs for client projects, delivering custom business logic and data modeling.
- Automated client onboarding workflows, reducing manual setup time by 40% through programmatic provisioning.
- Improved production observability and incident response with AWS CloudWatch monitoring, logging, and alerting.
United States Air Force
Logistics Specialist
- Processed and coordinated movement of 33,000+ tons of cargo across 5,000 airlift missions, sustaining supply chains to 24 nations and 70 forward locations; recognized as Group Team of the Quarter.
- Managed flightline ground operations for critical medical logistics, dispatching 27,000 blood products on 498 missions to 70 locations — directly supporting 272 lives saved.
- Led contingency operations during a 16-day logistics system outage, manually processing 2,000 tons across 199 aircraft — validated fallback procedures and contributed to Squadron's Wing Safety Award.
- Partnered with traffic management to audit and recover $1.2M in equipment lost over 5 years, processing 21,000 assets for depot return.
Reference
Testimonial
I recommend James without hesitation. He has the technical foundation, character, and drive to succeed in demanding and high-performing environments.View Full Letter
Portfolio
Featured Projects
Automated Billing Engine
Professional — Clube Certo
- Automated collection system with rule-based triggers (D+3, D+7), CRON batch processing, and multi-channel delivery via email/WhatsApp/SMS drivers.
- Email pixel tracking with unique UUIDs, rate-limited SMTP pooling, and atomic transaction logging with retry on failure.
- Processed thousands of invoices hourly with status filtering, amount ranges, and weekend skipping.
H3 Geolocation System
Professional — Clube Certo
- Translated Uber's H3 spatial indexing library from C to JavaScript/TypeScript and implemented multi-resolution hexagonal indexing (~1.2km, ~460m, ~174m) with k-ring expansion, replacing brute-force Haversine calculations for 2-10x query speedups.
- Built Sequelize model hooks for automatic H3 cell calculation on address create/update, with migration scripts to backfill existing records and indexed h3_cell columns.
- Developed two optimized query builders — closest address per establishment and full multi-address search — with category, keyword, range, and blacklist/whitelist filtering.
Hero
Professional — Clube Certo
- 432-component Vue 3 + TypeScript admin dashboard with TanStack Query, shadcn-vue component system, and dark mode support.
- Dynamic AutoForm generator (1,100+ lines, 16+ field types) and enterprise DataTable (850+ lines) with pagination and sorting.
- Role-based permission controls, financial dashboards with real-time metrics, and feature-driven modular architecture.
A.L.F.R.E.D
Personal — AI Assistant + REST API
- FastAPI REST API + WebSocket layer with Swagger docs, Dockerized and deployed on Railway. Three entry points: voice CLI, PySide6 GUI, and HTTP API — all sharing one Supabase backend.
- RAG pipeline with pgvector semantic search, multi-provider LLM fallback (Claude 3.5 Sonnet → GPT-4o-mini), and ElevenLabs/pyttsx3 TTS chain.
- Production infrastructure: GitHub Actions CI (lint + test), Docker, pinned dependencies, and 65+ unit tests with full mock coverage.
Chess Engine + AI
Personal — C++17 / SDL2 / WebAssembly
- Chess AI with minimax + alpha-beta pruning, quiescence search, killer move heuristic, and positional evaluation (king safety, pawn structure, bishop pair, piece-square tables) at depth 5.
- SDL2 GUI with click-to-move, move highlighting, piece slide animations, board flip animation, promotion dialog, and undo — compiled to WebAssembly via Emscripten with mobile-responsive canvas scaling.
Toolkit
Technical Skills
Backend
Python
PHP
Node.js
TypeScript
Express
Flask
Django
REST APIs
JWT
OAuth2
Socket.io
Zod
Frontend
React
React Native
Vue.js
Tailwind CSS
HTML5
CSS3
JavaScript
Database
MySQL
PostgreSQL
MongoDB
Sequelize
Redis
Cloud & DevOps
AWS EC2
S3
SQS
CloudWatch
Docker
GitHub Actions
CI/CD
Linux
Testing & Methods
Jest
Mocha
Agile
Scrum
Kanban
Code Review
Other
C
C++
SDL2
CMake
Git
Firebase
Stripe
Background
Education
ECPI University
2024 — 2026
B.S. Information Technology (Software Development)
GPA: 4.1
Coding Temple
2024
Certificate, Software Engineering
Communication
Languages
English
Native
Portuguese
Native
Spanish
Professional
Let's Connect
Get In Touch
I'm always open to discussing new projects, opportunities, or collaborations. Feel free to reach out.