James Villanueva

Designed and deployed cloud-native architectures on AWS using Docker, Kubernetes, and Nginx to improve service availability and reduce deployment-related issues. Architected high-availability backend systems with PostgreSQL, Redis, caching, and horizontally scalable services that support millions of monthly API requests. Containerized frontend and backend services and standardized local/staging/production environments to reduce environment-related deployment issues. Built background processing infrastructure using Redis, Celery, and Kafka to offload long-running AI/data workloads and reduce API latency. Integrated LLM-powered applications using OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, and Gemini APIs for chat, content generation, recommendations, and structured workflows. Improved AI accuracy with RAG plus re-ranking pipelines to improve retrieval relevance and reduce hallucinations in production.

Used AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT) to accelerate code generation, debugging, refactoring, test creation, and documentation, while manually reviewing changes before release. Built AI-powered automation workflows with tools like n8n, Make.com, and Zapier to connect APIs, CRM systems, webhooks, databases, and internal applications to reduce repetitive manual work. Developed automated test suites for Next.js and .NET applications, achieving 90%+ test coverage and reducing regressions during releases. Improved frontend performance by ~30% by reducing unnecessary React re-renders, optimizing assets, and implementing SSR, lazy loading, and caching strategies. Built secure, scalable REST APIs and integrated third-party services, authentication systems, webhooks, and external data sources using modern web development practices and CI/CD workflows.

Built backend features using PHP and Laravel and handled data integration and application logic. Converted UI/UX mockups to React screens and components using Bootstrap and CSS. Implemented frontend and backend features using React and Node.js with supporting APIs. Migrated backend from MySQL to MongoDB to improve scalability and performance as user activity grew. Built a React and Java component to track employees’ working time, vacation, and sick days. Developed and maintained web-based business applications using React, Node.js, PHP, and Laravel, including reusable frontend components and backend modules for internal enterprise tools. Worked with cloud-hosted databases and services to improve reliability and scalability. Implemented frontend performance improvements by reducing unnecessary re-renders and applying SSR/caching strategies.