Final year, BSc Computer Systems, University of Limerick
James Connolly
I work on the parts of software people only notice when they break: release pipelines, CI, and the tests that catch problems before users do. So far that has meant release tooling at Microsoft Azure Core, a test automation framework at Deloitte, and a peer-reviewed paper from a research internship at UL.
- 80+ hrs
- developer time saved a week with CI build caching at Microsoft
- 400+
- end-to-end Playwright tests built at Deloitte
- 38%
- faster view loads from predictive pre-loading in research
- 100+
- students tutored at UL's ICT Learning Centre
01Work
Microsoft Azure Core
Software Engineering Intern · Dublin · Jun 2026 – Sep 2026
Releasing on the Azure Core infrastructure team meant juggling about 15 tabs and bookmarks: approvals in one place, queued pipelines in another, compliance checks somewhere else. I built an end-to-end release orchestration agent that brings all of it into one place, with the safe-shipping logic built in so every required gate is visible and checked before code reaches production.
I also profiled where our CI time was going and added targeted build caching across pipeline tasks. Build runtimes dropped by up to 33%, which adds up to more than 80 hours of developer time saved every week across the team's pipeline runs.
Deloitte Public Sector & Enterprise Solutions
Junior Developer · Dublin · May 2025 – Feb 2026
My team was testing by hand, so I started our test automation. I designed and built a Playwright regression framework that grew to over 400 end-to-end tests across multiple suites. Each one runs in about 3 minutes and replaces 20 to 40 minutes of manual testing and chasing results, which works out at 130+ hours saved on every full regression cycle.
After my placement ended, Deloitte set up a dedicated Test Automation team to take the framework forward. Alongside that I built full-stack features in C#, JavaScript, Blazor and KnockoutJS, and worked with SQL Server, Redis and Azure DevOps.
University of Limerick Biocomputing and Development Systems Group
Research & Software Development Intern · Limerick · May 2024 – Aug 2024
Built a responsive R/Shiny app for exploring complex biological and medical datasets. Loading views was the slow part, so I designed a predictive pre-loading approach that cut view load times by 38%. The work became a paper.
Live app ↗Code ↗
02Final year project
An Adaptive Optimization Framework for Reducing Data Movement Overhead Using ML-Guided Zero-Copy Techniques
| Status | In progress |
|---|
| Idea | Zero-copy techniques avoid moving data between buffers, but they are not always worth it. The framework uses machine learning to decide when and how to apply them, reducing the cost of moving data through the system. |
|---|
03Research
DataPulse: An Interactive Dashboard for Statistical and Exploratory Analysis of Multimodal Healthcare Data in Shiny
Co-author. Presented at DATA 2025 in Bilbao, Spain, with related findings co-presented at AICUR 2025.
Live app ↗Code ↗
04Skills
Languages
Python, Java, C#, C, SQL, JavaScript, R, HTML/CSS
Cloud & DevOps
Azure, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, CI/CD, Docker, Linux, NGINX, Git
Data & observability
Redis, Elasticsearch, DynamoDB, SQL Server, Grafana, REST APIs
Testing & frameworks
Playwright, Blazor, KnockoutJS, Shiny, Unity
05Education & beyond
- Class of 2027
BSc Computer Systems, University of Limerick. First Class Honours standing. Awarded the Fidelis Partnership Scholarship for academic excellence and industry promise.
- 2025 – now
ICT Learning Centre tutor & mentor. Tutored 100+ students through drop-in sessions and lead peer-supported learning groups in programming, data structures and debugging.
- 2025
Google workshops, Dublin. Selected for Google's Algorithms Workshop, and attended Google Code Retreat and the Datadog & Google SRE Workshop.
- 2023 – 2026
UL Tennis Club. Treasurer for two years, then elected Chairperson, running events for 250+ members a year.