James Mcpherson
Principal Software Engineer, Data Engineering
Queensland, Australia
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJames Mcpherson is a Principal Software Engineer specialising in data engineering and streaming ETL, with over two decades of systems and Unix (notably Solaris) experience and more than 10 years focused on data platforms. He architects high-performance, scalable pipelines using Apache Kafka, Python, Java and extensive SQL, and has driven delivery improvements from months to days by redesigning systems and removing operational friction. His background in low-level OS and build systems gives him an uncommon ability to optimise end-to-end stacks—from kernel-adjacent tooling to cloud-native microservices and containerised databases. A committed mentor and code-reviewer, he runs company meetups and teaches analytical troubleshooting to uplift teams. Based in Brisbane, he balances deep technical craftsmanship with practical product delivery and even builds production utilities that automate operational toil (for example, Kafka Connect monitoring daemons and ETL orchestration).
11 years of coding experience
27 years of employment as a software developer
BA Mathematics Modern History, BA Mathematics Modern History at The University of Queensland
Stackoverflow
2,526reputation
388kreached
178answers
8questions
Github Skills (112)
streaming10
kafka10
java10
scala10
apache-kafka10
oauth10
vpn9
er-diagram9
entity-relationship-diagram9
wireguard9
tailscale9
python9
odpi-c9
static-site9
code-generator8
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
jmcp/grabbag
May 2018 - Jul 2019
Contributions:13 commits, 10 pushes, 1 branch in 1 year 2 months
jmcp/jfy-monitor
Mar 2018 - Aug 2021
Contributions:6 commits, 12 pushes, 1 branch in 3 years 5 months
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