Jacob Gakunga

Sole engineer of a multi-tenant rental-management SaaS (Java 17, Spring Boot 3, PostgreSQL 16, AWS). Live in production with a Washington landlord; built its financial and compliance core.
Built a compliance engine that blocks non-compliant agreement terms at creation, including Washington late-fee limits and federal lead-paint disclosure.
Implemented consent-gated, FCRA-regulated tenant screening

Owned development of payments reconciliation software for time-sensitive month-end financial close in an accuracy-critical fintech environment.

- Designed and built automated matching of mobile-money (M-Pesa), card, and transit fare collections against bank settlements, replacing a manual, error-prone process with a repeatable automated workflow.
- Surfaced unmatched items across payment channels

Core backend engineer on a rental-management and property-listings platform (proptech) that now serves 1,500+ listed units and has completed 150+ tenant placements — 1,800+ commits across API, data-model, and integration work in Java/Spring Boot and PostgreSQL.

- Translated operator and finance-side business requirements into structured, repeatable backend workflows for leases, billing, and repor

Built the Python/Django backend for an IoT smart-cart system that maintained a live virtual basket and automatically calculated customer totals, aimed at eliminating supermarket checkout lines.

- Designed sensor-fusion logic combining mapped shelf locations and shelf/cart weight changes with camera detections, using Raspberry Pi devices and MQTT for sensor and cart event transport.
- Collected an

• Built the Python / Django backend for a smart-cart system that keeps a live virtual basket with automatic totals; the working pilot was deployed in one supermarket.

• Trained YOLO object-detection models across v6, v7, and v8 (image collection, labeling, evaluation) and designed sensor fusion using shelf mapping and weight changes as the primary signal, with camera detection as verification.

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Designed and built an internal client-management system for the law firm, translating requirements from non-technical legal staff into structured internal workflow software.

• Designed and built an internal client-management system for a law firm, working from requirements given by non-technical legal staff.

Designed and built the company's e-commerce system using Python/Django.

• Designed and built the company's e-commerce system in Python / Django.

Completed an advanced program focused on Java, object-oriented design, and enterprise application development. Built multiple real-world projects including REST APIs, microservices, and relational database systems using Java, Spring, and SQL. Gained hands-on experience with system design fundamentals, version control (Git), and software development best practices.