Dafydd-Rhys Maund.

Full-stack engineer at Hoowla, a legal case-management SaaS platform, building and maintaining production features across JavaScript, HTML, CSS, PHP and SQL.

Work spans the full software-development lifecycle: analysis, implementation, testing, deployment and support. Day to day, that means shipping feature work, reviewing code, debugging live production issues, writing rapid hotfixes, and carrying out root-cause analysis when production does something it absolutely should not.

I have performed data migrations, where correctness, data integrity and careful rollout matter just as much as the code itself. Alongside the feature work, I contribute to system stability and performance through optimisation, testing, peer review, daily stand-ups and sprint planning.

Master's degree in Data Science, completed with Distinction. The course built on my software-engineering background with modules across big data, data mining, data visualisation, machine learning, computer vision, deep learning, optimisation, modelling, verification, operating systems, architectures and research methods.

My thesis focused on a hybrid machine-learning and rule-based support chatbot for university students, staff and visitors. I built the system end-to-end using Python, FastAPI, Rasa, PostgreSQL and a RoBERTa-based intent classifier.

The architecture combined machine-learning classification for flexible intent detection with rule-based dialogue flows for parts of the system that needed tighter control, including escalation, ticket submission and sensitive-topic handling. The result was a modular support system with separable frontend, API, conversational logic and data-storage layers.

First Class Honours in Software Engineering, awarded the Excellence Scholarship. The degree gave me a broad software engineering foundation across programming, algorithms, databases, concurrency, declarative programming, web services, software testing, project planning, mobile apps, embedded systems, graphics and games programming.

Final-year dissertation: a real-time synchronised media-streaming application where users could watch, listen and chat together across YouTube, SoundCloud, Twitch and Facebook in shared rooms.

Built with React, Node.js and Socket.io, the project handled persistent rooms, playback synchronisation, drift correction and live chat. It was a proper full-stack build: frontend state, backend events, real-time communication, third-party media integrations and enough edge cases to make timing bugs feel personal.

The course also developed the less glamorous but important parts of engineering: requirements analysis, project specification, documentation, testing, planning, teamwork and turning a rough idea into something that can actually be delivered.

Open-source contributions to PHPOffice/PHPWord and other libraries I use or rely on. Mostly the kind of work that looks small from the outside but matters in real projects: bug fixes, documentation improvements, examples, edge-case investigation and clearer reproduction steps.

The next step is to contribute more deliberately across the stack I work with: PHP tooling, backend frameworks, API libraries, documentation, testing utilities and data/ML projects connected to my master's work.

My focus is useful maintenance over vanity contributions: failing test cases, clearer docs, small bug fixes, migration notes, typed interfaces, validation edge cases and anything that makes a project easier for the next developer to use.

An API-first HTML refinery that cleans, prettifies, condenses, and optimises markup. Designed to be safe by default, deterministic, and suitable for automated pipelines — the kind of thing you reach for when you need to trust the output, not eyeball it.

Define a database schema, write two SELECT queries, and find out which one is likely to cost you less. Estimates relative cost from indexes, row counts, joins, filters, and sort behaviour, then explains why.

A web platform that calculates UK degree outcomes using institution-specific classification rules across 90+ universities. Grade analysis, module planning, and progress tracking — built for the students who actually need to know what they need to score.

A poster-generation platform for custom album artwork. Editable templates, dynamic rendering, and a Spotify API integration that pulls real album data so the poster you make actually matches the record on your shelf. Reusable templates, edit-preview-download workflow.

A psychological deduction game where the player audits a casino to identify anomalies in reality disguised as probability. Built in Unity. Wears its theme on its sleeve.

An IT-services chatbot for Swansea University. Trained on real helpline data, leveraging NLP and rule-based dialogue flows to handle support requests at scale. The thesis project that turned into something the university could actually use.

A synchronous media-streaming app — watch and listen together across YouTube, SoundCloud, Twitch, and Facebook in real time. The watchalong / listenalong service I wanted to exist. Drift correction, persistent rooms, chat that doesn't break.

A real-time collaborative editor — Google-Docs-style multi-user editing, rich-text formatting, autosaves to MongoDB, persistent sessions. React + Quill + Socket.io.

A machine-learning pipeline classifying land-cover types from satellite and aerial imagery. SVD for dimensionality, HoG features, CNN on top. Comparing classical and deep approaches end-to-end.

A Unity arcade shooter — Asteroids meets Space Invaders. Diverse enemy types, dynamic power-ups, special abilities. Built mostly because it was fun to build.

End-to-end analysis of SpaceX launch and landing data — collection, cleaning, exploratory analysis, and visualisation across rocket models and mission profiles.

An interactive A* pathfinder. Drop blockers, set multiple goals, watch the algorithm reason its way through. Built to make the heuristic stop being abstract.