Daniel Slater

Software engineer, Cape Town

Full-stack engineer at Nsuna, where I build a hospitality platform end to end. I also run a small web studio, Leachie. Before software I lectured computational mechanics at the University of Cape Town and completed an MSc in mechanical engineering.

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Now

Feb 2024 – present

Nsuna · Software Developer

Remote

  • Full-stack engineer on a hospitality platform (dine-in ordering, accommodation, discovery) since the company’s earliest days.
  • Own features through every layer: Go and Python services, GraphQL APIs, Svelte web front-ends and a React Native app.
  • Initiated the backend’s service-layer architecture; built the end-to-end test suite, local Docker stack and CI pipeline the team runs on.
  • Sole author of a production real-time voice AI assistant: LiveKit, a provider-agnostic STT → LLM → TTS pipeline, telephony and a mobile voice client.
  • Lead AI-tooling adoption across the dev team and act as primary code reviewer for the backend.
2026 – present

Leachie · Founder

Cape Town

  • Currently building leachie.com, a small web studio: websites for small businesses, designed, built, hosted and kept running.
  • Client sites are editable in place, with hosting, billing and customer accounts on a shared backend I built.

Teaching and research

2021 – 2023

University of Cape Town, CERECAM · Lecturer and Lab Engineer, Mechanical Engineering

  • Convened and lectured postgraduate courses in computational mechanics: finite element methods, continuum mechanics and nonlinear material behaviour. Owned curriculum, assignments, tests and exams.
  • Supervised final-year undergraduate and MSc students; wrote lab-equipment interfacing software and ran data processing and QC.
  • Elected CERECAM postgraduate representative, 2021 and 2022.
2020 – 2023

University of Cape Town · Tutor and 3D-Printing Assistant

  • Head tutor for Dynamics (2023), leading a tutor team; tutored Applied Mechanics, Computer Methods, Control Systems and System Design.
  • Ran 3D-printing operations and built tools for bulk submission processing and student-specific memo generation.

Education

2020 – 2023

MSc(Eng) Mechanical Engineering, with distinction

University of Cape Town

  • Dissertation: Repeatable Processing of Mechanical Test Data.
2016 – 2019

BSc(Eng) Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering

University of Cape Town

  • Fourth-year class representative, 2019.
2015

Matric

St John’s College, Johannesburg

  • Seven distinctions.

Skills

Languages
Go, Python, TypeScript / JavaScript, SQL
Backend
Go (GraphQL, gqlgen, ent), Python (FastAPI), REST and GraphQL APIs, PostgreSQL, OpenSearch, ScyllaDB, Kafka, Redis
Frontend and mobile
Svelte / SvelteKit, React, React Native (Expo), Tailwind CSS
AI and voice
LiveKit Agents, WebRTC, real-time STT / LLM / TTS pipelines, LLM tool use, prompt design, Twilio SIP telephony, agentic coding workflows
Infrastructure
Docker, Kubernetes, GitLab CI/CD, ArgoCD, Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, GCP, DigitalOcean, Cloudflare, Linux
Practices
End-to-end feature ownership, service-layer architecture, code review, test automation (E2E, Playwright, WireMock), incident response, mentoring

Projects

  • paramaterial Open-source Python package for repeatable mechanical test-data processing (PyPI, MIT). Produced from my MSc dissertation.
  • Aerias Athletics Founding team member: marketing site, customer portal (Supabase, Cloudflare) and a React Native mobile app for a running brand.
  • Berlein Psychotherapy Designed and built a private practice’s website, including the branding.
  • Personal tooling A LiveKit voice front-end for a Claude Code session, and a zero-dependency HTTP/SSE lens over running sessions.