Building software that feels useful, polished, and practical.
I'm Daniel B. Islas, a Computer Science and Business Administration student at UNC Chapel Hill focused on full-stack development, machine learning, and systems-driven engineering.
About
Building practical software with product value.
I care about projects that are useful, polished, and explainable.
I am a Computer Science student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a minor in Business Administration. I build full-stack applications, machine learning systems, and software that combines technical depth with practical product value. My experience includes production web applications, database systems, AI-assisted tools, and teaching advanced C++ concepts.
Education
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Minor in Business Administration
May 2026
Awards
Languages
Projects
Selected work
A mix of full-stack applications, machine learning projects, and technical practice built to show range.
June 2026 – Present
FIFA World Cup Match Predictor
End-to-end machine learning system that predicts international football match outcomes and simulates tournament results.
- Built an end-to-end machine learning pipeline using historical international matches to predict home win, draw, and away win probabilities and simulate tournament outcomes.
- Engineered Elo, recent-form, scoring, rest, tournament, and head-to-head features.
- Implemented logistic regression and gradient descent from scratch.
January 2026 – June 2026
Jacket Checker
Production full-stack application that analyzes live forecasts, user profiles, and private wardrobe data to recommend appropriate jackets.
- Built and deployed a production full-stack application that analyzes live forecasts and user profiles through a deterministic ranking algorithm.
- Recommended up to three jackets from a user's private wardrobe.
- Implemented AI image analysis, vector embeddings, authentication, PostgreSQL Row Level Security, private Storage, and Supabase Edge Functions.
January 2025 – May 2025
AI-Powered Office Hours Ticketing System
Full-stack AI-assisted course support feature that uses previously resolved tickets to generate contextual suggestions for students requesting technical help.
- Developed a full-stack AI-assisted feature that uses solutions from previously resolved tickets to generate contextual suggestions for students requesting technical support.
- Implemented RESTful FastAPI endpoints with SQLAlchemy and Pydantic.
- Built Angular components using Signals and dialog modals.
2026
Trading Bot Baseline
Algorithmic trading baseline that connects market data, broker APIs, and machine learning tooling to experiment with automated trading strategies.
- Created a baseline trading model using Lumibot as the algorithmic trading framework.
- Integrated Alpaca trade APIs for market data access and broker-side trade execution.
- Used Python datetime utilities to manage date formatting, time windows, and date-difference calculations.
July 2026
Professional Portfolio Website
Personal software engineering portfolio built to showcase projects, experience, education, certifications, and technical skills in one professional hub.
- Built a responsive portfolio using a modern Next.js and TypeScript stack.
- Created reusable UI components, dark mode, project cards, resume page, and centralized content data.
- Designed the site to support GitHub links, live demos, certifications, coursework, and professional experience.
2026 – Present
Blind 75 Interview Practice
Structured data structures and algorithms repository containing documented approaches, tested Python solutions, and interview preparation notes.
- Documented brute-force and optimized approaches for common interview problems.
- Recorded time and space complexity, mistakes, edge cases, and lessons learned.
- Created focused tests for completed solutions.
Experience
Technical and product-focused experience
Teaching, systems work, and business-facing experience that shaped how I build software.
Undergraduate Teaching Assistant
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC
August 2025 – January 2026
Supported more than 100 students in COMP 421, an advanced C++ database systems course, while helping develop projects, assessments, and course materials.
- Supported 100+ students through in-class instruction and one-on-one office hours for COMP 421, covering buffer management, indexing, query execution, transactions, recovery, and concurrency.
- Co-developed and maintained four C++ database projects implementing HyperLogLog, buffer pool management, concurrent B+ trees, and SQL query execution.
- Created automated tests and grading rubrics to evaluate correctness and edge cases.
- Collaborated with course staff to develop exams, practice problems, and solution keys; led review sessions and supported students with debugging, performance optimization, and complex DBMS concepts.
Marketing Assistant
FB Carports & Canopies
Elkin, NC
June 2019 – July 2023
Managed digital marketing initiatives, customer communications, and delivery coordination for a growing regional business.
- Managed SEO strategy and Google Ads campaigns, increasing monthly website traffic by 40% and sales conversions by 15%.
- Prepared customer quotes, coordinated delivery timelines, and supported client communications.
- Contributed to a 25% increase in customer retention and referrals.
Skills
Tools I use to build
A practical stack across frontend, backend, machine learning, and systems.
Languages
Frontend
Backend
Machine Learning
Tools
Certifications
Recent technical learning
Additional certifications focused on software engineering, AI, machine learning, and professional technical skills.
IBM Deep Learning with PyTorch, Keras and TensorFlow Professional Certificate
IBM / Coursera
July 2026
Google AI Professional Certificate
Google / Coursera
July 2026
Coursework
Academic foundation
Relevant computer science and business coursework supporting software engineering, machine learning, systems, and product thinking.
Computer Science
Business Administration
Contact
Let's connect
I'm currently looking for software engineering opportunities where I can build useful products and keep growing technically.
The best way to reach me is by email.