Gökce Yücel

About

I'm a software engineer with 15+ years of experience building and running HTTP-based systems end to end.

I enjoy working across the platform and the services that run on it: designing cloud and on-prem infrastructure with infrastructure as code, and building backend services with scale and day-to-day operations in mind.

Experience

1. Jul 2024 – Present

   Raisin Munich

   Senior Software Engineer

   Core banking platform, payments, savings products, banking integrations and data processing on AWS, with infrastructure defined in CDK.

2. Sep 2019 – Present

   Contract work

   Independent Consultant

   Technical consultation and implementation of an industrial IoT and data platform for a large-scale cement manufacturer: hybrid AWS EKS and on-prem Kubernetes, infrastructure as code, web apps and data services.

3. Nov 2018 – 2024

   Ounass (Al Tayer Digital) Dubai

   Senior Software Engineer → Team Lead

   Led the 9-person Marketplace team building a B2B marketplace that turned vendor onboarding from a semi-manual process into a fully automated one. Before that, full-stack work across B2C and B2B: database design, backend, frontend, product search and back-office tools.

4. Feb 2017 – Nov 2018

   Emlakjet (iLab) Istanbul

   Senior Software Engineer → DevOps Engineer

   Broke a legacy monolith into containerized services, then moved the platform to Google Cloud with near-zero downtime. Ran Kubernetes with Rancher and PostgreSQL, MySQL and Elasticsearch clusters across three data centers. Mentored a team of five.

5. Aug 2015 – Nov 2016

   Biotekno (Mobiliva) Istanbul

   Software Engineer

   Built a Slack-like messaging platform end to end: backend, deployment and infrastructure on AWS, plus mobile, desktop and web clients.

6. Apr 2013 – Aug 2015

   Bobiler.org (Veri Araştırma) Istanbul

   Software Engineer

   Rewrote the application from scratch, migrated its databases, set up continuous integration and built a public API and media processing.

7. Jul 2011 – Apr 2013

   Modapik.com Istanbul

   Software Engineer

   C# and ASP.NET web development, SQL Server stored procedures, server migrations and administration.

Skills

Platform & Cloud

AWS, AWS CDK, Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes, Amazon EKS, Helm, Rancher, Docker, Google Cloud, CI/CD, Prometheus, Grafana, Linux, Nginx

Languages & Frameworks

TypeScript, JavaScript, Node.js, Go, Python, Django, React, Java, Scala, C#, ASP.NET

Data

PostgreSQL, MySQL, Kafka, Redis, Elasticsearch

Things I've worked on

• Industrial IoT & data platform

  Hybrid infrastructure for a large-scale cement manufacturer: AWS EKS in the cloud and Kubernetes on-prem at factory sites, all defined as code, with web apps and data/ML services on top.

  • Terraform
  • Ansible
  • Kubernetes
  • EKS
  • Helm
  • Rancher
  • Python
  • Django

• Core banking & savings platform

  Services and infrastructure on AWS for payments, savings products, banking integrations and data processing at Raisin.

  • AWS
  • CDK
  • TypeScript

• Zero-downtime move to Google Cloud

  Migrated a high-traffic web and mobile platform to GCP with near-zero downtime, using sidecar and bake-and-deploy patterns, with database clusters in the EU, US and Istanbul.

  • GCP
  • Kubernetes
  • Rancher
  • Puppet
  • Prometheus
  • Grafana

• Monolith to microservices

  Split a legacy monolith into containerized services with CI pipelines, making the platform easier to scale and deploy.

  • Docker
  • Node.js
  • Java
  • Spring
  • Jenkins

• B2B marketplace automation

  Platform that onboards and runs vendors on a luxury e-commerce marketplace, replacing a semi-manual process with full automation.

  • TypeScript
  • Node.js
  • React
  • PostgreSQL
  • Kafka
  • Redis

• E-commerce search & back office

  Product indexing and search, database design and back-office applications for a luxury fashion e-commerce platform.

  • Elasticsearch
  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL
  • React

• Real-time messaging platform

  Slack-like instant messaging built on the actor model, with native mobile, desktop and web clients.

  • Scala
  • Akka
  • Protobuf
  • Node.js
  • AWS

Education

• 2016 – 2018

  MSc Software Engineering · Boğaziçi University

• 2007 – 2012

  BSc Economics · Karadeniz Technical University

• 2005 – 2007

  Economics & Management · Université de Perpignan, France

• 1996 – 2005

  Middle & high school, French-language · Lycée Français Saint-Benoît, Istanbul

Languages

Turkish (native) · English (fluent) · French (intermediate) · German (A1)