Portfolio / Curriculum Vitae

Selçuk Cihan

Portrait of Selçuk Cihan

Senior Software Engineer | Backend, Platform & Cloud

Profile

Senior software engineer with 17+ years of experience building distributed systems.

Former Amazon Software Development Engineer with hands-on experience across Node.js, Python, AWS, GCP, serverless architectures and observability.

Trusted in multi-year remote contracts to own ambiguous problems from architecture and implementation to operations and mentoring. Based in Istanbul (UTC+3).

Selected experience

2023 - 2026

Senior Software Engineer

RTIC Outdoors
  • Created mobile device management tools to support warehouse ops, reducing manual device setup and improving reliability across Android-based workflows.
  • Automated warehouse operations such as processing returns, customization of products and workflows, resulting in more efficient use of resources.
  • Expanded backend observability, giving engineering & operations teams more visibility into failures affecting warehouse.

ScalaSpringKubernetesPostgresGoogle CloudDataDog

2022 - 2023

Senior Software Engineer

Serverless Inc.
  • Created the Python AWS Lambda SDK for Serverless Console, an observability platform for applications running on AWS Lambda.
  • Owned release coordination & backward compatibility of the SDK, supporting dependable adoption among customers.

PythonServerlessLambdaAWS

2019 - 2022

Senior Software Engineer

Tellimer
  • Created serverless backends on AWS using Node.js & Python for multiple products, including a machine-learning SAAS application and a substack-like platform for financial writers.
  • Designed customer-facing GraphQL APIs, serverless execution orchestration, data-ingestion workflows and priority-queue services for mission-critical financial products.
  • Delivered analytics, article recommendation, summarization, and automated sitemap capabilities for customer-facing products on tellimer.com
  • Led architecture/design sessions, clarified ambiguous requirements, mentored engineers and reviewed technical documentation.
  • Improved production monitoring & operational excellence across distributed systems.

TypeScriptPythonServerlessLambdaAPI GatewayDynamoDBStripeEventBridgeAppSyncCognitoDatadogNode.js

2018 - 2019

Senior Software Engineer

Toptal
  • Developed a public facing REST API, fully serverless on AWS, serving hundreds of thousands of customers.
  • Reduced AWS bill by more than 50% through architecture and resource-usage optimizations.
  • Mentored developers and reviewed design documents for reliability & maintainability.

PythonServerlessLambdaAPI GatewayDynamoDBVPCSQSCloudWatchS3CloudFront

2017 - 2018

Software Development Engineer

Amazon
  • Developed and maintained the orchestration platform that powers Amazon’s product catalog.
  • Executed zero-downtime migrations across several web services and retired legacy services that constrained catalog growth.

PythonDistributed SystemsAWSJavaDynamoDBService OrchestrationSQSCloudWatchS3Kinesis

2013 - 2017

Senior Software Engineer

Intertech
  • Supported the workflow engine serving banking applications such as loans, customer complaints etc.
  • Designed a workforce management system that empowers the bank’s operation center.

Microsoft .NetC#MSSQLElasticSearchJavaScript

2011 - 2013

Software Development Engineer

Ziraat Teknoloji
  • Implemented workflow engine running on top of Oracle, serving over 100,000 workflow instances daily.
  • Served as scrum master and mentored junior developers.

Microsoft .NETC#WinFormsWPFOracle

2009 - 2010

Software Development Engineer

AirTies
  • Developed solutions for IPTV products in C & C++.
  • Implemented teletext and RTSP parsers along with closed captioning and subtitles for IPTV.

CC++Embedded LinuxRTSPTeletextIPTV

Credentials

Education

BS. & MS. in Computer Science

Boğaziçi University

Certification

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional

Amazon Web Services

In their words

“I've been most impressed by his exceptional ability to tackle every phase of software development with in-depth knowledge, confidence and clear communication. I cannot emphasize enough how good Selcuk is at communicating in a clear and structured manner.”
Daniel Vliegenthart · Team Lead, Tellimer
“He was the perfect remote contractor in many ways. His communication skills are top, he is very much a self-starter who can get stuck in on work with minimal guidance or oversight, and his code quality (and documentation!) is exceptional.”
Ian Watt · Co-founder, Tellimer
“Selçuk is a quick learner, he approaches problems systematically and understands the business and customer needs. He is very detail-oriented, and a hard worker. You can trust him with the most challenging issues.”
Erdem Kurul · Software Development Manager, Intertech
“I had the pleasure to manage and to work with Selcuk Cihan for the past 2 years while at Tellimer. He rose brilliantly to all challenges thrown at him both technically and communication wise. I would say his superpower is his communications skills, both writing and talking.”
Decebal Dobrica · Software Architect, Tellimer