Product engineer / two-sided practice

Selçuk Cihan

Senior Software Engineer | Backend, Platform & Cloud

Portrait of Selçuk Cihan
01 Interface / infrastructure

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 record / full chronology

One action.
Two visible systems.

Recto behavior & outcomes Verso execution & tools

01

2023 - 2026

Senior Software Engineer

RTIC Outdoors

R Frontend / effect

What changed for people

  1. 1Created mobile device management tools to support warehouse ops, reducing manual device setup and improving reliability across Android-based workflows.
  2. 2Automated warehouse operations such as processing returns, customization of products and workflows, resulting in more efficient use of resources.
  3. 3Expanded backend observability, giving engineering & operations teams more visibility into failures affecting warehouse.

V Runtime / method

What made it run

  • 01Scala
  • 02Spring
  • 03Kubernetes
  • 04Postgres
  • 05Google Cloud
  • 06DataDog
02

2022 - 2023

Senior Software Engineer

Serverless Inc.

R Frontend / effect

What changed for people

  1. 1Created the Python AWS Lambda SDK for Serverless Console, an observability platform for applications running on AWS Lambda.
  2. 2Owned release coordination & backward compatibility of the SDK, supporting dependable adoption among customers.

V Runtime / method

What made it run

  • 01Python
  • 02Serverless
  • 03Lambda
  • 04AWS
03

2019 - 2022

Senior Software Engineer

Tellimer

R Frontend / effect

What changed for people

  1. 1Created 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.
  2. 2Designed customer-facing GraphQL APIs, serverless execution orchestration, data-ingestion workflows and priority-queue services for mission-critical financial products.
  3. 3Delivered analytics, article recommendation, summarization, and automated sitemap capabilities for customer-facing products on tellimer.com
  4. 4Led architecture/design sessions, clarified ambiguous requirements, mentored engineers and reviewed technical documentation.
  5. 5Improved production monitoring & operational excellence across distributed systems.

V Runtime / method

What made it run

  • 01TypeScript
  • 02Python
  • 03Serverless
  • 04Lambda
  • 05API Gateway
  • 06DynamoDB
  • 07Stripe
  • 08EventBridge
  • 09AppSync
  • 10Cognito
  • 11Datadog
  • 12Node.js
04

2018 - 2019

Senior Software Engineer

Toptal

R Frontend / effect

What changed for people

  1. 1Developed a public facing REST API, fully serverless on AWS, serving hundreds of thousands of customers.
  2. 2Reduced AWS bill by more than 50% through architecture and resource-usage optimizations.
  3. 3Mentored developers and reviewed design documents for reliability & maintainability.

V Runtime / method

What made it run

  • 01Python
  • 02Serverless
  • 03Lambda
  • 04API Gateway
  • 05DynamoDB
  • 06VPC
  • 07SQS
  • 08CloudWatch
  • 09S3
  • 10CloudFront
05

2017 - 2018

Software Development Engineer

Amazon

R Frontend / effect

What changed for people

  1. 1Developed and maintained the orchestration platform that powers Amazon’s product catalog.
  2. 2Executed zero-downtime migrations across several web services and retired legacy services that constrained catalog growth.

V Runtime / method

What made it run

  • 01Python
  • 02Distributed Systems
  • 03AWS
  • 04Java
  • 05DynamoDB
  • 06Service Orchestration
  • 07SQS
  • 08CloudWatch
  • 09S3
  • 10Kinesis
06

2013 - 2017

Senior Software Engineer

Intertech

R Frontend / effect

What changed for people

  1. 1Supported the workflow engine serving banking applications such as loans, customer complaints etc.
  2. 2Designed a workforce management system that empowers the bank’s operation center.

V Runtime / method

What made it run

  • 01Microsoft .Net
  • 02C#
  • 03MSSQL
  • 04ElasticSearch
  • 05JavaScript
07

2011 - 2013

Software Development Engineer

Ziraat Teknoloji

R Frontend / effect

What changed for people

  1. 1Implemented workflow engine running on top of Oracle, serving over 100,000 workflow instances daily.
  2. 2Served as scrum master and mentored junior developers.

V Runtime / method

What made it run

  • 01Microsoft .NET
  • 02C#
  • 03WinForms
  • 04WPF
  • 05Oracle
08

2009 - 2010

Software Development Engineer

AirTies

R Frontend / effect

What changed for people

  1. 1Developed solutions for IPTV products in C & C++.
  2. 2Implemented teletext and RTSP parsers along with closed captioning and subtitles for IPTV.

V Runtime / method

What made it run

  • 01C
  • 02C++
  • 03Embedded Linux
  • 04RTSP
  • 05Teletext
  • 06IPTV

Reference table

The working index

Capabilities 12

  1. 01TypeScript
  2. 02Node.js
  3. 03Python
  4. 04Java/Scala
  5. 05SQL/NoSQL
  6. 06REST/GraphQL
  7. 07AWS
  8. 08GCP
  9. 09Cloudflare
  10. 10Serverless
  11. 11Distributed Systems
  12. 12React

Education

BS. & MS. in Computer Science

Boğaziçi University

Certification

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional

Amazon Web Services

Peer review / field notes

Signals from the other side

“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 VliegenthartTeam 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 WattCo-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 KurulSoftware 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 DobricaSoftware Architect, Tellimer