Bugra Ekuklu
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Engineer and Developer
London, United Kingdom
Toptal member since November 11, 2025
Bugra is a software engineer with a primary focus on server-side systems, complemented by proficiencies in front-end, mobile, and embedded development. His unique skill set positions him as a vital bridge within teams, ensuring seamless integration across varied domains. Beyond implementation, his experience equips him to lead and guide teams effectively. Bugra is a versatile professional, always ready to innovate and adapt in a rapidly changing tech landscape.
Portfolio
Experience
- C++ - 10 years
- Web Applications - 10 years
- PostgreSQL - 9 years
- AWS IoT - 7 years
- Elixir - 7 years
- Cloud Engineering - 6 years
- Erlang (OTP) - 5 years
- Kotlin - 5 years
Preferred Environment
MacOS, Linux, Slack, Cursor AI, IntelliJ IDEA
The most amazing...
...solution I've built is an analytics platform for a mortgage software company, which ingests terabytes of data in real-time to provide BI data to lenders.
Work Experience
Senior Software Engineer
Mortgage Broker Tools
- Reimplemented features found in the existing Rails application in Elixir. Implemented a back-office interface using Phoenix LiveView and Tailwind UI.
- Set up a deployment pipeline with blue/green transitioning on AWS ECS Fargate and AWS CDK.
- Dockerized existing projects, initiated AWS EKS migration, and improved cloud nativeness of existing projects and stateless microservice conversions for better containerization.
- Migrated the front-end project to Tailwind CSS. Constructed a continuous integration and deployment pipeline of the front-end project based on Cypress, Jasmine, and Karma.
- Started OLAP processing using AWS Athena by making use of RDS instances and S3 data sources as the AWS Glue back end.
- Implemented analytics APIs using Spring Boot with Kotlin and JOOQ.
- Introduced UDTs with JavaScript for federated queries between data sources using AWS Lambda and Node.js.
- Established infrastructure as code using Amazon CDK with C# .NET.
- Modernized queue implementations for the existing applications by making use of cloud technologies, such as Amazon SQS and Amazon SNS.
Embedded Software Developer
SKAARHOJ
- Developed and maintained the monolithic firmware software implemented with C++ running on the custom Arduino Due hardware.
- Modernized and documented the older C APIs by mostly rewriting them to increase the code quality and test harness.
- Integrated several device cores for broadcasting specific software, including vMix.
Full-stack Developer
STC
- Collaborated with the team developing the first financial, banking application of the KaiOS operating system, a mobile operating system for low-cost feature phones, such as Nokia 8110 4G, heavily being used in India, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
- Built a UI components library on React. Released two applications, one for the merchants of our platform and the other for the customers.
- Leveraged a lightweight version of the Matrix API to receive in-app messages. Implemented the API gateway in Elixir, using the Phoenix framework.
- Implemented remittance integrations with Western Union, using .NET and SOAP. Introduced asymptotic cryptography based authentication with Bouncy Castle in libraries for Android and iOS applications.
- Developed libraries for package management, centralized logging, database primitives (PostgreSQL), and migration helpers; all sorts of packages required for a better development experience.
- Started development of an instant messaging (IM) service using Ejabberd and Matrix (named STC Blink). Enhanced Synapse (Matrix) user access control processing by integrating STC authentication data to the server side.
- Deployed the microservices using Kubernetes and OpenShift. Integrated centralized logging and application performance monitoring by using Prometheus and Grafana. Dockerized existing solutions and implemented Helm charts for the projects.
Software Developer
BuyBuddy
- Implemented platform APIs using Elixir (Phoenix), JavaScript (Hapi and Express) and Go (Gin and Beego).
- Developed an embedded software in C and Assembly for the IoT devices.
- Built application libraries in Swift and Java for iOS and Android devices to support IoT devices.
- Created an application in Objective-C to set up firmware on MacOS with native UI controls.
Experience
SoilSense
As the technical lead of the team, I architected the entire software stack, initiating the front-end, back-end, and embedded software projects, and implemented most of the embedded software for the products. I also collaborated with manufacturers in China, developing the industrial design of the product and designing the logic board for the electronics. In the proof-of-concept stage, there are currently 100 devices produced initially, and most of the products are sold in Turkey.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering
Istanbul Technical University - Istanbul, Turkey
Skills
Libraries/APIs
JOOQ, React
Tools
IntelliJ IDEA, AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), Amazon Cognito, AWS Glue, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), Webpack, Amazon EKS, Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Amazon Athena, Slack
Languages
Elixir, Kotlin, Java, Erlang (OTP), C++, C, JavaScript, SQL, GraphQL, TypeScript, Transact-SQL (T-SQL), Go, Swift, Objective-C
Frameworks
Phoenix, Spring Boot, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), Redux, Spring Microservice, Next.js, Tailwind CSS, Cypress, Hapi.js, Express.js, Gin, Beego
Paradigms
Microservices
Platforms
MacOS, Linux, iOS, AWS IoT, Docker, Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda, Arduino, KaiOS, Android
Storage
PostgreSQL, Redis, NoSQL, SQL Server 2016
Other
Software Engineering, Web Applications, Cloud Engineering, AWS ECS Fargate, Amazon API Gateway, Phoenix LiveView, AWS Aurora PostgreSQL, GitHub Actions, Clang, CI/CD Pipelines, Application State Management, RESTFul APIs, RESTful Microservices, Amazon EventBridge, Performance Tuning, Amazon RDS, Cursor AI, Serverless, Internet of Things (IoT), OAuth, Tailwind UI, Arduino IDE, vMix, Matrix API, Objective-C++, ESP32, System-on-a-Chip (SoC)
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