Ali is available for hire
Hire AliAli Cerrahoglu
Verified Expert in Engineering
Full-stack Developer
Location
Baia Mare, Maramureș County, Romania
Toptal Member Since
July 15, 2021
Ali is a software engineer with over four years of experience delivering projects in various industries, including betting, security and defense, and marketing. With a problem-solving mindset, Ali excels at architecting and building software, focusing on design, quality, and performance. He is comfortable with Python (Flask), Redis, PostgreSQL, and React/Redux. Still, Ali can pick up any tool when necessary, as demonstrated by his previous work with PHP, MySQL, MongoDB, Node.js, and Angular.
Portfolio
AsistentulTau
PHP, Google Cloud, ChatGPT, Image Generation, APIs, JavaScript, Laravel, Email...
Kahana
JavaScript, React, Redux, Node.js, Next.js, Heroku, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)...
Smarkets
Amazon EKS, Kubernetes, Docker, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, WebSockets...
Experience
Availability
Part-time
Preferred Environment
Python, Docker, React Redux, Webpack, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Flask
The most amazing...
...project I've worked on is an online banking integration for sports and politics betting exchange that sees about £5 million deposits and withdrawals per week.
Work Experience
CTO
2023 - PRESENT
AsistentulTau
- Co-founded the company. I was solely responsible for the tech stack and aligning tech-related decisions with business decisions. I mitigated contingencies and planned for a smooth release.
- Designed and performed user experience interviews to gather data about the tool's usage in our target audiences.
- Engaged on the technical side, including both front-end and back-end development, focusing on tasks such as email flows, promotions, AI integration with ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion, as well as integrating the Stripe API.
- Gained insightful experience into how technical decisions impact the value perceived by customers and how and where each technical decision fits in the pipeline of tasks required for a product.
Technologies: PHP, Google Cloud, ChatGPT, Image Generation, APIs, JavaScript, Laravel, Email, Stripe API, SendGrid, User Interface (UI)
Full-stack Developer
2021 - 2022
Kahana
- Improved the core product's performance, stability, aesthetics, and usability.
- Implemented real-time group collaboration on writing hubs. Various features include security rules for role-based access, link and email sharing, strong privacy guarantees, real-time comments, and real-time hub collaboration.
- Enabled an internal drag-and-drop React library using a file system module.
- Redesigned and improved the loading speed of the Chrome extension.
Technologies: JavaScript, React, Redux, Node.js, Next.js, Heroku, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Firebase, Firebase Web SDK, Stripe, Sentry, Firebase Cloud Functions, Web Extensions, HTML5, CSS, Chrome Extensions, APIs, Progressive Web Applications (PWA), JSON, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), REST, Python 3, Google Cloud Functions, Cloud Firestore, Asynchronous Programming, User Interface (UI), User Experience (UX)
Software Engineer
2020 - 2021
Smarkets
- Integrated PayWithMyBank online banking to facilitate deposits and withdrawals for instant bank transfers for US users.
- Developed and maintained ETL pipelines that streamline regulatory and accounting reporting.
- Built and maintained highly available and elastic microservices that support user functionality on the Smarkets betting exchange, including public API, authentication, responsible gambling, KYC, payments, and OTC trading services.
- Improved the performance of Smarkets's in-house customer support chat service.
- Assisted the recruitment team in performing technical interviews.
- Assisted in developing a recruiting funnel, a two-step process where potential interview candidates need to solve a C-code puzzle and complete a web-app game.
Technologies: Amazon EKS, Kubernetes, Docker, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, WebSockets, Python Asyncio, Gunicorn, PySpark, Python, Databases, React, Redux, Flask, RabbitMQ, Apache Kafka, TypeScript, HTML, CSS, SQL, Web Scraping, React Native, APIs, Redis, OpenAPI, OAuth 2, Swagger, JSON, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), REST, Python 3, Jinja, Asyncio, Data Engineering, Asynchronous Programming
Machine Learning Engineer
2019 - 2019
Ordulu
- Worked on small object detection in medium-altitude (tactical and MALE) UAV videos.
- Researched state-of-the-art networks and found solutions so that they could detect small and low-resolution objects.
- Implemented and changed the network architecture of DSSD (while also testing ResNet and Yolo V3) and created a novel object-detection dataset based on proprietary UAV videos, which I later extended with public datasets for optimal results.
- Helped the front-end team in developing and creating the architecture of the admin dashboard for an in-house messaging platform.
Technologies: AngularJS, JavaScript, PyTorch, Keras, Python, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, HTML, CSS, SQL, Web Scraping, JSON, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), REST, APIs, Python 3, Electron, Node.js, Data Engineering, Asynchronous Programming
Full-stack Engineer
2018 - 2019
Brand Developer
- Built a real-estate platform that helps users find and book viewings of the properties; also designed the user experience to be fluid in order to keep engagement levels high.
- Created an eCommerce web application for a B2B company that showcases different products and allows users to create and manage their invoices.
- Developed customer-facing Shopify websites that showcase the products from our clients; also helped the user experience to flow better by developing performant Shopify plugins.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), APIs, Redux, Next.js, Node.js, Shopify, React, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, SQL, JSON, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), REST, Asynchronous Programming
Full-stack Engineer
2016 - 2017
Carpathian IT
- Implemented a web app for UniCredit bank, which aids users in calculating their working capital.
- Participated in meetings with the bank representatives to define the design and user flow.
- Created and implemented UniCredit bank's requirements for proprietary PDFs.
Technologies: Adobe Acrobat Pro, MySQL, PHP, Redux, React, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, SQL, Swagger, JSON, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), REST, APIs, Node.js, Asynchronous Programming
Experience
Kahana Web App
https://app.kahana.coA react-based app for collecting and writing research. I redesigned the core features to be usable, aesthetic, and responsive. After a revamp of the codebase (bug and some architecture fixes), I designed and implemented the collaboration features (sharing hubs with other users/non-users). I was responsible for the design, front-end, and back-end work.
Smarkets Ordinary Puzzles
https://smk-ali.github.io/A React Native-based web app for a recruitment funnel. This was part of a creative project within Smarkets, where we developed a few puzzles to funnel potential interview candidates. I was responsible for a C code art puzzle and showcased the React Native puzzle in the URL.
Increased Aversive Learning in Pessimism, Anxiety, and Depression
Research project for my master's thesis that explores aversive learning in a Pavlovian conditioning experiment. The project computationally models collected human behavior using several models for the given task, including reinforcement learning, leaky memory, and Bayesian models. It reports the differences in participants' prior beliefs and learning mechanisms modulated by psychometric measurements out of which of interest were optimism, anxiety, and general depression.
Moodsic | Online Music Search
An online music search website that lets a user search by text, emotion, or genre. Having curated a dataset containing 800,000 songs with lyrics, the project had several functionalities: back end, front end, emotion classification, genre classification, recommendation system, and text search.
Out of these, I was responsible for the back end (which included integrating the whole system, exposing it to a public-facing API), the front end, and the emotion classification module.
The project was part of a master's degree course at the University of Edinburgh, and it was deemed the best project of the year.
Several Personal Achievements:
• To speed up the labeling required for the novel emotion classification network, I created a small tool (an online website with a Node.js server hosted in AWS) that streamlined the labeling process.
• We used various methods to speed up the text search flow and overall user experience (front-end and back-end caching, a SPA on the front end).
• The emotion classification network achieved a state-of-the-art F-score on the task of emotion labeling (6-class) on text data.
Out of these, I was responsible for the back end (which included integrating the whole system, exposing it to a public-facing API), the front end, and the emotion classification module.
The project was part of a master's degree course at the University of Edinburgh, and it was deemed the best project of the year.
Several Personal Achievements:
• To speed up the labeling required for the novel emotion classification network, I created a small tool (an online website with a Node.js server hosted in AWS) that streamlined the labeling process.
• We used various methods to speed up the text search flow and overall user experience (front-end and back-end caching, a SPA on the front end).
• The emotion classification network achieved a state-of-the-art F-score on the task of emotion labeling (6-class) on text data.
Education
2015 - 2020
Master's Degree in Computer Science
University of Edinburgh - Edinburgh, Scotland
Skills
Libraries/APIs
React, Node.js, Python Asyncio, Keras, PyTorch, SQLAlchemy, PySpark, React Redux, Firebase Web SDK, Stripe, OpenAPI, Asyncio, Stripe API
Tools
Amazon EKS, Webpack, Cron, RabbitMQ, MQTT, Sentry, ChatGPT, SendGrid
Languages
Python, JavaScript, Python 3, HTML, CSS, SQL, PHP, TypeScript, HTML5, C
Frameworks
Next.js, Redux, Flask, Bootstrap, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), Electron, AngularJS, React Native, OAuth 2, Swagger, Jinja, Laravel
Storage
JSON, Databases, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Cloud Firestore, Google Cloud
Paradigms
REST, Asynchronous Programming
Platforms
Firebase, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Shopify, Kubernetes, Docker, Heroku, Apache Kafka, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Jupyter Notebook
Other
APIs, WebSockets, API Integration, Web Scraping, Data Engineering, Machine Learning, Bayesian Inference & Modeling, Deep Learning, Adobe Acrobat Pro, Gunicorn, Server-side Rendering (SSR), Integration, Documentation, Mathematics, Technical Writing, Statistics, Firebase Cloud Functions, Web Extensions, Chrome Extensions, Progressive Web Applications (PWA), Google Cloud Functions, Image Generation, Email, User Interface (UI), User Experience (UX)
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