Murat Firat, Developer in Amsterdam, Netherlands
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Murat Firat

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Software Developer

Location
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Toptal Member Since
September 9, 2020

Murat is a software engineer and PhD candidate with over 14 years of hands-on experience developing business software solutions in the airline, logistics, and banking sectors. The bulk of Murat's professional experience consists of web-based projects using Java and related technologies. Murat also has a robust background in machine learning.

Portfolio

Toptal Clients
Java, Amazon Web Services (AWS), PostgreSQL, REST, MySQL, Spring Boot...
Turkish Airlines
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microservices, Node.js, Apache Struts, JavaScript...
Turkiye Finans Participation Bank
Microsoft SQL Server, T-SQL (Transact-SQL)...

Experience

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Spring MVC, Microservices, Java, Spring Boot

The most amazing...

...thing I've made was a fail-safe mechanism at Turkish Airlines—it provided a 3% increase in online sales with an additional turnover of US $60 million annually.

Work Experience

Software Engineer

2020 - PRESENT
Toptal Clients
  • Developed a fintech application for a Toptal client from the US that provides physical gold ownership with blockchain technology. Fixed security issues as well as performance problems on the platform.
  • Created a premium membership flow for the fintech application integrated with the open banking systems Plaid and Salt Edge that provided automated customer verification based on external bank accounts of customers.
  • Delivered a web platform for a Toptal client that operates esports tournaments. Implemented a microservice for payment and tournament management. Delivered the MVP version in three months and stabilized the platform in two months with a small team.
Technologies: Java, Amazon Web Services (AWS), PostgreSQL, REST, MySQL, Spring Boot, Spring Data JPA, Azure, Liquibase, Flyway, Redis, Architecture, GraphQL, SQL, PL/SQL, Oracle Database, Hibernate, JUnit, Mockito, Relational Database Services (RDS), Back-end

Software Engineer

2013 - 2020
Turkish Airlines
  • Worked on the online reservation system for 7.5 years and contributed to Turkish Airlines by helping it become the primary sale and customer support channel for the company.
  • Provided technical solutions for the projects that covered business requirements and system optimization on the codebase of a 15+-year-old legacy system.
  • Designed proper architecture for many projects and technically led and mentored the team during SDLC.
  • Developed ancillary service marketing for online applications that provided additional revenue sources to the company and achieved a 3% net revenue share in the first year. It decreased the call-center workload by making the services available online.
  • Developed payment integrations with more than ten banks and payment providers for an online reservation system that made multiple local or global payment options available for customers.
  • Implemented a circuit-breaker mechanism for an online-reservation system that decreased downtime, provided over 80% faster response time at peak times, and prevented chronic application crashes due to third-party integration failure.
  • Replaced the server-based legacy log management with Graylog, which provided central, queryable, asynchronous, fast, and visualized log management for all integrated applications.
  • Moved session state management for online applications from distributed nodes to central Redis sentinel instance, solving around 50% of payment errors due to the load balancer misdirection of HTTP requests to the wrong servers.
  • Helped detect system failures with online applications in real time by introducing alert-notification events based on monitoring sources like business data and application logs.
  • Performed major Java version upgrades (1.4, 1.6, and 1.8) for online applications.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microservices, Node.js, Apache Struts, JavaScript, SoapUI, Postman, Wireshark, Jira, Knockout (Knockout.js), HTML, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Amazon EC2, RESTful Microservices, Toad, Jakarta Server Pages (JSP), Bitbucket, Subversion (SVN), Git, Jenkins, Apache Maven, Apache Tomcat, WebLogic, IBM MQ, Graylog, Redis, PL/SQL, Spring MVC, Spring Boot, Spring, Java, Architecture, SQL, Oracle Database, CI/CD Pipelines, Relational Database Services (RDS), Back-end, Full-stack

Software Engineer

2011 - 2013
Turkiye Finans Participation Bank
  • Designed, developed, and delivered a strategic product that provided instant retail loan allocation using a debit card over a POS device. Designed the data model and developed limit assignment, credit approval, and card application modules.
  • Maintained the core credit-scoring system of the bank that provided an automated decision in such cases as a customer's loan application.
  • Integrated some financial instruments with a credit-scoring system that provided a more objective and automated way of managing customer risk.
  • Developed a batch process that provides a retail-loan limit pre-allocation in case of a customer's loan request.
Technologies: Microsoft SQL Server, T-SQL (Transact-SQL), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), C#, SQL, Relational Database Services (RDS)

Software Engineer

2007 - 2011
OMSAN Logistics
  • Implemented system integrations with major customers of the company. The projects provided automated order-processing and warehouse-delivery management integrated with external SAP systems of customers.
  • Developed a web application that provided the creation of sale and purchase orders for warehouse customers.
  • Built a mobile framework that provided GPS tracking and messaging. Implemented multiple mobile applications, including vehicle-GPS tracking and packet-delivery tracking integrated with Google maps.
  • Developed a batch OCR application that automated processing thousands of physical invoices into the system.
  • Developed new features on a web-based warehouse-management system.
Technologies: Jakarta Server Pages (JSP), ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET, PL/SQL, Oracle, Java, C#, SQL, Oracle Database, Relational Database Services (RDS), Full-stack

Online Marketing of Ancillary Services

In order to provide new revenue items, the project consisted of making ancillary services such as paid seats, extra baggage, and so on available on the online reservation system so that airline tickets and new products are offered to customers.

As the key project developer, I implemented all the types of products offered to customers. I also designed and developed proper (back-end) software architecture, from inventory availability to post-payment operations.

Integration of Online Payment Methods

I implemented new payment integrations with international payment methods, including Alipay, BKM Express, Qiwi, KNET, and so on. Each payment integration was developed as a different project to provide an alternative payment method for the online reservation system of Turkish Airlines. I developed the payment initialization and the airline ticketing flow for each project.

Microservice Oriented Redesign of an Online Reservation System

I redesigned the back end of an online reservation system of Turkish Airlines. The project aimed to upgrade the monolithic architecture of the system to microservice-oriented services that can be deployed to containers independently. I developed a core project structure using Spring Boot/Java and implemented initial services. The project modules were divided into microservices and Redis was used for core session management between distributed services.

Airline Ticket Booking Web Application

I developed the microservice-oriented back end of an airline ticket booking web application for an airline agency. I decided on all architectural designs for RDS, logging, caching, session management, cloud hosting, security configuration, and development. The project was developed in the Java ecosystem. Redis was used for session management and caching; Graylog was used for log management; Cloudflare was used for reverse proxy; AWS MySQL was used for RDS; AWS EC2 and Elastic Beanstalk were used for cloud runtime; and Spring Boot was used for microservice design.

Loan Allocation Via Debit Card

I contributed to developing a credit card-based loan allocation product for Turkiye Finans Participation Bank. The project contemplated using a loan via debit card. As a member of the core development team, I designed the project architecture. I developed database objects, the credit risk limit allocation module, the product application module, and the loan allocation services.

Loan Application and Approval System

I worked on the following business process management projects, each of which implements and manages its custom approval process from the beginning (application) to the end (accounting) with the integration on bank interfaces including a credit rating system, appraisal, identity check, and fraud check.

Business process management projects:
• Retail loan approval system
• Credit card application approval system
• SME credit approval system
• Loan allocation system

Vehicle Tracking Framework and Applications

I developed a mobile platform and framework and web-based management interfaces that provided GPS tracking, messaging, and management of connected devices. I also implemented service-oriented endpoints to handle operational processes along with many operational processes that were being manually handled previously, including:
• Truck (maintenance) control application
• Packet and material delivery tracking application
• Truck tracking application
• Office mail delivery application

Implementation of Artificial Neural Networks

https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/19323/Image-Recognition-with-Neural-Networks
I implemented artificial neural networks as a part of an undergraduate project and applied a deep learning method for image recognition by using a back-propagation training algorithm.

The source code is available at the following link, and despite its old release date, it is still efficient for today's machine learning tasks.
2019 - 2022

PhD in Computer Science (In Progress)

Istanbul University - Istanbul, Turkey

2017 - 2019

Master of Science (MSc) Degree in Computer Science

Istanbul University - Istanbul, Turkey

2003 - 2008

Bachelor of Science (BSc) Degree in Computer Science

Gebze Institute of Technology - Istanbul, Turkey

Languages

Java, SQL, HTML, C#, T-SQL (Transact-SQL), JavaScript, Python, CSS, C++, GraphQL

Frameworks

Spring Boot, Spring, Hibernate, ASP.NET, ASP.NET Web Forms, Jakarta Server Pages (JSP), Spring MVC, Knockout (Knockout.js), Apache Struts, Bootstrap, Swagger, .NET, .NET Compact, JUnit, Mockito

Libraries/APIs

Liquibase, Node.js, GDI(+), Windows Forms (WinForms)

Tools

Eclipse IDE, Flyway, Apache Maven, Jira, Slack, Graylog, IBM MQ, Apache Tomcat, Jenkins, Git, Subversion (SVN), Bitbucket, Toad, Wireshark, Postman, SoapUI

Other

Back-end, Machine Learning, RESTful Microservices, SOAP, Web Servers, Architecture, Relational Database Services (RDS), Full-stack, Data Structures, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Gradient Boosting, Queuing Systems, Evolutionary Algorithms, Deep Learning, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), BPM, Ultimus BPM, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), WebLogic, DNS Configuration, Internet Information Services (IIS), Cloudflare, CI/CD Pipelines

Paradigms

REST, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Software-defined Networking (SDN), Microservices Architecture, Microservices

Platforms

Eclipse, Amazon EC2, Oracle, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Oracle Database

Storage

PL/SQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Redis, MySQL, SQL Server 2010, Spring Data JPA

Industry Expertise

Network Security

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