Furkan Tunalı

AI, Full-stack & Platform Engineer

Berlin

Summary

Experienced AI, software and platform engineer building scalable full-stack systems, cloud infrastructure, and agentic AI pipelines.

Recent Projects

Nomadic

A taste-based place-discovery ChatGPT app (in OpenAI app review)

Shipped as a ChatGPT app first to validate the idea and gather the first places and users. A LangGraph agent plans its own tool chain over a pgvector taste model on Supabase, served through an OpenAI Apps SDK (MCP) server that renders its own interactive UI inside ChatGPT. It runs on Kubernetes, traced with LangSmith and OpenTelemetry.

  • Built the recommendation engine: it blends semantic (vector) search, collaborative filtering, global taste and live place data to suggest places someone will actually want.
  • Modelled each person's taste from their swipes, so recommendations sharpen the more they use the app.

Stack TypeScript · LangGraph · MCP / OpenAI Apps SDK · Supabase + pgvector · NestJS · BullMQ · Kubernetes · Terraform · Grafana / OpenTelemetry

An AI news assistant, live as a ChatGPT app

A LangGraph agent fetches, scores and summarises trending news on demand and streams each result as it is written, rendered through an OpenAI Apps SDK (MCP) server as its own interactive UI inside ChatGPT. It builds a news archive that grows on its own.

  • Runs end to end without depending on any cloud AI: a self-hosted Qwen handles the everyday work and escalates to Gemini only for the harder jobs. Running cost stays close to just electricity, and the whole system, data included, can run on its own hardware.
  • Traced end to end with LangSmith and a Grafana stack (logs, traces, metrics), so every run's steps, tools and errors are inspectable, with prompt versioning and cost tracking in LangSmith.

Stack TypeScript · Python · NestJS · Next.js · LangGraph · LangChain · Ollama · Gemini · MCP / OpenAI Apps SDK · SSE streaming · PostgreSQL · Redis · BullMQ · K3s · Cloudflare · Grafana / Loki / Tempo · Turborepo

Experience

heyData GmbH, Berlin

01/2022 – 07/2025
Senior AI Solutions Engineer10/2024 – 07/2025

Every heyData client has a compliance database of the tools and apps they use, with each tool's data location, data-protection contact, privacy policy and category. A specialist built it by hand, tool by tool, every time a customer onboarded. I replaced that with an AI agent that researches and verifies every field, each answer sourced, and keeps the database up to date.

Senior Platform Engineer10/2023 – 10/2024

Led the company's move from ECS to Kubernetes, learning it myself, and cut production over with no downtime. Packaged it to run self-hosted or outside US clouds. Set it all up as code, and mentored the DevOps team, handing Kubernetes projects over for them to own.

Senior DX and Full-stack Engineer01/2022 – 10/2023

As the first engineer, and its most active contributor that first year, I built the foundation the team still runs on: the shared codebase, the company's first local dev setup, the architecture and boilerplate, and the CI/CD behind its 25+ microservices. I folded its two legacy monoliths, the CRM and the admin app, into one monorepo, helped hire and mentored the engineers, and built the internal tooling the team works in.

Stack TypeScript · Python · NestJS · Nuxt · Rails · Kubernetes · Terraform · AWS (EKS, ECS, ECR, CloudFormation, EventBridge) · Docker · GitHub Actions · OpenAI API · Tavily · PydanticAI

Senior Software Architect at Société Générale Digital Factory, Berlin

11/2019 – 05/2020

Deployed the group's AI and machine-learning models to Azure with GPU (CUDA) support, containerising the models and notebooks to run in production. Added secure company sign-on, and represented the Berlin office in the group's global software-architecture team.

Stack Azure · Docker · Vue.js · TypeScript · GraphQL · Apollo · PostgreSQL · Azure Functions · GitHub Actions

Senior Back-end Architect at GameBook AG, Berlin

12/2018 – 04/2019

As back-end architect, I refactored services, fixed performance bottlenecks, ran data migrations, and improved the containerisation and release flow.

Stack Ramda · Node.js · React · Redux · GraphQL · AWS · Docker · MongoDB · TeamCity

Lead Front-End Developer at Groupe Chantelle, Berlin

08/2017 – 12/2018

Led the front-end team and pulled scattered components and design into one shared library. I packaged the team's tooling (ESLint, Babel, build), brought in TDD and a functional-programming style, and published the shareable logic as open-source packages. Beyond the front-end, I made the case for breaking the Magento monolith into Node.js microservices and built the proof of concept, proxying Magento and peeling services off one at a time from authentication on. The company carried that to a Google Cloud microservices platform.

Stack React · GraphQL · Redux · AWS · Koa · MongoDB · WebPack · Magento

Full-stack JavaScript Engineer at Pixsy GmbH, Berlin

01/2017 – 08/2017

On Pixsy, the reverse-image-search service that finds stolen photos across the web, I worked full-stack on the React and Node monorepo. I re-architected its core workload, the large-scale image finding, scoring and matching, onto a serverless AWS Lambda queue, so it scaled on demand and ran more reliably and far cheaper than the setup it replaced. I also owned the Stripe payments and built the deep Salesforce integration the product relied on, all under behaviour-driven tests.

Stack React · Redux · AWS Lambda · Koa · MongoDB · Stripe · SalesForce · Sentry

Software Architect at Talented Square, CA

08/2015 – 08/2016

Led the front-end performance overhaul of ASDA's online store (Walmart's UK brand). Found where the load time was going and cut key page loads by up to 62%, so customers moved from browsing to basket to checkout faster.

Stack Angular · JavaScript · Backbone · LoopBack · MySQL · MongoDB

Early Career

Founder

NOD studios 01/2013 – 08/2015

This was my own studio. I found my own clients (Les Benjamins, beIN Sports, ALJ Toyota, Mazda, Ülker), designed and built each project end to end, and managed freelancers.

Full-stack web developer

FOX TV Channels 01/2012 – 12/2012

Social apps and micro-sites for Samsung, National Geographic, Nokia, and FOX shows.

Founding Front-end Engineer

projectz 07/2011 – 12/2011

Front-end for the YardimLazim.com startup

Full-stack developer

WPP / JWT 05/2009 – 06/2011

Built CRM, CMS and social web apps, front and back end, for Turkcell, Türk Telekom, Efes, Miller, Eston and TeraBrokers.

Full-stack developer

Saatchi & Saatchi (formerly OnKaplan) 02/2008 – 04/2009

Sole front-end for Türk Telekom's TTNET, plus work for Garanti, Tofas (Fiat) and DOD.

Front-end developer

Tribal DDB Worldwide (formerly Manadigital) 03/2009 – 05/2009

Front-end for Türk Telekom

Designer & front-end developer

Koçak Design 09/2007 – 03/2008

Front-end and design for the Yedinci Kent startup.

Designer & front-end developer

MedyaNova 04/2005 – 08/2007

Front-end and design, including Best Western and other hotel sites.

Education

Computer Programming and TechnologiesKadir Has University

Interests

Music · Swimming · Photography · Sci-Fi · 80s · Design · Travelling