VOLKAN YAVUZ

Product-minded engineering leader & hands-on builder

I lead teams and still write the code. I've architected and scaled high-traffic platforms across fintech, e-commerce, publishing, and legal tech. I care about clean architecture, DevOps automation, and putting AI to work where it moves real numbers.

Los Angeles, CA
email ·
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01 · Work experience

EPCVIP logo

2025-PRESENT

Senior Software Engineer

EPCVIP

Los Angeles, CA · Full-time

PlanetArt logo

2019-2025

Tech Lead – Senior Software Engineer (LLM & Full Stack)

PlanetArt

Los Angeles, CA · Full-time

  • Engineered and deployed an LLM-powered chatbot (Vue.js front-end, Node/Express/PHP microservices on Lambda) that cut customer-service load ~50%; guided an 8-person distributed team, including a React/Symfony/Laravel prompt-management and reporting tool on Pinecone.
  • Architected a unified Laravel/Symfony REST API powering all 4 company apps (iOS/Android), eliminating redundant code and keeping functionality consistent across stores.
  • Drove the launch of 'FreePrints Gifts' (iOS/Android) as Lead Developer, owning API development, deployment, and post-launch optimization on a Laravel backend.
  • Built a Vue (Nuxt) + Laravel/GraphQL call-center CMS on AWS Fargate, and kept 50+ regional sites at 99% uptime with Docker and Jenkins CI/CD.
Internet Brands logo

2018-2019

Lead Software Engineer

Internet Brands

Los Angeles, CA · Full-time

  • Spearheaded the modernization of lawyers.com (~1M monthly users): migrated legacy Angular to Vue.js for a 40% load-speed gain (Google Lighthouse), lifting UX, SEO rankings, and organic traffic.
  • Cut API response times 50%+ by refactoring inefficient code and adding Redis caching, improving scalability.
  • Automated CI/CD with Jenkins (deploys from 15 minutes to under 5) and built a Docker-based dev environment that cut onboarding 70% and ended 'works on my machine' issues.
  • Mentored developers, ran code reviews, and contributed to hiring, raising team efficiency and code quality.
Forbes logo

2012-2017

Senior Platform Engineer

Forbes

Jersey City, NJ · Full-time

  • Designed, developed, and maintained the mission-critical Editorial Tools platform at 99.999% uptime for hundreds of editors, contributors, and producers publishing thousands of articles monthly (custom Zend/PHP, MongoDB, Java API).
  • Licensed the platform to outside publishing companies, validating its scalability and commercial value.
  • Led development of Editorial Tools v2 (AngularJS front-end, Zend Framework 2, Mongo, custom Java API) with continuous delivery via Jenkins.

02 · Capabilities

Leadership

Team LeadershipMentorshipHiringAgile

Backend

PHPLaravelSymfonyNode / ExpressGraphQLPython / Flask

Frontend

ReactNext.jsVue.jsTypeScriptSASS

AI / ML

LLM IntegrationRAGOpenAIClaudeNLP

Cloud & DevOps

AWSLambdaFargateDockerJenkins CI/CD

Data & Performance

MySQLMongoDBPineconeRedisElasticSearch

03 · Education

City University of New York, Hunter College logo

2006-2011

City University of New York, Hunter College

B.S., Computer Science

© 2026 Volkan Yavuz