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 ·
phone ·
linkedin ·LinkedIn

01 · Work experience

Fast Loan Advance logo

2025-PRESENT

Director of Engineering

Fast Loan Advance logoFast Loan Advance

Los Angeles, CA · Full-time

  • Lead a 7-engineer team that builds and runs EPCVIP's lending funnel platforms, owning architecture, delivery, and the roadmap across Fast Loan Advance and partner brands.
  • Pitched and proved replacing the legacy PHP funnels with a React platform: my POC lifted revenue 3-12% per funnel in A/B tests, and the executive board approved the migration.
  • Delivered a partner-embeddable funnel product the company had wanted for years: proved it with a POC, then built it with my team, lifting revenue 5-7% and opening a new distribution channel.
  • Architecting the next-generation white-label lending platform on that same product, so the company can launch new brands quickly, with regulatory compliance and automated quality gates built in.
  • Delivered a company-wide A/B testing and feature-flag platform with my team, so every product can test ideas against revenue and roll out only the winners, without a deploy.

Lead Software Engineer

@ EPCVIP
  • Built the company's funnel engine from the ground up in React and TypeScript; it now runs hundreds of funnel variants across the company's lending brands.
  • Architected and prototyped the embeddable funnel runtime, then guided the team that built it out: partners add one script tag and get a branded loan application on their own site.
  • Act as lead developer across EPCVIP's other engineering teams: review code, set technical standards, and own release quality so fewer issues reach production.
  • Built and own the delivery pipeline end to end: CI builds, QA and production deploys through automated pull requests with release notes, giving every release an audit trail.
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

Frontend

ReactNext.jsTypeScriptVue.js / NuxtTailwind CSS

Backend

Node.js / ExpressNestJSPHPLaravelSymfonyREST API Design

Cloud & DevOps

AWSLambdaFargateDynamoDBCloudFrontAmplifyDockerTerraformLinuxCI/CD

AI

LLM IntegrationClaudeOpenAIRAGVector SearchAgentic Tool UseMCP ServersAI-assisted Engineering

Data & Experimentation

MySQLPostgreSQLMongoDBRedisElasticsearchA/B TestingFeature FlagsAnalytics Instrumentation

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