VOLKAN YAVUZ

2025-PRESENT

Los Angeles, CA · Full-time

2019-2025

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.

2018-2019

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.

2012-2017

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.