I'm a junior software developer with a Computer Engineering background, focused on backend development, API design, databases, and applied AI systems.
I have experience across backend, web, mobile, database systems, and machine learning projects. My work includes production-style REST APIs, mobile applications, recommendation systems, semantic search pipelines, and real-world software projects developed through academic, internship, and professional experience.
- Computer Engineering graduate from Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus
- Interested in backend engineering, platform engineering, API design, databases, and applied AI
- Experienced with Python, Java, C, C++, C#, JavaScript, TypeScript, SQL, HTML, CSS, and Dart
- Built projects using FastAPI, Node.js, React Native, Flutter, Firebase, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, Docker, and Pytest
- Worked on municipal web platforms, mobile applications, machine learning tasks, recommendation systems, and REST APIs
- Comfortable working with authentication, database design, testing, documentation, and system design concepts
A mobile tourist guide application for Nicosia designed to help users explore historical and cultural landmarks, access essential city services, view walking routes, take personal notes, and receive personalized recommendations.
The system was designed as a full software engineering project with requirements analysis, architectural diagrams, database design, implementation, testing, performance evaluation, and user testing.
Highlights
- Mobile tourist guide application for Nicosia
- Historical place discovery and categorized browsing
- Personalized recommendation system
- Content-based filtering approach
- Firebase Authentication and Firestore integration
- Google Maps API integration for routes and navigation
- OpenWeatherMap API integration
- Essential services information such as pharmacies, restaurants, hotels, exchange offices, hospitals, and transportation details
- Offline accessibility for historical place information
- User notes, liked places, disliked places, favorites, and visited places
- Unit testing, integration testing, system testing, performance testing, user testing, and accessibility testing
- User testing with strong usability results
Tech Stack: Flutter, Dart, Python, Firebase, Firestore, Google Maps API, OpenWeatherMap API, Flask, REST API
A retrieval-first scientific search project that compares BM25, dense retrieval with Sentence Transformers and FAISS, and the Official Stanford ColBERTv2 implementation on the BEIR SciFact benchmark.
The project focuses on the retrieval layer of Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems. It provides an end-to-end pipeline for dataset preparation, passage indexing, retrieval, evaluation, and interactive result comparison through a Streamlit interface.
Highlights
- BM25 lexical retrieval baseline
- Dense retrieval with Sentence Transformers
- FAISS vector search
- Official Stanford ColBERTv2 integration
- BEIR SciFact benchmark
- Retrieval evaluation reports
- Streamlit interface for result comparison
- RAG-oriented retrieval pipeline
- Comparison between lexical, dense, and late-interaction retrieval approaches
Tech Stack: Python, FAISS, Sentence Transformers, ColBERTv2, Streamlit, BEIR SciFact
A production-style support ticket management REST API with role-based access control, ticket workflows, internal comments, audit history, filtering, pagination, Docker support, and automated tests.
Highlights
- JWT authentication
- User/Admin authorization
- Ticket status workflow
- Assignment validation
- Internal admin comments
- Ticket history and audit log
- Filtering, search, sorting, and pagination
- PostgreSQL database with Alembic migrations
- Dockerized local development
- Automated test coverage with Pytest
Tech Stack: FastAPI, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, Alembic, JWT, Docker, Pytest
A production-style uptime monitoring REST API that allows users to register URLs, run HTTP checks, track response times, detect downtime, and manage incidents.
Highlights
- URL monitor management
- Manual HTTP checks with HTTPX
- UP / DOWN / DEGRADED / UNKNOWN status classification
- Incident opening, incrementing, and resolution
- Optional in-process scheduler
- Permission-aware statistics
- Filtering, sorting, search, and pagination
- PostgreSQL persistence
- Docker and automated tests
Tech Stack: FastAPI, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, HTTPX, Docker, Pytest
A backend system for tracking companies, contacts, job applications, interviews, notes, status history, and job-search analytics.
Highlights
- Company and contact management
- Job application pipeline tracking
- Validated application status workflow
- Automatic status history
- Interview scheduling and tracking
- Application notes
- Analytics and statistics
- Ownership-aware user/admin authorization
- Filtering, sorting, search, and pagination
- PostgreSQL database with Alembic migrations
- Docker support and automated tests
Tech Stack: FastAPI, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, Alembic, JWT, Docker, Pytest
A reusable FastAPI backend template designed to quickly generate production-style API projects with authentication, database support, testing, Docker, and CI configuration.
Highlights
- JWT authentication and user roles
- PostgreSQL and SQLAlchemy setup
- Alembic migrations
- Repository/service architecture
- Global error handling
- Pagination utilities
- Docker Compose support
- GitHub Actions CI
- Ruff, mypy, and pytest configuration
- Project generation helper script
Tech Stack: FastAPI, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, Alembic, Docker, Pytest, GitHub Actions
A mobile matchmaking application using React Native and Node.js, with authentication, real-time chat, user profiles, matching logic, and API documentation.
Highlights
- React Native mobile frontend
- Node.js backend
- Firebase integration
- User authentication
- Real-time chat
- Profile management
- Matching and compatibility logic
- Swagger UI API documentation
Tech Stack: Node.js, React Native, Firebase, Swagger UI
Worked on a municipal web platform supporting daily operations for thousands of active users. Contributed to feature development, performance improvement, technical issue resolution, and collaboration with cross-functional teams.
Key Areas
- Web platform development
- Backend and database-related tasks
- Feature enhancement
- Performance optimization
- Debugging and issue resolution
- Cross-functional collaboration
Contributed to a municipal services platform with a focus on web development. Supported research and early implementation steps for an LLM-based solution and prepared documentation around database migration alternatives.
Key Areas
- Web development
- LLM-related research
- Database migration research
- Technical documentation
- Software maintenance support
Worked on machine learning and web development tasks. Built predictive models, prepared documentation, and helped coordinate intern work.
Key Areas
- Machine learning model development
- Neural network experiments
- Predictive modeling with datasets such as Boston Housing and Titanic
- Web development exposure
- Documentation and reproducibility
- Team coordination
B.E. Computer Engineering
Coursework and project experience included:
- Software Engineering
- Database Systems
- Algorithms
- Data Structures
- Machine Learning
- Web Development
- Mobile Application Development
- System Design
- Software Testing
- Computer Architecture fundamentals
- Object-Oriented Programming
- API Design and Integration
- Team-based software development projects
- Backend APIs
- Database-driven applications
- Authentication and authorization systems
- Clean and maintainable service architecture
- API documentation
- Automated testing
- Dockerized development environments
- Search and retrieval systems
- Recommendation systems
- Applied AI and LLM-based tools
- Mobile application backends
- Turkish — Native
- English — Fluent
- German — Intermediate
- French — Beginner
- Email: akinunal121@gmail.com
- GitHub: github.com/Akin-Unal
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/akin-unal