Kaan Mert Koc

Senior Full-Stack Engineer · Istanbul → New York
Summary

Senior full-stack engineer delivering SEO-first SSR/SSG web apps, high-traffic RESTful APIs, and mobile apps with TypeScript, Next.js, React Native, Expo EAS, Strapi, Firebase, and Go. Delivered 1.4M+ visits, 3.0M pageviews, 2.0M requests/month (p95 latency 96ms), and 280K+ TRY GMV. Core Web Vitals green; INP under 200ms on key templates.

Experience
Ablefy.io GmbHDec 2025 – Present
Full Stack Developer · Berlin, Germany
  • Core engineer on a multi-tenant community SaaS: 250+ commits, 110K+ LOC in 7 months (Next.js App Router, React 19, tRPC, Prisma/PostgreSQL, Clerk, Inngest)
  • Built community platform core to Open Beta launch: rooms, posts, membership lifecycle (invites, approvals, roles, archive/removal), pinning, permissions, moderation, full en/de i18n
  • Live commerce: webinars + live shopping with realtime product overlays, drag-and-drop layer editor, in-stream checkout, viewer presence
  • Realtime messaging: shipped direct messaging end-to-end; live session chat with scoped Ably tokens, server-side publish, persisted history, host moderation modes
  • AI authoring: selection-based AI edits, AI review popover, prompt assist, AI-seeded community onboarding
  • Notifications and email: in-app deep links, locale-aware (en/de) transactional emails, weekly digest engine (per-community cron fan-out, ranking queries, branded templates, opt-out preferences)
  • Identity: cross-platform SSO bridge to parent commerce platform (Clerk), user sync and external-ID backfill
  • Hardening: closed cross-tenant authorization gaps, cleared 74/76 Dependabot alerts (all 32 highs); SEO foundation (robots.txt fix, sitemaps, canonical URLs, OG images)
  • Quality/DevEx: Playwright E2E stabilization, Sentry-to-Jira ticket automation, staging CI, Dockerized local setup; Next.js 16, React 19, rich-text editor major upgrades
Cosmopolitan TurkeyAug 2024 – Aug 2025
Chief Technology Officer (Hands-on Senior Full-Stack & DevOps)
  • Sole engineer: 1.4M visits, 3.0M pageviews in 12 months (zero marketing budget)
  • SEO: JSON-LD, AI metadata (gpt-4o-mini/Strapi), 1.01M clicks, 15.9M impressions
  • Architecture: Next.js SSR (Vercel/Coolify), custom Strapi CMS, block-based page builder
  • Performance: Caching/revalidation, SSR TTFB 100ms/p95 500ms, zero downtime, CWV green
  • Cosmo Quiz API: 1.3M solves/5 months, 10M+ events, 2.0M requests/month, Bun/Hono/TypeScript/Drizzle/SQLite, 48ms/p95 96ms, 99.9% uptime
  • Search: Meilisearch AI semantic "Similar Documents" (20 per page)
  • Subscribe: SSR gating, iyzico router (20+ endpoints), magazine pipeline, Shopify, 170 subscriptions
  • Shop: Shopify SSR, webhook revalidation, 1,305 orders, 280K TRY revenue
  • Auth/Admin: cross-domain SSO (NextAuth), React/Vite/TanStack admin with RBAC/analytics
  • CI/CD: GitHub Actions, E2E tests, observability/alerting
Aposto!Sep 2021 – Apr 2025
Mobile, Web, Full-Stack Engineer · Istanbul, Turkey
  • Aposto! mobile app (50+ screens): offline podcast, read list, Turkish/English, dark/light modes, TestFlight/Play Console
  • 100K+ downloads, 3.05M App Store impressions, Apple featured (2022), Top 3 Turkey (Media)
  • aposto.com (Next.js 12/Redux): inbox, reading, authors, authentication, follow/unfollow, share
  • About/Newsletters subdomains (Next.js 13 App Router), Lighthouse 98
  • Premium subscriptions (Stripe): paywall, card management, shared TypeScript KV library
  • Premium Stories: Go (chi)/SQLite, Cloudflare-cached, 100K requests/month
  • Admin modernization: CRA/React 16 → Bun/Vite/React Router, TTS editor (ElevenLabs)
  • Quality: crash monitoring, E2E paywall tests
  • Impact: 100K+ monthly visitors, 1.5M+ users, 100K+ USD revenue, ~10 team
Sober DigitalMar 2024 – Feb 2025
Lead Full-Stack Engineer · Istanbul, Turkey
  • Shop, editorial site and festival app for a biannual print magazine; 50K+ users, 600K+ TRY GMV
  • Next.js 14 SSR e-commerce (Firebase Functions/Firestore, 20+ endpoints, iyzico), custom admin (merch/categories/coupons)
  • Festival inventory: QR-coded SKUs, isolated stock pools
  • Strapi CMS (self-hosted): issue > sections > content modeling, unified web/mobile
  • Expo app: Feed, Events (iyzico ticketing, QR check-in), Explore (mini-games, Spotify), Shop, Perks
  • Auth/Growth: NextAuth (web), soft login/registration walls
  • Media/Performance: Bunny CDN, video carousel, GIF galleries
  • Ops: Vercel, VPS Strapi, Firebase backend, ~50 USD/month
  • Observability: Firestore/Functions dashboards/alerting
  • "Sober People" SEO catalog (50+ profiles)
UrWordAug 2022 – Dec 2023
CTO · New York, USA
  • Sole developer (NYC integrity/trust platform): backend, database, mobile app, admin site
  • 180+ TestFlight builds; Firestore (10K+ documents, security rules)
  • Firebase Functions: 12 RESTful endpoints, 150 services (pacts, connections, data sharing, notifications, moderation, analytics)
  • Expo/React Native/TypeScript/Redux app (50+ screens, 1,000+ components), admin dashboard
Skills
Frontend
React, Next.js (App Router, SSR, SSG, ISR), TypeScript, TanStack Query, Redux, Zustand, CSS-in-JS, a11y, CWV
Mobile
React Native, Expo EAS, in-app purchases, deep links, push notifications (FCM), TestFlight, Play Console
Backend
Node.js, Bun, Go (chi), Hono, RESTful APIs, microservices, webhooks, Firebase Functions, Firestore, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Drizzle ORM
Infrastructure
Docker, Docker Compose, Vercel, VPS, Nginx, Coolify, GitHub Actions, CI/CD, CDN/caching, GCP
CMS/Search
Strapi (self-hosted), Meilisearch
Auth/Security
NextAuth, OAuth 2.0, JWT, SSO, RBAC, rate limiting, feature flags
Commerce/Payments
Shopify, Stripe, iyzico
Media/Storage/CDN
Bunny CDN, Cloudflare R2
Analytics/SEO
Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Plausible, JSON-LD, technical SEO
Observability/Testing
Sentry, Dozzle, Firebase Crashlytics, Google Cloud Monitoring/Logging, Jest, Vitest
Open Source
  • 4-year GitHub contributor: 11K+ contributions (2022-2025)
  • iyzico-subscription-ts: Modern TypeScript SDK for Iyzico Subscription API, cross-platform compatible (Node.js, Bun, Deno, browsers, serverless), zero dependencies, full TypeScript support
Awards

Solana Ideathon 2nd place; Solana Presentation 3rd place; Solana HyperDrive Global Hackathon invitee

Education
  • Touro University, New York — M.S. Artificial Intelligence, started 2026
  • MEF University, Istanbul — B.Sc. Computer Engineering, 2023IAESTE member; algorithm competition finalist
  • UIST “St. Paul the Apostle”, Ohrid — 2021iOS “Code Tracker” app (GitHub auth, full grade)