Utku Birkan

• Drove the consolidation of a microservice platform based on a code-level dependency analysis, folding multiple microservices into a single ASP.NET Core service and retiring the redundant deployments.
• Flattened the layered architecture of several microservices into vertical slices with component tests using Testcontainers, removing over 50,000 lines of code while preserving behavior.
• Delivered large-scale refactors through agent-driven development with Claude Code and GitHub Copilot, steering the work with architecture decision records, specs and implementation plans.
• Modernized shared libraries and standardized HTTP resilience across services.
• Worked with MongoDB, Kafka on Redpanda, and GitOps deployments of Docker containers to Azure Kubernetes Service using Argo CD.

• Worked within a Scrum team using the SAFe Framework to develop a full stack solution for managing electric grid protection data, starting from the initial system architecture design phase to the delivery of the product.
• Engaged with internal and external stakeholders to specify and refine product requirements.
• Developed event-driven microservices in C# using ASP.NET Core, working with a RabbitMQ event broker using MQTT and AMQP protocols and CloudEvents payloads.
• Managed multi-tenant database migrations for both schema and critical data using PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server and EF Core.
• Used the Keycloak identity provider and developed a permissions management library using a hybrid Entity-Based and Role-Based access control schema.
• Refactored Kubernetes deployments to use Gateway APIs, cert-manager, and Helm charts with an OCI registry. Refactored deployment pipelines running on GitLab CI/CD to achieve 70% reduction in execution times.
• Managed development environment deployments using Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service.
• Implemented OpenTelemetry metrics, logs and traces on the backend services and non-production clusters. Integrated non-production telemetry into the company-wide ELK stack built on OpenSearch.
• Led the migration of a legacy Python service to ASP.NET Core, leveraging AI-assisted development with GitHub Copilot and Claude Code, resulting in a 400% performance increase and 50% reduction in the codebase size.
• Collaborated with external teams on developing shared libraries using C++. Used ASP.NET Core to expose critical functionality as gRPC services to our internal services.
• Maintained an Angular frontend application written in TypeScript. Maintenance efforts included updating all the services to v21, using a Vite based build pipeline, and modernizing core libraries with new signal based APIs.

• Worked on containerization and closed-network edge delivery of a full-stack application.
• Built a CI/CD pipeline integrating containerization, SBOM generation with CycloneDX, CVE scanning with Trivy, and threat/risk analysis. Used JFrog Artifactory and GitLab as OCI registries.

• Investigated possible simulation implementations of Moore-Crutchfield quantum finite automata on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers.
• Studied the class of non-trivial languages that can be recognized by quantum finite automata.
• Implemented a custom transpiler stage to achieve 20% faster quantum circuit execution.
• Simulated automaton executions on hardware with varied qubit topologies using Qiskit.

Graduation project: aMoment

• Worked within a team to develop a mobile app for easily sharing photographs taken during an event.
• Developed the backend server using FastAPI to manage database operations, authentication and running image recognition on photographs.
• Implemented mobile authentication using Firebase.
• Deployed our application to Google Cloud Run and Google Pub/Sub messaging service.

• Awarded the undergraduate scholarship by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK).
• Graduation thesis: A Literature Review on Measurement Based Quantum Computing.
• Volunteered for the Quantum Computing Society as an instructor and an organizer.