Hi, I'm Talha Yildirim

Software
Engineer

Self driven developer, passionate about backend engineering, selfhosting/homelabs, and digital privacy. A strong believer in the Free Software Movement and an outdoors enjoyer. Learn more about me!

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postgresql Postgresql
nodejs Nodejs
c C
c++ C++
nginx Nginx
kubernetes Kubernetes
docker Docker
rust Rust
golang Golang
aws Aws
mysql Mysql
linux Linux
bash Bash
git Git
javaScript JavaScript
tailwindcss Tailwindcss
python Python
postgresql Postgresql
nodejs Nodejs
c C
c++ C++
nginx Nginx
kubernetes Kubernetes
docker Docker
rust Rust
golang Golang
aws Aws
mysql Mysql
linux Linux
bash Bash
git Git
javaScript JavaScript
tailwindcss Tailwindcss
python Python
postgresql Postgresql
nodejs Nodejs
c C
c++ C++
nginx Nginx
kubernetes Kubernetes
docker Docker
rust Rust
golang Golang
aws Aws
mysql Mysql
linux Linux
bash Bash
git Git
javaScript JavaScript
tailwindcss Tailwindcss
python Python

What I do?

  • Backend Engineering
    • Authentication and authorization systems (e.g., OAuth, JWT)
    • RESTful API development and integration
    • Performance optimization and scalability solutions
  • Cloud Deployment
    • Containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, etc)
    • CI/CD pipeline implementation and automation (GitHub Actions)
    • Infrastructure setup and management (AWS and self hosting)
  • Sunshine and Rainbows
    • Collaborative and joyful personality
    • Enjoy a plethora of activites (rock climbing, reading, camping, etc)
    • Very funny (trust me)

Where I've been

Experience

Software Engineer Intern @ OpenText

May 2026 – Present

Waterloo, ON

  • Deploying a Rust log-parsing binary on AWS Lambda, triggered via S3 events, reducing LLM cold start latency from 36 min to 23s with a projected $7k/month in cloud savings
Rust AWS Lambda S3

Software Engineer Intern @ Sun Life

Jan 2025 – Apr 2025

Toronto, ON

  • Implemented Kubernetes pod and resource quotas across namespaces using Helm and Kustomize, reducing compute costs and overprovisioning by 30%
  • Setup infrastructure and IAM roles for ECR lifecycle policies using Terraform, saving $1000/month in server costs
  • Built a containerized Go consumer ingesting Snyk vulnerability findings from a Kafka event stream, enforcing security gates that block vulnerable merges in 500+ PRs/month
Kubernetes Helm Terraform Go Kafka

ML Infrastructure Engineer @ WAT.ai

Sept 2023 – Feb 2025

Waterloo, ON

  • Improved data pipeline efficiency by 40% via GitHub Actions by automating preprocessing of raw data into vectorized format using Python and Pandas
  • Exposed wildfire model as a REST API via AWS API Gateway and Lambda, returning zone-level burn forecasts for 36 regions
Python Pandas AWS GitHub Actions

Platform Engineer Intern @ Questrade

Jan 2024 – Apr 2024

Toronto, ON

  • Orchestrated DAGs in Apache Airflow via GCP Composer to validate data integrity between staging and production BigQuery datasets nightly, reducing data quality issues by 60%
  • Deployed a Kafka cluster to a production environment through Harness, using Kubernetes, Helm, and Makefiles
  • Developed an RBAC system using Django REST API endpoints and a CLI tool, enhancing system security and streamlining user role management
Airflow GCP BigQuery Kafka Django

Software Engineer Intern @ Royal Bank of Canada

May 2023 – Aug 2023

Toronto, ON

  • Spearheaded a project to clone and manage AWS Terraform policies by building CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins, with automated testing for security compliance
  • Wrote a Bash script that scrapes SCCM, dispatching weekly server health digests over SMTP, reducing task time by 90%
Terraform Jenkins AWS Bash

My work

Projects

CUDA CNN Accelerator

Solo Contributer (Rust)

Chess Engine

Contributor (C++)

Package Manager

Solo Contributer (Rust)

Parallel Logram

Solo Contributer (Rust)
More projects on