Arda Karaduman

AI Platform & Backend Systems Architect

Chofu, TokyoTokyo since 2004 · 22 years9 roles · 2 degreesTurkish (Native), English (Near Native), Japanese (Business)arda.tr

About Me

I build backend and platform systems where production software, cloud infrastructure, and AI agents meet. At Veltra, I work across Python, Go, and Node services on AWS, including Model Context Protocol integrations and internal AI tooling.

Before that, Go/Ruby/Python systems across logistics, fintech, medical IT, and games — shipped and operated in Tokyo since 2004. I work as a bridge between overseas and Japan teams, in English and Japanese.

Work Experience

9 entries · 2011–2026

Systems Architect

2024 - Present
Veltra (Tokyo, Remote)

Systems architect at Veltra working across Python, Go, and Node services and AWS infrastructure, including MCP services that expose the travel-activity catalog to AI assistants and internal analytics tools.

  • Built a stateless 'activity search' MCP server compatible with Claude and OpenAI app hosts — approved by Anthropic and publicly listed in the Claude connector directory — plus internal Google Analytics and AWS read-only MCP tools.
  • Migrated image delivery from a paid CDN to a self-developed solution on AWS CloudFront.
  • General application and infrastructure architecture and planning across Python, Go and Node services, deployed on AWS ECS with Terraform and GitHub Actions CI/CD.
  • Acted as bridge engineer between the overseas and Japan teams, and led MCP integration of legacy systems.

Senior Developer

2020 - 2023
Gaussy (Tokyo, Remote)

Senior backend engineer and top-3 author on the Go (Echo/GORM) API behind WareX, a production logistics 'warehouse-exchange' SaaS — owning core domain verticals and the team's integration-test harness.

  • Senior backend engineer and a top-3 author on the Go (Echo / GORM) API of WareX, a production logistics 'warehouse-exchange' SaaS (the company incorporated as Gaussy in 2022).
  • Owned the warehouse (geo + license-filtered search), contract, workspace, document and price-specification resource verticals end-to-end — data models, REST resources and migrations.
  • Built role-based access-control middleware and server-side mass-assignment guards, with systematic request validation and parameterized queries.
  • Owned a large share of the integration-test suite, including the shared test harness the rest of the team's API tests run on.
  • Database migration and seeding (goose) and Bugsnag error reporting; third-party integrations including Hubspot and Mailgun.
  • Deployed on Google Kubernetes Engine via CircleCI with SOPS-managed secrets; some frontend work on the Vue/Nuxt admin and customer portals.

Senior Developer

2018 - 2020
Robotfund (Tokyo, Hybrid)

Lead developer of a LINE-bot fintech platform (Rails 5 + React) and a race-free Go media/TTS caching service for a Tokyo robo-advisory startup.

  • Lead author of a multi-tenant Rails 5 JSON:API + React platform delivering fund and bond analytics (net-asset-value graphs, factor analysis) to users as LINE Flex Messages and generated charts.
  • Implemented LINE webhook HMAC signature verification, strong-parameter authorization across all controllers, and bcrypt-secured authentication.
  • Built a solo Go service fronting a pool of text-to-speech servers — race-free by design (channel-owned state), with PCM-to-MP3 transcoding, content-digest caching and per-host load distribution, validated with `go test -race` in CI.
  • Built a Go AWS Lambda ingesting daily Reuters DataScope Select market data into an idempotent DynamoDB/S3 state machine, and extracted an MIT-licensed Reuters DSS Go client library.
  • Mature CI/CD: CircleCI build-and-deploy with Docker images pushed to AWS ECR and tag-gated releases.

Senior Development Engineer

2014 - 2018
Allm Inc (Tokyo, Onsite)

Solo/lead builder across two product lines at a medical-IT and retail-analytics company — an end-to-end IoT/edge people-analytics product and a versioned clinical stroke/cardiac triage API.

  • Sole author of an end-to-end Go daemon for in-store edge devices (amd64 and ARM) — staff counting via BLE beacons, repeat-customer counting via WiFi sniffing, and face recognition — with a web configuration UI.
  • Built its full over-the-air update pipeline: cross-compiled amd64/armhf, built signed Debian packages, pulled build secrets from HashiCorp Vault, GPG-signed releases, and published to an S3 apt repository with testing/release channels.
  • Lead author of a FAST-ED stroke/cardiac triage API for hospitals (Ruby/Grape + GraphQL + Pundit) with API versioning, HMAC request signing, and bcrypt auth with login lockout and rotating keys.
  • Co-built the triage admin SPA (Vue 2 + Apollo) deployed to AWS S3/CloudFront, and contributed sensor-vendor drivers to a multi-tenant Go ingestion daemon.
  • Extracted reusable Go libraries to my own namespace; CI/CD with GitLab CI and Docker.

Developer

2014
Aiming Inc (Tokyo, Onsite, Contract)

Backend engineer on the live Ruby/Padrino backend of a published mobile MMORPG (Japan + Korea), independently owning several gameplay feature verticals.

  • Backend engineer on the live Ruby/Padrino backend of 'Griffon', a published mobile MMORPG (Japan + Korea/Naver) in a ~60-engineer codebase.
  • Independently owned the achievements, friendship, reward-distribution and guild-battle matchmaking systems end-to-end — data model, typed-RPC service, master-data importer, migrations and tests.
  • Designed database-level idempotency via unique indexes and wrapped multi-step in-game economy mutations in transactions.
  • Built a structurally mass-assignment-free typed-RPC API with server-side authorization, validated by branch-complete RSpec suites.
  • Worked in an Agile environment with tight deadlines on a game with thousands of daily active users.

Dev Ops

2012 - 2014
Kii Inc (Tokyo, Onsite)

Owned the usage-metering and billing pipeline for a mobile Backend-as-a-Service platform, plus the API-gateway and Puppet-based deployment around it — and wrote the team's first Go code.

  • Co-led (primary author) a Ruby usage-metering and billing batch for a mobile Backend-as-a-Service platform — aggregated per-app API/storage/analytics usage from a 3scale API gateway, computed plan overages, and reported billable usage to Zuora with idempotent create-or-update reconciliation.
  • Tested with RSpec, Minitest and serverspec; packaged as an Omnibus/RPM cron job.
  • Built and operated the Varnish + 3scale API-gateway metering layer and the Puppet modules (VCL/Puppet) that deployed the billing and gateway stack.
  • Payment integration via Zuora and PayPal; usage tracking and logging with 3scale, Varnish and fluentd.
  • Developer-portal development (Ruby on Rails, Backbone.js) and Cloud Code maintenance (Node.js); wrote the team's first Go code (an early Kii Go SDK).
  • Various automation: reports and AWS resource tuning in Ruby/Bash with Puppet.

Dev Ops

2011 - 2012
Mobilous Inc (Tokyo, Onsite)

Sole build/release and cloud-infrastructure engineer for a white-label no-code mobile-app platform — the native build pipeline, S3 release delivery, and Puppet/Vagrant provisioning.

  • Sole build-and-release / cloud-infrastructure engineer for AppExe, a white-label no-code mobile-app builder that generated native iOS/Android apps.
  • Built the on-demand native build service that turned no-code app definitions into signed native APKs (Ruby/Sinatra, with a Python predecessor).
  • Authored full server-stack provisioning with Puppet + Vagrant (dual VirtualBox/AWS): GlassFish, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, log shipping and firewall, plus the Android/iOS build, release and backup scripts.
  • Built a per-customer AWS account/instance activation control plane and a versioned S3 release-delivery tool.
  • Automated AWS account signup end-to-end with a Selenium-driven pipeline, and ran the team's git server.
  • Designed scalable EC2 infrastructure with monitoring and auto-scaling.

Contract Developer

July 2021 - July 2022
Ryde Inc (Tokyo, Remote - Part Time)

Part-time backend (and some frontend) development for Ryde's mobile and web services using Ruby on Rails and GraphQL.

  • Backend development for Ryde services (Mobile and Web) using Ruby on Rails and GraphQL.
  • Some frontend development (Admin site, Ruby on Rails, React).

Contract Developer

2017 - 2019
Iron.io (US, Remote - Part Time)

Part-time open-source contributor to IronFunctions, one of the first Docker-based serverless (FaaS) platforms — its web UI and engine.

  • Part-time open-source contributor to IronFunctions, an early Docker-based serverless (FaaS) platform (later the Fn Project).
  • Contributed to and helped maintain the IronFunctions web UI (Express + Vue) as a top-3 author — added JWT authentication and the CI/CD Docker release pipeline.
  • Contributed features and fixes to the Go FaaS engine, including a payload-as-stdin runner and a dependency-management migration.
  • Wrote example serverless functions in Go, Node and Ruby to dogfood the platform.

Skills

10 entries
  • Proficient in Go, Ruby, and Python. Comfortable picking up new languages quickly.
  • AI/LLM integration — working with the Anthropic and Gemini APIs, Model Context Protocol (MCP) tooling, and TTS engines (Edge TTS, Coqui).
  • Extensive experience with AWS & GCP. Hands on with EC2, S3, DynamoDB, SES, IAM, Route53, Cloud Run, Firebase.
  • Backend development with Node.js/Express and Go/Echo. Experience designing RESTful and GraphQL APIs for web and mobile.
  • Docker containerization and CI/CD. Early adopter of continuous integration and deployment practices.
  • Frontend development with React, Vue, and Astro. Tailwind CSS across all projects.
  • Browser automation and web scraping with Playwright and go-rod.
  • Arch Linux (CachyOS) & Emacs user. Very comfortable in unix environments and shell scripting.
  • Experience with TDD, BDD, Agile and GitHub driven development.
  • AI-accelerated development with strong regression discipline — using LLMs to ship quickly while preserving tests, reviewability, and production safety.

Projects

10 entries

Travel Activity MCP Services

Built Veltra MCP services that expose the travel-activity catalog to Claude and ChatGPT apps, along with internal analytics tooling; the activity-search connector is live in Anthropic's public Claude connector directory.

StackPython, FastAPI, Model Context Protocol, Terraform, AWS ECS

WareX — Logistics SaaS API

Senior backend engineer and top-3 author on the Go API of WareX, a production logistics 'warehouse-exchange' SaaS at Gaussy — owned the warehouse, contract, workspace, document and pricing verticals plus the team's integration-test harness.

StackGo, Echo, GORM, MySQL, JWT/RBAC, Minio/S3, GKE, CircleCI

golem — LINE-bot Fund Analytics

Lead author of a multi-tenant Rails 5 + React platform that delivers fund and bond analytics (net-asset-value graphs, factor analysis) to users as LINE Flex Messages and generated charts, with HMAC webhook verification, at Robotfund.

StackRuby on Rails 5, React, JSON:API, LINE Messaging API, gnuplot

bumblebee — Race-free TTS Caching Service

Solo Go service fronting a pool of text-to-speech servers — race-free by design (channel-owned state), with PCM-to-MP3 transcoding, content-digest caching and per-host load distribution, verified with `go test -race`, at Robotfund.

StackGo, CSP concurrency, LAME (PCM→MP3), Docker, AWS

Reuters Market-Data Pipeline

Solo Go AWS Lambda that ingests daily Reuters DataScope Select market data into an idempotent DynamoDB/S3 state machine, built on an extracted MIT-licensed Reuters DSS Go client library, at Robotfund.

StackGo, AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, S3, Reuters DataScope Select

github.com/c0ze/dss_reuters_go

FupIntuition — IoT/Edge People Analytics

Sole author of an end-to-end Go daemon for in-store edge devices — staff counting via BLE, repeat-customer counting via WiFi, and face recognition — with a web UI and a full signed over-the-air update pipeline, at Allm.

StackGo (amd64 + ARM), BLE beacons, WiFi sniffing, HashiCorp Vault, GPG-signed OTA, S3 apt repo

FAST-ED Clinical Triage API

Lead author of a versioned stroke/cardiac triage API for hospitals (Grape + GraphQL + Pundit) with HMAC request signing and hardened authentication, plus its Vue 2 + Apollo admin SPA, at Allm.

StackRuby, Grape, GraphQL, Pundit, HMAC, bcrypt

Griffon — Mobile MMORPG Backend

Backend engineer on the live Ruby/Padrino backend of the published mobile MMORPG 'Griffon' (幻塔戦記グリフォン, Japan + Korea) — independently owned the achievements, friendship, reward-distribution and guild-battle matchmaking systems with database-level idempotency, at Aiming.

StackRuby, Padrino, ActiveRecord, MySQL, Resque, RSpec

IronFunctions — Open-source Serverless Platform

Open-source contributor to IronFunctions, an early Docker-based FaaS platform (later the Fn Project) — added JWT auth and the CI/CD release pipeline to its web UI and contributed engine features such as a payload-as-stdin runner, at iron.io.

StackGo, Docker, Vue, Express, JWT, CircleCI

github.com/iron-io/functions

This Résumé Site

A static, multilingual (EN/JA/TR) résumé site prerendered to HTML, generating language-specific PDF and DOCX résumés at build time from a single content source, deployed to GitHub Pages.

StackReScript, React, Vite, Tailwind CSS, PDFKit, docx

github.com/c0ze/resume

Education

2 entries · 2000–2011

Master of Science

2006 - 2011
Keio University

Graduate research at the Amano Laboratory (computer architecture / embedded systems / VLSI). Completed the Master's in 2008 and continued PhD-level research through 2011 — four first-author peer-reviewed papers on the "Echo instruction," a hardware code-compression technique implemented in Verilog on a MIPS R3000 core and synthesized to 90nm silicon — before moving to industry.

Master's thesis

Selected Papers:

  • 2011Cache Implementation for Echo Instructions on an Embedded Processor (IPSJ Transactions on System LSI Design Methodology, T-SLDM)
  • 2009Code Compression with Split Echo Instructions (IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems)
  • 2009Design and Implementation of Echo Instructions for Embedded Processors (Embedded World Conference, Nuremberg, Germany)

Bachelor of Science

2000 - 2004
Istanbul Bilgi University

Dissertation on parallel simulation of quantum circuits on Linux clusters (MPI) — implementing the QFT, Grover and Shor algorithms with a distributed state-vector simulator.

Dissertation

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