Cenk Akın

Cenk Akın

Operations, engineered.

I spent eight years leading operations teams of up to 150 people. Now I build the software that helps them do more with less.

Get in touch See my work

For eight years, I led customer operations at Turkcell and KKTCELL.

In Northern Cyprus, I built a national operator's customer operation from zero.

Later I saw how much of the daily work was repetitive. So I learned to automate it.

Today I bring both: an operator's judgment and a developer's toolkit.

Portrait of Cenk Akın

About

I'm an operations leader who builds software. I spent eight years managing customer operations for Turkcell, Türkiye's largest mobile operator, and for KKTCELL in Northern Cyprus. I led teams of up to 150 people.

At KKTCELL, there was no customer operation when I arrived. I designed the customer-service and CRM operation end to end: the call centre, the back office, the IVR, every process and every KPI the business ran on.

Since 2012, I've worked independently: first on remote software projects, then running my own design and marketing agency, UDM Marketing, and now as a freelance Python developer. I build the kind of systems I once wished my teams had. They forecast demand, plan staffing, track inventory and flag problems before a person has to go looking for them.

I live in Vancouver, BC. I'm looking for a role where leading people and building systems are part of the same job.

Experience

From running the floor to building the software behind it.

  1. 2023 – present

    Software Developer

    Freelance

    I build Python automation, data pipelines and LLM-powered tools for clients and for my own products. I design systems end to end, from the database to deployment, and several of my automation services run unattended around the clock.

    • Built scheduled monitoring services that collect data, apply business rules and alert only when a human decision is needed.
    • Tested and evaluated LLM output for accuracy, consistency and bias, and designed prompt and evaluation workflows.

    Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, Docker, GitHub Actions, OpenAI API

  2. 2020 – 2023

    Founder

    UDM Marketing, United States

    I founded and ran a design and marketing agency, responsible for every part of the business.

    • Delivered design, branding and web projects for clients.
    • Ran an e-commerce operation on Amazon Marketplace end to end: product sourcing, inventory planning, order fulfilment and shipping logistics.
    • Handled software and web development in-house.

  3. 2012 – 2020

    Independent Software Developer

    Remote contracts

    I delivered contract software projects remotely, managing my own schedule, client specifications and delivery deadlines.

  4. 2011 – 2012

    Line Manager

    Turkcell Global Bilgi, Türkiye

    Once the KKTCELL operation was up and running on its own, I returned to Türkiye and rejoined Turkcell Global Bilgi to manage the Turkcell Platinum operation against its performance and service targets.

  5. 2010 – 2011

    Line Manager

    KKTCELL (Kuzey Kıbrıs Turkcell), Northern Cyprus

    I built the national mobile operator's customer-service and CRM operation from the ground up.

    • Set up the inbound, outbound and customized-services teams, the call centre and the back office.
    • Designed the IVR, the customer-experience processes and the planning and reporting framework.
    • Defined the KPI framework: service level, average handle time, first-contact resolution, abandonment rate, quality score and customer satisfaction.
    • Improved service response times by 20%.

  6. 2004 – 2010

    Team Leader / Unit Manager

    Turkcell Global Bilgi, Türkiye

    I led the Turkcell Black and Platinum customer operations at the customer-experience arm of Türkiye's largest mobile operator, with teams of up to 150 people.

    • Improved customer satisfaction scores by more than 25%.
    • Reduced operational errors by more than 30% through process redesign.
    • Built reporting that improved performance-tracking accuracy by 35%.
    • Helped design the Privileged Services team and set up the Legal Correspondence teams that work with Türkiye's telecoms regulator.

Selected work

Systems built around real operational problems, from the data model to the API.

Supply chain

Warehouse AI Suite

Tracks SKUs, suppliers, stock and purchase orders in one place, and flags low inventory before it becomes a stockout.

FastAPI, PostgreSQL, Alembic, Docker

View on GitHub

Workforce planning

Demand and Staffing Optimizer

Forecasts demand for every store and product, then turns it into a staffing plan that meets service-level targets.

FastAPI, PostgreSQL, forecasting

View on GitHub

Logistics

Warehouse Management System

Inventory and order management with role-based permissions, so every user sees exactly what their job requires.

FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, JWT

View on GitHub

Data extraction

Receipt OCR and Analytics

Turns paper receipts into structured data and reports spend by vendor, category and period.

Tesseract OCR, FastAPI, PostgreSQL

View on GitHub

Document AI

InsightAI

Ask a question in plain English and get the answer straight from a stack of PDFs.

Vector search, OpenAI, FastAPI

View on GitHub

Real-time analytics

Tradewatch

Monitors market trades in real time and surfaces unusual activity on a live dashboard.

WebSockets, Redis, Plotly Dash

View on GitHub

AI system

Personal AI Assistant

A local-first AI assistant running 24/7 on my own hardware, with source-linked memory, one-command agents and strict spending limits.

Python, LLM agents, encryption

Private, demo on request

Automation

Unattended Monitoring

A suite of scheduled services that watch public data sources, apply business rules and alert by email, Telegram or voice when something changes.

GitHub Actions, Python

Private, demo on request

Capabilities

What I bring to a team from the first week.

Leadership

  • Leading teams of up to 150
  • Hiring and coaching
  • Workforce planning
  • KPI and quality management
  • Process improvement

Engineering

  • Python, FastAPI
  • SQLAlchemy, Pydantic
  • WebSockets, Redis
  • REST API design
  • OAuth2, JWT, RBAC

Data and AI

  • PostgreSQL
  • Pandas, scikit-learn
  • Forecasting
  • OCR, vector search
  • LLM APIs and agents

Delivery

  • Docker, Compose
  • GitHub Actions automation
  • Alembic, Pytest
  • Linux, macOS
  • English, Turkish

Let's talk about your team.

If you're hiring for operations leadership or a technical role close to the business, I'd like to hear from you. I'm based in Vancouver and ready for my next role.

Email me →