Kayra Alat

Web Engineer

Passionate engineer experienced in bringing products to life and solving complex customer problems with impactful cutting edge technologies.


Key Skills

  • Python (Django, Flask, Scrapy)
  • JS (React)
  • Dev-ops (AWS, Docker, bash)
  • Graphic Design (Prototyping)

Experience

Solution Architect - Tractable

For this role I travelled to various countries and met with new/potential customers to understand how we could most effectively leverage our products to meet their needs. I also built engineering teams from the ground up, mentored engineers, and developed an effective working culture between the in-house technical and business teams.

The main skills that were responsible for my success in this role were stakeholder management and system design. As it was a start up, I was also responsible for engineering delivery, and primarily worked with Python (Flask and proprietary technologies), Typescript (React), SQL, Kafka, and various AWS services.

I consider my biggest achievement at Tractable to be architecting and building a custom solution with very limited engineering capacity as a proof of concept for a potential customer. This solution went on to win Tractable’s largest contract at the time (more than double the previous) in the newly entered region of Japan.

(Tractable offers an AI solution that identifies when car repair bodyshops are over-charging for a repair to save the time and money of car insurance companies.)

Lead Web Engineer - Whitespace Ventures

During my time at Whitespace Ventures, I had two main responsibilities. The first was to assist enterprise companies in assimilating new teams after acquiring start ups, and the second was to architect and build various internal tools.

The main skills that were responsible for my success in this role were system design, hiring, and mentoring. When building the internal tools I used Python (GQL and proprietary technologies), Javascript (React), SQL, and various AWS services.

I consider my biggest achievement at Whitespace to be the creation of a custom web framework in Python that easily allowed the use of both GraphQL and HTTP to be used as a base for all future applications. This sped up development drastically and is still being used to this day.

(Whitespace Ventures works with various enterprise and start-up companies and provides expertise to help them build and implement complex technical solutions.)

Lead Web Engineer - Custom

I lead the backend engineering effort for the Custom web application. This involved architecting and building the application and it's various features, and managing remote engineers.

The main skills that were responsible for my success in this role were remote line management, system design, and project management. For the web engineering aspect of the role I used Python (Flask, Scrapy, NLTK) to build the API, retail store scrapers, and NLP product identifier, SQL for data management, and I maintained the infrastructure by working with various AWS services.

I consider my biggest achievement at Custom to be the creation of an NLP engine from scratch. It enabled the application to identify the clothing product a fashion influencer was talking about in their social media post, locate it in our database, and present it to the user for purchase. This required me to understand linguistic rules more deeply and hire/manage remote developers to deliver a quality solution quickly under a limited budget.

(Custom was a fashion search engine and social media aggregation web application that allowed users to more easily find clothes relevant to them.)

Freelance and Contract Work - Various

During this time in my career I worked with agencies to develop applications and features for their clients. I focused on delivering high quality work quickly and consistently.

I worked with C# (.net MVP), PHP (Drupal), and Python (Flask). Delivering well also relied on stakeholder management, specifically this meant communicating technical information with project managers in a way that enabled them to effectively build relationships with their clients.

My biggest achievement during this time was delivering a feature that was so well received by the client that they went on to request the agency who contracted me to rebuild their entire site.

Personal Projects

Tigin

Tigin is a company I founded as a side project to explore the process of bringing an idea to market without traditional investment. The focus is putting an idea through four stages: market research, MVP development, marketing, and feedback based iteration. I’m currently building an e-sports video game guide platform.

metuo.io

Metuo is a photography portfolio I built using AWS (EC2, RDS, S3) and Docker for hosting, Python/Flask and SQL for the back-end API, and JS/React for the front-end client. An interesting feature is the IP geolocated tagging; if I have taken pictures near you the application will display those first. It was very rewarding to start with a mock-up design in Sketch and compare it to the finished product.

dinkers.io

Dinkers is a small group of engineers I manage/organise from various disciplines to share knowledge and collaborate on projects. I have set up a Jekyll site that renders Markdown as a way for us to formalise our notes and share our expertise with very little effort/overhead. I found this to be a great way to incentivise craft honing, and have received feedback from other members reflecting the same sentiment.


Hobbies and Interests

Mentorship

I personally enjoy mentoring, and have been doing it in secondary school (troubled lower school children), through university (first year students), and more recently at coding workshops. My last regular mentoring experience was coaching at CodeBar, a workshop for under-represented groups in engineering (women, PoC, etc), where I helped engineers with personal projects and assignments. I also wrote some Python tutorials for use by other coaches at Codebar workshops across the world.

I find mentoring very rewarding, it develops communication skills and empathy, and helps me build a deep understanding of technical concepts that allows me to communicate them to non-technical people more easily. Any opportunity to do this in a professional manner is very welcome.

Photography

For me, photography is an entertaining, creative outlet. It helps me to be more attentive during my travels, and is a great way to connect with people at events. I’m self taught, and I enjoy the technical aspect as much as the creative. The portfolio site I’ve created is the best place to see some of my work.

Music

Music is important to me. It’s not only a pleasurable pastime, but also a way to learn about other cultures I wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to, and a great way to connect with people. I really like discovering interesting looking records when travelling, I attend a lot of live performances, and I’m thinking of building a custom tool to help manage my 250+ Spotify playlists. I’m always interested in discovering new music, so if there is an artist or track you are passionate about please don’t hesitate to drop me a message.


Get in touch.