usevimli.dev
← Back to the site

Utkan Sevimli

Senior DevOps Engineer & R&D Team Lead · Vendor Box · Istanbul, Türkiye

I build CI/CD, Kubernetes platforms and monitoring that run themselves — secure by default, written down as code, and quiet at 3 a.m.

I’ve worked in DevOps and DevSecOps since 2019, including two years of security-focused QA, across Kubernetes operations, cloud platforms, MLOps and RAG systems. Today I’m a Senior DevOps Engineer and the R&D Team Lead at Vendor Box, and I consult for İVEN Bilişim. After hours I build minderhq, a self-hosted AI platform I first imagined in 2023 while working on Monitra. A home lab tests all of it and feeds this site’s lab journal.

Experience

Nov 2024 — now

Senior DevOps Engineer & R&D Team Lead — Vendor Box

Remote

Two roles at once. As Senior DevOps Engineer I take care of the platform’s infrastructure and delivery; as R&D Team Lead I lead the team that decides what we build next.

  • A fully autonomous, Jira-integrated delivery pipeline, with separate test and production environments
  • Docker and Kubernetes environments, infrastructure as code with Ansible; monitoring, logging and access control

Oct 2026 — now

Software developer & DevSecOps consultant — İVEN Bilişim ve Ar-Ge

External · remote · Technoscope, Mersin University Technopark

Alongside Vendor Box: I build software and advise on secure, automated delivery for an R&D company working in software, chemistry and recycling.

2026 — now

Founder · R&D project lead · RAG core engineer — minderhq

Own product · idea since 2023

A self-hosted, local-first AI platform: LLMs, RAG pipelines and knowledge graphs on your own hardware, extended through a public plugin ecosystem. The idea took shape in 2023, while I was working on MLOps and RAG for Monitra; in 2026 it became a product — and an R&D project I lead as its technical architect and RAG core engineer.

  • Experiment design and hypotheses; technical architecture; validating models, hardware and security before the pilot
  • RAG module contracts, reference pipelines and adapters, compared in controlled experiments
  • Budget-aware method selection driven by each document’s profile

Jul 2024 — Nov 2024

Cloud & DevOps Engineer — Servicepark

Istanbul · hybrid

Took over Monitorpark, a product whose old version had been left unmaintained, and rebuilt it into a much leaner one that is far easier to install and keeps itself up to date.

  • Cloud infrastructure end to end: CI/CD, container-based deployments, monitoring and backups

Feb 2023 — Mar 2024

DevOps & DevSecOps Engineer — iSIMPlatform

Informatics Valley, Gebze · hybrid

Built a secure CI/CD platform and the DevSecOps practices around it.

  • GitLab, Harbor, Argo CD and K3s on Proxmox, monitored with InfluxDB and Grafana
  • Monitra: worked on the MLOps processes and contributed to the RAG-based systems

Jan 2021 — Feb 2023

Software QA Engineer — iSIMPlatform

Informatics Valley, Gebze · hybrid

Test automation with Selenium and JMeter, DevSecOps-oriented security testing, and test environments on Jenkins, Docker and Kubernetes.

Jul 2019 — Dec 2020

DevOps Engineer — Proline Integrated Intelligence

Istanbul

My first DevOps role, at a time when DevSecOps was barely a job title — which made me the friendly nightmare of the DevOps and R&D teams. My issues came with every detail and a cause-and-effect chain that left nothing to argue about, so teams picked them up instead of debating them in weekly meetings. Product quality and process quality both went up.

  • Deployment and infrastructure automation with Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes and Ansible

Mar 2016 — Feb 2017

R&D Project Engineer — Smartoject Innovation Center

Freelance · hybrid

Hardware projects with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Linux and Python — and the schedules that kept interdisciplinary projects on track.

Earlier

2015 — 2018

Student Administrative Assistant — Bahçeşehir University

2011 — 2012

Intern — Türk Telekom

2009

Field Specialist — Frekans Bilişim

Education

2013 — 2019

B.Sc. Electrical and Electronics Engineering — Bahçeşehir University

2007 — 2011

Associate degree, Electronics and Communication — Marmara University

2007

Electronics, vocational high school — Şişli Vocational and Technical High School

Certificates & training

2022

Secure Software Development and Software Security Architecture — ADEO

2022

AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials — Amazon Web Services

2022

AWS Technical Essentials — Amazon Web Services

2021

Fully Managed Communication Platform: Azure Communication Services — TR AI Week 2021 · Microsoft Türkiye (Mehmet Kut)

Labs & communities

Şişli Vocational and Technical High School (until 2007) · Marmara University (2007 — 2011) · Linux, self-taught (2011 — 2013) · Hackerspace Istanbul (2013 — 2015) · Bahçeşehir University (2013 — 2019) · Sparkgo (2015 — 2018) · BAU Future Lab (2015 — 2018)

Skills

Containers
Docker · Kubernetes · K3s · Helm · Traefik
CI/CD & GitOps
GitLab CI · Jenkins · GitHub Actions · Argo CD · Harbor
Automation
Ansible · Terraform · Renovate · n8n · LDAP
Observability
Prometheus · Grafana · InfluxDB · Alertmanager
Virtualization
Proxmox VE · VMware ESXi · LXC · Debian Linux
Code
Python · Bash · Node.js · Java
Testing & security
DevSecOps · Selenium · JMeter · Postman
Data & AI
PostgreSQL · MongoDB · Qdrant · RAG · MLOps
Embedded & IoT
Embedded systems · PCB design · Raspberry Pi · Arduino
Also
Jira and Agile · mentoring · technical support · PCB design
Languages
Turkish (native) · English (full professional)
↑

↑↓ · enter · esc