Semih Ünaldı
Staff Software Engineer & Engineering Lead · Dubai, UAE
Summary
Engineering leader and Staff Software Engineer with over ten years of experience scaling teams and systems.
At Yomly, a GCC HR and payroll SaaS, I created Yomly Agent, an AI engineering agent now used by over 70% of the company, and led the architecture and delivery of the Performance Management module. I have led engineering through several growth stages, from small founding teams to multi-squad organisations, with a track record of converting ambiguity into shipped product. My focus is on systems, people, and the discipline that connects the two.
Experience
Staff Software Engineer
Nov 2025 → Present
Yomly · GCC HR & payroll SaaS · ~200 clients · Dubai, UAE
- Proposed, built and launched Yomly Agent, an AI teammate in Slack that triages and resolves production incidents end-to-end, turns Jira tickets into bug-fix and feature PRs, reviews code, drafts design documents and post-mortems, and answers support and HR policy questions. Connected to observability, databases, the workflow engine, Jira, Confluence and Zendesk. Used by over 70% of the company within six months. The CTO credited it with materially shortening triage and investigation time.
- Made the agent self-improving: it audits its own work twice daily and ships fixes autonomously, with preflight and post-PR validation, weekly drift reports and LLM-judge regression tests in CI.
- Automated CVE remediation: the agent audits vulnerabilities and opens fix PRs. Engineers used it to clear their Dependabot backlogs, merging more than a hundred security PRs in a month.
- Designed a config-driven harness so non-engineers can add capabilities through markdown playbooks. Supports Claude and OpenAI models, with shared skills extended to Codex. Built within Yomly's PDPL and ISO 27001 controls, with documented access restrictions.
- Led architecture and delivery of the Performance Management module, from design to production release ahead of its revised target. Designed it as a self-hostable module that can be offered independently of Core HR, and performance-tested it before release.
- Drove platform upgrades and reliability work across services, reducing latency on high-traffic queries, clearing a large message backlog and speeding up CI pipelines.
- Set engineering standards: published the engineering handbook and SDLC guidance, and introduced developer-owned integration testing.
- Led observability work on the customisation engine, surfacing previously silent failures in production pipelines.
- Cleaned up long-standing defects in the leave module, including allocation, rollover, and accrual edge cases.
Engineering Manager
Sep 2022 → Oct 2025
Talabat (Delivery Hero) · Dubai, UAE
- Delivered a new rewards redemption flow directly from the menu, driving €2.5M in incremental revenue.
- Nearly 4x growth in Rewards users in 2024.
- Increased cashback and voucher utilisation by 7% through targeted A/B testing strategies.
- Implemented vendor reward indicators in search and vendor lists, leading to €440K in added engagement-driven revenue.
- Led reward vendor filtering in search, generating an additional €455K revenue.
- Achieved 30% adoption growth and 10% GMV increase for Talabat Rewards in H2 2023 while reducing liability costs by €500K.
- Reduced involuntary churn for Talabat Pro by 59% in Qatar and 40% in the UAE.
Head of Engineering
Sep 2021 → Sep 2022
Mindbehind · Izmir, Turkey
- Managed and coached four teams (15+ members) while spearheading technical initiatives.
- Built and led a dedicated operations and customer engagement team to support the platform.
- Partnered with HR on talent management and recruitment, making 4 hires.
- Optimised cloud costs, delivering 50% savings on QA and 25% on production environments.
- Introduced SonarQube, raising code coverage to 80% within a year.
- Developed WhatsApp Business API integration for distributed notifications.
- Led GDPR and KVKK accreditation compliance.
Enterprise Architect
Mar 2021 → Sep 2021
Allianz · Izmir, Turkey
- Led the Change Advisory Board, overseeing Solutions Architects responsible for technical solutions across Allianz Turkey.
- Owned the application portfolio and technology landscape organisation-wide.
- Ran enterprise architecture compliance checks on all new projects and interfaces, mapping the project portfolio to the application landscape.
- Built proofs of concept (POCs) for new projects and tools.
- Introduced and implemented Camunda as the organisation's workflow engine.
Solutions Architect
May 2020 → Mar 2021
Allianz · Izmir, Turkey
- Led transformation of legacy projects in the Allianz Health domain.
- Designed integration solutions and drove architectural improvements with the Enterprise Architecture team.
- Implemented messaging solutions with RabbitMQ and led a cultural shift towards Test-Driven Development.
Lead Software Developer
Sep 2018 → May 2020
Allianz · Izmir, Turkey
- Modernised legacy PL/SQL systems to a Spring, Angular, and semi-microservices stack.
- Centralised all outbound SMS and email communications across Allianz Turkey.
- Mentored the team's developers and interns.
Senior Software Developer
Sep 2017 → Sep 2018
Logo Business Solutions · Izmir, Turkey
- Built a payroll SaaS targeting global markets using Spring Cloud.
- Implemented scalable APIs and containerised infrastructure using Docker.
- Built developer tooling to automate repetitive engineering tasks.
Software Developer
Sep 2014 → Aug 2017
Turkcell · Istanbul, Turkey
- Developed and maintained CRM and order management systems for Turkcell SuperOnline.
- Introduced Jenkins for continuous deployments and built internal tooling for operational teams.
- Mentored new team members and trainees.
Software Developer Intern
Jul 2014 → Sep 2014
Turkcell · Istanbul, Turkey
- Placed 3rd in Software Innovation Project Competition among 300+ interns.
- Built a Mobile Health app with GPS tracking to detect accidents and alert emergency services.
Software Developer (Part-Time)
Mar 2014 → Jun 2014
Dume-Tech · Istanbul, Turkey
- Developed an advertisement recognition algorithm in C++ and OpenCV to detect TV commercial breaks.
Skills
Programming
Java
Spring Boot
Spring Cloud
Node.js
TypeScript
React
Next.js
iOS
Android
Cloud
AWS
Google Cloud
Kubernetes
Docker
Tools
PostgreSQL
MongoDB
Redis
RabbitMQ
Kafka
Elasticsearch
MySQL
Jenkins
Projects
Wedding planning app for guests, invitations, seating and budgets in one place.
iOS application.
Could Shakespeare have listened to Verdi?
Honours & Awards
3rd Place, Software Innovation Project Competition · Turkcell Technology R&D
Thesis Support, BIDEB 2441 Industry-Focused Undergraduate Programme · TUBITAK
B.S. Electronics & Communications Engineering
Turkish
Native
English
Professional
Built a 3-metre sailboat in my garage
Tennis & table tennis
Kitesurfing