Gökberk Karaca

Gökberk Karaca

Senior Software Engineer · Atlassian

Architecting distributed systems that serve millions — built to last.

About

Who
I am

I'm a Senior Software Engineer at Atlassian, where I architect and build distributed systems that serve millions of users at scale. I work across the full backend spectrum — from Kotlin and Java services to cloud-native AWS infrastructure — with a deep interest in reliability, system design, and software that stands the test of time.

I believe the best software is built not just to work, but to last.

Atlassian
Current Company
Backend
Specialisation
AWS
Cloud Platform
Expertise

Skills &
Technologies

Languages & Frameworks
Kotlin Java Spring Boot GraphQL REST APIs
Cloud & Infrastructure
AWS SNS/SQS Docker Terraform CI/CD
Data
DynamoDB PostgreSQL Redis Elasticsearch
Architecture
Microservices Distributed Systems High Availability Scalability Observability
Experience

Where
I've worked

Atlassian · Full-time
Jul 2019 – Present · 6+ yrs
Senior Software Engineer Apr 2023 – Present Senior Engineering Associate Apr 2021 – Apr 2023 Software Engineer Jul 2019 – Apr 2021

Munich, Bavaria, Germany · Remote

  • Architected and owned backend services for the Change Management domain within Jira Service Management, enabling enterprise teams to plan, track, and govern deployments at scale.
  • Built deployment tracking and gating infrastructure for CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, Bitbucket Pipelines), letting teams enforce risk-based policies before changes reach production.
  • Designed Change Calendar — a visualisation platform for planned and historical change events, giving teams a clear operational picture of their release activity.
  • Led the migration of Opsgenie's authentication infrastructure to the Atlassian identity platform, unifying auth across products and deprecating legacy auth paths.
  • Built core authentication & authorisation systems and owned Redis (ElastiCache) and Elasticsearch infrastructure for Opsgenie's high-throughput backend.
HAVELSAN · Part-time
Oct 2018 – May 2019 · 8 mos

Software Engineer

Ankara, Turkey

  • Developed weather radar simulation software for the Boeing 737 aircraft, working with real-time sensor data pipelines in a safety-critical avionics context.
  • Implemented ARINC data transfer protocols — the industry-standard communication specification for civil aviation systems.
University of Maryland · Research Internship
Jun 2018 – Sep 2018 · 4 mos

Summer Research Intern

College Park, MD, USA

  • Conducted cybersecurity research under Associate Prof. Tudor Dumitras, investigating the mis-issuance of code signing certificates at scale.
  • Built a static analysis tool to detect certificate validity violations, reducing the need for manual audit of signing pipelines.
  • Research accepted and presented as a poster at NDSS — one of the world's top-tier network and distributed systems security conferences.
Atlassian · Internship
Jun 2017 – Aug 2017 · 3 mos

Software Engineering Intern

Bursa, Türkiye

  • Profiled product performance under varied load conditions using systematic load testing, identifying and surfacing key bottlenecks.
  • Designed and shipped a multi-language RESTful API, providing a consistent integration surface across different programming language clients.
  • Delivered a self-service backup and restore tool that gave customers full control over their data recovery workflows.
Education

Where
I studied

Bilkent University Sep 2014 – Jun 2019

B.Sc. Computer Science

GPA 3.89 / 4.00 Ranked 2nd / 159 in CS Department
EPFL Sep 2017 – Jan 2018

Computer Science — Exchange Semester

Spent a semester at one of Europe's top technical universities as part of an international exchange programme.

Contact

Let's
connect.

Open to conversations about engineering, architecture, or anything interesting.