AI-native engineering
5×output from agentic development
Moved the engineering organization to fully agentic delivery — coding, review, testing and deployment all run through agents, with engineers directing the work rather than typing it.
AI-Forward Engineering Executive
Özgür Şahin Çakmak
I build AI-forward engineering organizations — from platform architecture to the teams that run them.
Currently leading technology end-to-end at Digitopia, an agentic AI transformation partner working with 300+ enterprises across 40+ countries — architecture, platform, security, AI, and delivery.
About me
What's set my career apart isn't just technical depth — it's the ability to sit in the room where a business problem is being defined and turn it into both a product idea and an architecture decision. Deep enough to build it myself, commercial enough to know why it's worth building: that combination is what I bring to every team I lead.
Accomplishments
People & teams
50+Engineers led and mentored
Across five companies and 10+ nationalities — from a 5-person squad to a 21-person cross-functional organization, and one engineering team grown from a single engineer to 11.
Cost & efficiency
50%+Infrastructure cost removed
A monolith rebuilt as cloud-native microservices on AWS, improving scalability and regional deployment at the same time.
Maintenance & delivery
80–99%Fewer production issues
On core banking and insurance platforms — while lifting delivery capacity 40–50% with the same headcount, by replacing ad-hoc request handling with structured process.
Transaction scale
Millionsof daily transactions handled
High-volume systems architected end to end: an e-invoice platform built years before "cloud-scale" was a common expectation, and an insurer's core processing millions of transactions a day.
Programme delivery
$4MTransformation programme led
A PEGA rebuild of a bank's Corporate Banking platform across two sub-projects, including a decision system aggregating 162 services against more than 40 KPIs.
Security & governance
SOC 2Type II certification led
Security controls, governance processes, policy frameworks, risk management and audit readiness — owned end to end.
R&D & funding
₺5MAI R&D programme secured
TÜBİTAK-funded and still led today, with a €2M EIC initiative in progress.
1/8
Where I do my best work
Where the technology decision is a business decision
Where someone has to lead across the P&L and the architecture, translating in both directions — not relaying requirements, but shaping what gets built.
Where the architecture has become the ceiling
When what got the company this far cannot take it further: the business runs fine, but every new customer costs more than the last — and the handful of engineers who built it have to become an organization.
Enterprises that need to move like a startup
Large institutions where the constraint is not budget or talent but pace — modernizing core systems, replacing ad-hoc delivery with structure that compounds, and getting the organization shipping again.
Startups carrying enterprise expectations
Small teams selling into banks, insurers and global enterprises — moving at startup pace while clearing procurement, security review and audit like an incumbent. The rigour came from working inside those institutions. The speed came from building outside them.
Current role
Digitopia
Director, Head of Engineering
Sept 2022 — present
Architect and own the agentic AI platform behind the company's enterprise AI transformation work — cloud infrastructure, security, and AI strategy end to end, powering engagements with major global enterprises. Leading SOC 2 Type II certification and a ₺5M TÜBİTAK-funded AI R&D programme.
See the full careerLet's talk
The fastest way to reach me is WhatsApp — it goes straight to my phone and I usually reply the same day. Email and LinkedIn work just as well — better, if you're sending something long or formal.
Message me on WhatsApp@ozgurscakmak
- /in/ozgursahincakmak
- [email protected]
- Based in
- Istanbul, Türkiye