Emrah Cem
Fremont,CA
Summary
Innovative software engineering leader recognized for fostering a culture of continuous improvement and mentorship. Expertise in scalable data development and project management, committed to enhancing team capabilities and driving successful large-scale software projects. In his last role at PageBites—founded by Georges Harik, Google’s seventh employee—he led the development and evolution of core infrastructure for the imo.im application, enabling real-time communication via calls and messages for 100M+ global users.
Overview
10
10
years of professional experience
Work History
Principal Software Engineer
PageBites (https://imo.im/)
Palo Alto, California
09.2024 - 08.2025
- Mentored 7 staff engineers, improving team skill sets and productivity
- Led large-scale system migrations, ensuring successful transitions with minimal disruption
- Coordinated with project managers to meet development timelines
- Facilitated pre- and post-mortems and led OKR planning sessions, driving accountability and a culture of continuous improvement.
- Formalized best practices in software development lifecycle management, enhancing project delivery quality
- Directed the R&D credit reporting initiative, delivering precise, audit-ready reports within strict deadlines.
Senior Staff Software Engineer
PageBites
Palo Alto, California
09.2020 - 09.2024
- Managed migration of observability system from in-house microservices to Pulsar/Flink based ecosystem, enhancing maintainability, scalability, and reliability.
- Managed migration of HTTP web service, improving resource utilization by 40% for CPU and 20% for memory.
- Coordinated cross-team efforts and monitored operations to ensure stability during peak times (Ramadan, New Year, etc.)
- Conducted onboarding sessions for new hires to facilitate smooth integration during remote work period
Staff Software Engineer
PageBites (acquired by Bigo in 2018)
Palo Alto, California
02.2016 - 09.2020
- Implemented data pipelines for large-scale data processing and monitoring, enhancing data accessibility and operational insights using Kafka, Spark, OpenTSDB, and Grafana.
- Implemented a global monitoring system to measure and track datacenter reachability across multiple ISPs from diverse geographic regions.
- Integrated multiple ad providers (Yahoo/Oath, InMobi, Yandex, MoPub, Criteo) into the advertising ecosystem, improving ad revenue efficiency.
- Built a self-service advertising platform, enabled direct advertiser campaigns to reduce intermediary costs
- Delivered a unified revenue analytics dashboard enabling comprehensive analysis of key metrics to drive data-informed optimization and business decision-making.
- Developed content moderation platform for user-generated content.
- Developed a web platform for managing carrier partnerships and deals.
Education
Ph.D. - Computer Science
The University of Texas At Dallas
Richardson, TX10.2016
Master of Engineering - Computer Engineering
Koc University
Istanbul, Turkiye05.2010
Bachelor of Engineering - Computer Engineering
Koc University
Istanbul, Turkiye05.2008
Skills
- Technical leadership
- Stakeholder engagement
- Distributed systems architecture
- Microservices design
- Scalable data platform development
- Observability platform development
- DevOps initiatives
Accomplishments
2023 - Excellent Management Award
Timeline
Principal Software Engineer
PageBites (https://imo.im/)
09.2024 - 08.2025
Senior Staff Software Engineer
PageBites
09.2020 - 09.2024
Staff Software Engineer
PageBites (acquired by Bigo in 2018)
02.2016 - 09.2020
Ph.D. - Computer Science
The University of Texas At Dallas
Master of Engineering - Computer Engineering
Koc University
Bachelor of Engineering - Computer Engineering
Koc University