About

Reasoned Cloud-Native Open-Source Software Infrastructure Engineer Link to heading

Site Reliability Engineer. Observability, Monitoring, and Performance Engineering. Mentor. Speaker. Blogger. Angel Investor. Introverted human (not a Cylon, but who knows?). Open Source Software Developer. Gopher. CNCF Ecosystem Contributor. Maintainer of Thanos, Prometheus, and Prometheus Operator.

What I Do Link to heading

I work at Datadog - APM, building Go for Go—instrumenting and optimizing performance in Go applications at scale. My focus is on instrumentation, profiling, performance monitoring, and observability tooling that helps engineers understand and optimize their systems.

In 2024, I explored Python tooling, ML inference infrastructure, MLOps, and container runtimes, designing systems to optimize ML workflows. While this broadened my understanding of ML infrastructure, I realized that my passion remains in observability. Now, I’m doubling down on instrumentation, performance monitoring, and profiling, ensuring that engineers have the tools they need to build and operate high-performance systems.

Before that, I was the monitoring and profiling guy—building Linux observability tools for software and reliability engineers. My work was deeply rooted in profiling, eBPF, performance engineering, time-series, and columnar databases.

I also have a keen interest in the Zig programming language, which aligns with my systems programming, performance, and simplicity philosophy.

Beyond Professional Life Link to heading

In my free time, I’m a tinkerer—I open things up, inspect what’s inside, and fix them. I’m also a bookworm, a dog whisperer, a mechanical keyboard and LEGO builder, a single malt taster, and a coffee drinker in training (peer pressure).

I enjoy sci-fi and fantasy literature, board games, and programming fun side projects (from hardware tinkering to functional programming experiments). I’m passionate about traveling, cooking vegan and vegetarian dishes, and constantly challenging myself to learn new languages—one day, I hope to become a proper polyglot.

As an angel investor, I’ve had the privilege of investing in two promising companies, helping support innovation and growth in the tech ecosystem.

One of my long-term goals is early retirement, spending most of my time outdoors—maybe overlanding with a Land Rover? Who knows?

Home Link to heading

I currently live in Berlin, Germany, with my beloved significant other, Rüya, and our one-year-old son, Atlas Robin. Our home is often filled with toys and creative projects. Though we recently lost our beloved dog, she lives on in spirit—and through the tattoo on my left forearm.

CV Link to heading

It’s 202x, so just visit: linkedin.com/in/kakkoyun

Where to Find Me Link to heading

You can find me across various platforms under the handle kakkoyun, except on Twitter/X: kakkoyun_me. If you wish to reach out and chit-chat, you may email me: kakkoyun_at_gmail_dot_com

PGP public key Link to heading