Serkan Yersen

Founder at Stele · Software Engineer Email: serkanyersen@gmail.com • Website: serkan.dev • Location: Bay Area, CA

SUMMARY

Founder of Stele, shared memory for AI coding agents. Software engineer with 19+ years of experience, including work at Meta across WhatsApp Web, WhatsApp Mobile Infrastructure, release engineering, and agentic AI developer workflows. Deep expertise in JavaScript/TypeScript, large-scale frontend architecture, build systems, release automation, and developer experience tooling. Led teams delivering highly reliable release systems powering WhatsApp for 3+ billion users across all platforms.

EXPERIENCE

Stele - Founder

Building shared memory for AI coding agents: a durable project record of decisions, tasks, and lessons that works across tools and sessions.

Meta (Facebook / Meta Platforms) - Staff Software Engineer

Sept 2019 – Present | Menlo Park, CA

WhatsApp Web – Frontend Architecture & Desktop Apps

  • Architected core components of WhatsApp Web, including performance-critical UI systems and long-term frontend infra used by millions daily.

  • Built and maintained foundational tooling for the web client (Webpack/Babel/ESLint/PostCSS customizations, build performance improvements, bundling strategies).

  • Co-developed and shipped WhatsApp Desktop (Electron), owning desktop-specific integration points and build distribution workflows.

  • Drove modernization of the codebase toward monorepo and stricter architectural boundaries.

WhatsApp Mobile Infra – Release Infrastructure & Developer Tooling

  • Led the engineering effort for WhatsApp’s release infrastructure, supporting Android, iOS, Web, and Desktop.

  • Owned reliability, automation, and scalability of systems responsible for delivering WhatsApp to 3B+ users worldwide.

  • Designed and implemented advanced internal tools including:

    • Release Hub (central release management)
    • On-Demand Dev Environments
    • Release Data Architecture
    • Developed APIs and Automations for code delivery workflows.
    • CI/CD code reliability tooling (internal Meta infra)

  • Led a team of developers to ship resilient, high-automation pipelines reducing human error and drastically shortening release turnaround times.

  • Partnered with cross-functional teams (mobile clients, backend, QA, security) to unify release practices across multiple platforms.

Agentic AI Developer Flows - WhatsApp

2024–Present

  • Building agentic AI workflows that assist developers in understanding, modifying, debugging, and shipping features across WhatsApp’s massive codebases.
  • Designing systems enabling LLM-powered code navigation, release awareness, and scheduling.
  • Focused on bridging developer tools, AI orchestration, and WhatsApp’s complex distributed architecture.
  • Collaborating with Meta AI teams to operationalize agentic capabilities for real engineering use cases at scale.

EARLIER EXPERIENCE

TechShed / RedBeacon (Acquired by Home Depot) - Frontend Architect

2013 – 2019

  • Worked as tech lead on companies various frontend applications, focused on scalability, reliability and delivery for Homedepot’s many online workflows.
  • Build various developer tooling and APIs for productivity.
  • Formed and mentored a strong frontend team capable of delivering high quality applications in a short amount of time.

JotForm.com - Founding Engineer

2006 – 2013

  • Built Jotform’s first of its kind Drag&Drop WHYSIWYG form builder.
  • Built core frontend and backend architecture used across millions of form submissions daily.
  • Developed internal libraries, tools, and infrastructure that accelerated company-wide development.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Languages & Core:
JavaScript (ESNext), TypeScript, Flow, HTML, CSS, SQL, GraphQL

Frontend Architecture:
React, Redux, Webpack, Babel, Electron, build systems, design systems, performance optimization

Backend & Infra:
Node.js, Express, microservices, CI/CD systems, containerized workflows, internal Meta infra, distributed pipelines

Tooling & Developer Experience:
Custom linting/transforms, code mods, static analysis, CLI tooling, dev-workflow automation, release pipelines

AI / LLM Work:
Agentic workflows, developer-tool integration, code intelligence, in-context orchestration

PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS (Meta)

  • WhatsApp Release Hub - Unified release coordination platform across Android/iOS/Web/Desktop. Reduced release friction and improved stability.

  • WAJS On-Demand Dev Environments - Provided instant testing environments, cutting dev iteration time.

  • AI Powered Knowledge and Productivity tools - Helps developers navigate highly complex release infrastructure, schedule releases, hotfixes and product launches.

  • WhatsApp Desktop Architecture - Key contributions to the Electron-based desktop client.

  • Meta-wide Dev Infra Integrations - Improved reliability and visibility across internal CI systems used by hundreds of engineers.

EDUCATION

2005 Bilkent University - Computer Technologies & Programming