# Burak Yavuz

> Software Engineer at Databricks

Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/burakyavuz

• Excels at problem solving and experimental methods to derive simplified CLEAR solutions.
• Disciplined and hard working with great social, communications, analytical, and 
programming skills. Always a go-to person among peers.

• Languages: Java, Scala, Python, C/C++, SQL, Objective-C, Visual Basic, Unix, Bash
• Tools: Spark, AWS, Azure, Kafka
• Software: Matlab, Eclipse, Xcode, MS Office, SolidWorks (and similar CAD)

## Work Experience
### Senior Staff Software Engineer @ Databricks
Jan 2024 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States

### Software Engineer @ Databricks
Jan 2015 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area
- Helped create technologies like Delta Lake (https://delta.io) and Apache Spark's Structured Streaming to make the lives of data engineers easier across the industry
- Apache Spark committer since January 2017
 - Contributions to Apache Spark MLlib and SparkSQL around linear algebra, statistics
 - Worked in setting up Databricks' centralized data pipeline.
 - Gave guest lectures on Spark at UC Berkeley, UCLA, and Istanbul Sehir University
 - Worked with high profile customers as a Solutions Architect (1 month rotation) to make them successful on Databricks and Spark

### Engineering Manager @ Databricks
Jan 2021 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco, California, United States
Staff Software Engineer / Engineering Manager

 - Leads the data ingestion team, where the mission is to bring as much data into the Databricks Lakehouse as seamlessly as possible

### Software Engineering Intern @ Databricks
Jan 2014 – Jan 2014
Worked on the open source project Apache Spark. 
Made contributions to the Machine Learning Library (MLlib) for Spark. 
Wrote performance tests for MLlib to monitor performance regressions and optimize when necessary.

### Research Assistant @ Stanford University
Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | Computer Science Department
Fully funded RA-ship. Developed a new method called Sampled Stochastic Subgradient (SaSS), that 
combines two optimization frameworks: Randomized Linear Algebra (RLA) and Stochastic Gradient 
Descent (SGD), as a best-of-both-worlds algorithm. The algorithm shows state-of-the-art performance 
in the medium precision regime.

### Undergraduate Researcher @ Bogazici University
Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Istanbul, Turkey
Researched and worked on designing a small-sized RF Ion Thruster, a propulsion system currently used on satellites for altitude control and orbital repositioning, with Assist. Prof. Murat Celik at Bogazici University. 
Contact info: http://me.boun.edu.tr/dep/celik.html


## Education
### Master's Degree in Management Science and Engineering
Stanford University
Jan 2013 – Jan 2015

### Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Mechanical Engineering
Boğaziçi University
Jan 2009 – Jan 2013

### The Koc School
Jan 2005 – Jan 2009


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/brkyvz

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Source: https://flows.cv/burakyavuz
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/burakyavuz/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-23