Contact
- mehmet.duran@gmail.com
- Mobile
- +44 7503 388 345
- linkedin.com/in/mehmetduran
- Location
- London, UK
Profile
Product-focused technical leader and senior engineer with 20+ years of experience building complex, large-scale products, including AI and Machine Learning services. Former CTO of two companies, combining deep engineering expertise with strong product vision, business awareness, stakeholder communication, and team leadership to turn user needs into clear technical direction and successful delivery.
Skills
Leadership Skills
- Leading cross-disciplinary product teams
- Defining product-focused technical strategy aligned with user needs and business goals
- Managing stakeholders, clients, and cross-functional collaboration
- Mentoring and developing engineering talent
- Leading agile delivery and effective team ceremonies
- Recruiting and building high-performing local and remote teams
Technical Skills
- Front-end: modern, accessible front-end experiences with JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, CSS, and React
- Back-end: Node.js, Python, Ruby, and C
- Experience with React, Next.js, D3, Django, and Flask
- Designing scalable architectures, APIs, and cloud infrastructure across AWS and GCP
- Expert in accessibility, assistive technologies, and automated testing
Highlights
- At the Department for Education, brought together product, design, delivery, and engineering teams to deliver a major greenfield programme ahead of deadline, enrolling 95% of schools in England and Wales — 11,445 schools — within the first year.
- Led the architecture, design, and development of an AI-assisted design tool for Adobe Illustrator, using GAN technology. The work was shortlisted in the Design category at Cannes Lions 2019.
- At GDS, created a rigorous framework for comparing automated accessibility testing tools, leading research across 12 tools and publishing a report that remains widely cited .
- At the Home Office, established API and data technical standards, working with 30+ teams to align how services store, structure, share, and expose data. Collaborated across government departments to shape cross-government technical standards.
Experience
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Kanexa
Head of Artificial Intelligence
2024 – Present
- Built the AI function from scratch as Head of AI, defining the strategy, identifying product opportunities, and aligning product and technology leads around practical, high-value AI use cases.
- Led the development of a natural language chatbot that converted user questions into structured API calls, enabling accurate, repeatable answers instead of opaque generative responses.
- Developed Azure OpenAI demos for automated document data extraction, demonstrating how AI could streamline manual workflows and create new product capabilities.
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Software Consultant
2022 – 2024
- Freelance software consultant for startups across SaaS, hardware, gaming, art, and health tech, advising on product direction, architecture, growth, and delivery.
- Ran strategy workshops, supported recruitment, reviewed code and architecture, and established engineering practices to improve quality and delivery.
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- Led the Teachers’ Continuing Professional Development project , aligning product, design, delivery, and engineering on a £750m greenfield programme.
- Scaled the engineering team from 6 to 12 developers, adding testing capability and technical architecture leadership while defining the service architecture, delivery approach, engineering standards, CI/CD pipeline, and testing strategy.
- Enabled delivery ahead of deadline, enrolling 95% of schools in England and Wales — 11,445 schools — within the first year.
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- CTO across a real estate AI startup and creative technology agency, leading product, architecture, fundraising support, pitches, prototypes, client delivery, and production projects.
- Built and led a 9-person engineering team, establishing architecture, engineering standards, CI/CD, testing, delivery practices, and technical governance from scratch.
- Led AI product development across multiple product iterations, investor demos, commercial proof points, and an AI-assisted Adobe Illustrator plugin shortlisted in the Design category at Cannes Lions 2019.
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- Developer in the GOV.UK Accessibility Team , improving accessibility practice across UK digital government and creating testing infrastructure for front-end components that later evolved into the GOV.UK Design System .
- Led a major research project comparing 12 automated accessibility testing tools, publishing findings that became a widely cited reference for teams choosing and using accessibility tooling.
- Worked with researchers, auditors, developers, and service teams to test services, interpret findings, improve implementation quality, and help establish the early GDS Accessibility Empathy Lab .
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- Led the Home Office Digital Data and API team, setting technical direction for how services stored, structured, shared, and exposed critical data.
- Defined API, data, and technical standards with 30+ delivery teams and cross-government partners, improving consistency, data sharing, and service interoperability.
- Served as Head of Accessibility for developers, running accessibility reviews, interpreting audit findings, setting up automated testing, and leading cross-departmental meet-ups.
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- Ran an experimental AI and computer vision research project at Photobox, prototyping photo-ranking algorithms across 1000+ image sets to explore how face recognition, composition, and quality signals could identify the best photos in a user collection.
- Built a desktop research tool to test and compare 12 algorithmic approaches, supporting rapid iteration, visual review, and measurable improvements in photo-selection accuracy.
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- Senior full-stack developer across high-profile client projects for Nike, Burberry, Nokia, and Goldman Sachs, covering architecture, infrastructure, technical design, and implementation.
- Contributed to Nike KitBuilder, winner of a Eurobest award, and designed the HTML and JavaScript framework for the Goldman Sachs website .
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Various companies
2004 – Present
- I've had a long career with too many great roles to fit here, such as the UK Ministry of Justice, UK Cabinet Office, Microsoft, Financial Times, Friday, Sapient, BT, Barclays, Lab49, Shazam and yet a few more. My full CV with all the roles are available in my LinkedIn page .
Education
Işık University, Istanbul – BSc. Computer Science