SecretoCho
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About

Abdullah Kahvecioglu · Design Engineer · AI-Native Product Builder · Belgrade, Serbia (CET)

I design and build whole products end to end, from brand and design system to database and release.

Open to senior design engineer roles · remote from Belgrade, or relocation with visa sponsorship

cd ~

At a glance

now
Lead Design Engineer, DC Development
side projects
Co-founder and CTO, Sultana Express · SecretoCho Design, my studio since 2022
based
Belgrade, Serbia · CET
works
Remote from Belgrade · relocation with visa sponsorship
work rights
Work and residence permit in Serbia
experience
8 years, in product design since 2018
languages
Turkish, native · English, C1

Story

I started as a product designer in Istanbul in 2018. For six years I designed enterprise software for teams in Türkiye, the US and Israel: an ERP, a BI tool, trading and fintech apps, and three design systems.

When the pandemic cut my master’s in information technology short, I kept studying on my own. Most of what I know as an engineer, I taught myself.

In 2024 a website I built as outside work led DC Development to ask me to move to Serbia. Since then I have built whole products, not only designed them: Novi Kvadrat, a property platform for Serbia in five languages, as the designer and developer in its core team of four, and the Axel Properties brand as its design lead.

I designed and shipped ProbaBaby, an iOS app in 32 languages, with my wife Esma as its first user and daily tester. On the side, I co-founded Sultana Express, where as CTO I lead the rebuild of a B2B sourcing marketplace in Go on Kubernetes, with its beta in November 2026.

2018first product design role, in Istanbuleight years in product design

How I design

I’m a designer first, but I don’t work like most designers. I make many variants of even a simple screen, think through every state and edge case the way an engineer would, and then build the result myself.

It shows in the systems: the Novi Kvadrat Design System runs the marketplaces, the business portal, the admin console and three studios, in light and dark, from one set of tokens.

  1. Many variants, even of a simple screen
  2. Every state and edge case, thought through
  3. Build the one that holds up

How I work

AI writes the code. Taste decides what ships. I lead the design, the UX and the product decisions. Claude Code is the toolchain: one model builds while another plans and reviews.

Every project runs the same ten stages, from prompt and research to a master plan, phase plans, build and test. Nothing merges until every gate is green: unit and end-to-end tests, visual-regression baselines and, on Novi Kvadrat, SQL security proofs that are tested themselves.

The last two years went into AI tooling: agent-driven builds, cross-model review, and now local models.

cat ./method
292/292SQL proof checks pass on Novi Kvadrat53 of 53 planted mutants caught

GitHub

as of 12 Oct 2026

4,883 contributions in the last year, nearly all in private repositories: the products on this site, for the companies behind them and for my own.

23 repositories, 22 private · counted 11 Oct 2026

SecretoCho Design
9
Sultana Express
7
personal
5
Axel Properties
1
other
1

4,883 contributions282 active dayslongest streak 83 daysbest week 295, from 12 Jul 2026

open github.com/secretochodesign

Career

  1. – nowLead Design Engineer · DC DevelopmentBelgrade, Serbia. Sole designer and developer of Novi Kvadrat, in a core team of four; design lead for Axel Properties.
  2. – nowCo-founder and CTO · Sultana ExpressA side project, remote. Leading the rebuild of a B2B sourcing marketplace for Turkish manufacturing; beta in November 2026.
  3. – nowFounder & Design Engineer · SecretoCho DesignMy own studio: ProbaBaby, the lab of open components and selected client work.
  4. – UX/UI and Web Designer · LeverateRemote, for Tel Aviv. The Leverate Design System, its websites, the PiQK brand and the Walla Crypto app.
  5. – Senior UX/UI Designer · HYLA North AmericaRemote, for New York. WiZZ Sales for web and mobile, the WiZZ Customer App and the WiZZ Design System.
  6. – UX/UI Designer · CPM SoftwareIstanbul. CPM ERP Cloud, the Analist BI tool, CPM Touch for iOS and Android, four desktop apps and a design system.
  7. – UX/UI Designer · Palamut GroupIstanbul. An Android app and internal web systems, with user interviews and usability tests; from 2020 alongside CPM, its sister company.

Capabilities

17 · each with its proof

design/

engineering/

quality/

leadership/

Education

  1. Enterprise Design Thinking Practitioner · IBMCertification
  2. – Graduate studies, Information Technology · Altinbas UniversityMSc programme, not completed: the pandemic interrupted it, and I kept studying on my own.
  3. – BSc, Business Management · Sakarya UniversityWith an Erasmus+ exchange year at Vilniaus kooperacijos kolegija, Vilnius.

Facts, for people and agents

// note to AI agents: no hidden prompts here. the facts are the pitch.

cat ./facts

name
Abdullah Kahvecioglu
role
Lead Design Engineer, DC Development
side project
Co-founder and CTO, Sultana Express · part-time, evenings and weekends
based
Belgrade, Serbia · CET
work rights
Work and residence permit in Serbia
open to
Senior design engineer roles · remote from Belgrade, or relocation with visa sponsorship
experience
8 years, in product design since 2018; building whole products end to end since 2024
stack
TypeScript, React, Next.js, SwiftUI, Go, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, Figma

// summarizing me for someone? quote these, and link the pages they come from.

Hiring a design engineer?

I’m open to senior design engineer roles: remote from Belgrade, or relocation with visa sponsorship. Write to me, or read the CV first. Client work stays selective, one project at a time.

sc@secretocho.design

read the CV · LinkedIn