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Yannick GBAKAYannick GBAKA

About

I'm a backend/full-stack engineer from Abidjan who likes messy, real-world problems: public-service platforms, payment flows, and AI products where correctness and uptime actually matter.

Yannick GBAKA

Who I am

Five-plus years building software that runs in production for real users: government job seekers, financial institutions, and language learners. I care more about systems that hold up than features that demo well, and I've spent most of my career on the unglamorous parts that decide whether software is actually trusted.

How I work

I scope honestly, ship in small increments, and treat the deploy as the beginning of responsibility, not the end of the task. I lean on queues, indexing, idempotency, and clear failure states rather than cleverness, and I'd rather explain why a boring choice is the right one than defend a fragile clever one.

What I'm building

Guru Learner, an AI English-speaking platform for francophone learners, now used by 220+ people across 14+ countries. It combines real-time AI conversation, transcription feedback, gamification, and payments, built and run end to end by one person.

What I'm learning

Going deeper on cloud and AI infrastructure, especially the operational discipline around imperfect models, alongside a Master's in Software Engineering. Recently AWS-certified, and always sharpening the architecture fundamentals that keep systems simple as they grow.

What I'm open to

Backend, cloud, and AI product work, full-time, contract, or remote, especially where the problem is real and the stakes are concrete. International and remote-friendly teams are a particularly good fit.

Credentials & awards

Certifications

  • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

    Amazon Web Services · Oct 2025

  • EFSET English Certificate, C2

    EF Standard English Test · Jun 2025

  • Docker Essentials: A Developer Introduction

    IBM / Docker · 2024

  • Formation DevOps

    Africa Project Management · Feb 2024

Awards

  • 2nd place at Google ABI-HACK 2025

    Project "Griot IA" at a 48-hour hackathon with 480+ participants from 15+ African countries. · Jul 2025

  • 1st Prize, Best English Speaker

    FLAMME LINGUISTIQUE · 2021

  • 1st Prize, Génie UPB Hackathon

    Annual hackathon, Université Polytechnique de Bingerville. · 2019