CX architect · AI advisor · creative human

Building the human edge in intelligent service.

I help ambitious teams turn complex customer experience challenges into clear, scalable systems — with AI that works for people.

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Top 5
Global closed ARR
(Zendesk)
Top 3
EMEA ARR
3 consecutive years
2
Top 10 global
Zendesk accounts
25+
Years in CX &
digital transformation

Where strategy meets systems.

From the boardroom to the API layer, I connect the big picture to what actually ships.

01 / Intelligence

Agentic CX & AI

Designing service experiences that combine automation, knowledge, and human judgment.

Agentic AICX copilotsChatGPTClaude
02 / Integration

Ecosystems that talk

Making platforms, teams, and workflows move as one through pragmatic architecture.

MCP serversREST APIsSalesforceJira
03 / Leadership

Clarity at the top

Helping leaders make confident technology decisions with a human-centered point of view.

C-level advisoryMIT design thinkingINSEAD MBA

A track record of making it real.

Trusted in high-stakes conversations where customer experience, technology, and growth intersect.

2021 — now
Zendesk

Senior CX AI Solutions Architect
& Technical Advisor

  • Technical advisor for 2 of Zendesk’s global Top 10 ARR accounts.
  • Top 5 globally and Top 3 in EMEA for closed ARR across 3 consecutive fiscal years.
  • Architecting Agentic AI, Omnichannel, Voice, Messaging, and Action Flows.
2019 — 2021
Oracle · Düsseldorf
2015 — 2019
Oracle · Dubai
2010 — 2014
Oracle · İstanbul

Senior CX Subject-Matter Expert
& Solutions Architect

  • Trusted C-level advisor for strategic Oracle CX Platform and Cloud deal cycles.
  • Led customer journey design using Human-Centered Design Thinking.
Banking
Aug 2014 — Jul 2015
HSBC

Senior Manager, Client Service

  • Built and led a newly established centralized Payments & Cash Management client service team, coaching 15 managers supporting global companies and large local corporates.
  • Established query, email and call management, reporting and performance processes; also contributed to customer experience, branch rollout and payment process improvement initiatives.
Sep 2007 — Jul 2010
Citi

Channel Development &
Innovation Manager

  • Delivered channel development initiatives for direct card and personal loan sales, including field SMS pre-approvals, mobile sales automation for agents, and consumer SMS pre-screening.
  • Worked across WAP and iPhone mobile banking, telesales outsourcing, online marketing and analytics, and automated outbound calling.

The work between the work.

Curiosity does not stop at the job description. A few things I make, host, and explore.

01 / Audio narrative · Turkish · 7 episodes

Bilim Kurgu Manyağı

A Turkish-language science-fiction podcast looking past the spectacle to the human stories, symbols and ideas underneath. Across seven short episodes, Gökhan Engin moves from iconic characters to questions about empathy, AI, immortality and technology, with film and book recommendations along the way.

Amadiro'ya dur diyecek yok mu?

Asimov’s robot stories, intelligent life and a recommendation of The End of Eternity.

Luv'ın zıvanadan çıkışı ve Metaverse neden heyecansız?

Blade Runner 2049’s Luv, the metaverse, and a look back at Serenity.

John'un Cesur Yeni Dünyası

John from Brave New World, memorable Star Trek moments and Lower Decks.

Roy Batty'nin Vedası

Roy Batty, science and logic in sci-fi, and Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat series.

Ah Pinbacker, Vah Pinbacker

Sunshine’s Pinbacker, dystopian corporations and Martha Wells’ Murderbot.

Cypher, ne yaptın böyle?!

The Matrix, Asimov’s laws of robotics, and our fears of AI and robots.

Logan ile yeni başlangıçlar

Logan’s Run, immortality, Altered Carbon and John Scalzi’s Fuzzy Nation.

Explore the full show on Spotify ↗

Spotify show player · listen to the episodes

02 / Generative sound · Artist: Khanen

AI Music & Lyrics

Original compositions pairing generative audio with human words, released under the artist name Khanen. The Spotify profile features eight popular tracks, including the latest single, “Onca Sevişmeden Sonra.”

Explore Khanen on Spotify ↗

Spotify player · browse and listen to Khanen’s songs

04 / Civilization VI · Gathering Storm · Custom civilization

Göktürk Kağanlığı

Bilge Kağan · The Sky Turks ride again

A complete custom civilization for Civilization VI: Gathering Storm. Göktürk Kağanlığı spans gameplay, art, music and text, and runs on both Windows and Mac.

Civilization and leader

  • Bozkurt Soyu: Pastures give +1 Production and +1 Culture. International trade routes earn extra Gold for each Pasture in their origin city.
  • Ötüken Yurdu: every city receives free buildings as the world advances: Monument, Granary, Water Mill and Sewer.
  • Türk Kardeşliği: a mutual special relationship with the Ottomans, improving diplomatic standing and adding Gold and Culture to trade routes between them.
  • Taşa Kazınan Sözler: defeating enemy units earns Great Writer points; Great Generals grant Culture to nearby cities.
  • AI agenda · Türk Bodun: Bilge Kağan favors civilizations that trade with him.

Unique units and improvement

  • Börü: light cavalry replacing the Horseman. Stronger, requires no Horses, and gains a pack bonus beside other Börü.
  • Asena Kızları: female horse archers replacing the Crossbowman, inspired by the Asena wolf legend. Faster, stronger in home territory, and able to heal neighboring units.
  • Bitig Taş: a runic memorial stone named after the Orkhon inscriptions, providing Culture and later Tourism.

Art

  • Leader portraits for loading and diplomacy, round leader icon, unit and civilization icons, and a custom color scheme.
  • A custom leader scene set at the Ötüken camp in the Orkhon valley.
  • Sepia historic-moment illustrations for Börü, Asena Kızları and Bitig Taş.
  • Unit and improvement models selected from the game's existing assets.

Music

  • 12 era tracks, three each for the Ancient, Medieval, Industrial and Modern eras, in a gapless random rotation.
  • Built in Wwise with separate Windows (Wwise 2015) and Mac (Wwise 2021) sound banks included in the same mod.

Text

  • Full English and Turkish text, Civilopedia pages, and a custom loading-screen quote.
  • 40 historical city names and citizen names.

CIVILIZATION VI: GATHERING STORM · WINDOWS + MAC · GAMEPLAY · ART · MUSIC · ENGLISH + TÜRKÇE

05 / Browser game · Built with Claude

Aether Reel

A steampunk sci-fi film trivia game with 440+ questions, spanning silent-era cinema to recent releases. Built iteratively with Claude, it turns a quick quiz into a brass-and-boiler-powered showdown.

Play the game
JAVASCRIPT · HTML/CSS · GAME DESIGN · TRIVIA · STEAMPUNK · BUILT WITH CLAUDE
  • Deep-cut questions: sci-fi films, cult and classic novels, Star Trek and Star Wars series, famous quotes, character rounds, and the Turkish cult film Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam.
  • Two ways to play: Solo Reel, or Dual Engine with two players taking turns on one device.
  • Set your reel: choose 12, 15, 20, 24, or 30 questions on a brass gauge dial; each question is rated easy, medium, or hard.
  • Race the boiler: answer against a pressure countdown to score x1, x1.5, or x2 based on difficulty and speed.
  • All the atmosphere: animated card flips stamped VERIFIED or REJECTED, a rotating gear backdrop, and a closing score screen with a joke for every performance tier.
  • Made for replay: personal bests and games played are saved by reel length; last-used player names are remembered in the browser.
  • Lightweight and accessible: one self-contained HTML file with vanilla JavaScript and CSS, responsive layout, dark-mode support, and reduced-motion support. No frameworks or build step; only Google Fonts load externally.

06 / PORTFOLIO PROJECT

Retro Games: Commodore 64

LOAD "GAMES",8,1

I build small games for the Commodore 64 as a hobby. It's a mix of nostalgia, low-level programming, and my interest in language and storytelling. There's an arcade racer, two text adventures and a poker table, and two of them are fully in Turkish, which meant designing custom fonts and a parser that understands Turkish grammar on a 1 MHz machine with 64 KB of RAM.

Download all (.zip) 41 KB
İstanbul Yarışı running on the Commodore 64, showing its Istanbul race title screen
Arcade racing · Turkish

İstanbul Yarışı

A top-down arcade race through nine Istanbul districts, from Sultanahmet to Kadıköy.

Drive past taxis, simit sellers, street cats, bridge fishermen, tulip beds and Bosphorus ferries. A BASIC prototype grew into a machine-code engine with pixel-smooth scrolling, hardware sprites and SID sound.

  • 50 fps on PAL, built in 6502 assembly with 64tass.
  • Eight pre-blended character sets power smooth vertical scrolling.
  • Animated roadside scenes evolve from district to district.
  • Worst-case frame: about 16k of ~19.7k available CPU cycles.

Controls: Joystick port 2, or A/D steer, W gas, S brake.

Download İstanbul Yarışı 37 KB
Galata Sinyali Turkish text adventure displayed on the Commodore 64
Text adventure · Turkish

Galata Sinyali

A Turkish sci-fi adventure in a post-apocalyptic İstanbul, 2087.

Thirty years after the Great Quake, Deniz scavenges from a beached ferry in Karaköy. A radio broadcast from Galata Tower carries the voice of Deniz's missing mother. Cross the Golden Horn, bargain in the Grand Bazaar, visit a fortune teller, and choose what becomes of the city's memory.

  • Custom characters display Turkish letters on original C64 hardware.
  • A parser understands Turkish word order and suffixes: KAPIYI AÇ, LALEYE SİMİT VER.
  • About 30 minutes, three endings, scored out of 100.

Commodore BASIC V2 + a small machine-code font loader.

Download Galata Sinyali 29 KB
Neon Rain Blade Runner fan adventure title screen on the Commodore 64
Text adventure · English

Neon Rain

A noir text adventure in Los Angeles, November 2019.

As detective Kade, hunt three fugitive replicants through a rain-soaked city while the evidence points back at your own memories. Fly between districts, enhance photographs for hidden clues, and run empathy tests on suspects.

  • Photo analysis mini-game: zoom into grid sectors to reveal evidence.
  • Interrogation choices determine how conclusive each test becomes.
  • Three possible endings, depending on whom you spare.

Commodore BASIC V2 · Non-commercial fan tribute to Blade Runner.

Download Neon Rain 29 KB
Five-card draw Poker screen on the Commodore 64
Card game · English

Poker

Five-card draw against up to three computer opponents.

Enter your name, pick 1–3 opponents with randomly generated names, and play for dollars. Everyone starts with $100; the ante is $5, bets are $5 before the draw and $10 after, and hand-drawn flower patterns decorate the card backs. Play until you're broke or cash out.

  • Opponents judge their hands, chase four-card flushes and bluff with different levels of aggression.
  • Full betting rules: up to three raises per round, all-ins and correctly split side pots.
  • Stress-tested over thousands of simulated hands: no money created or lost.

Controls: C check/call · B bet · R raise · F fold · 1–5 mark cards, RETURN · Q cash out.

Commodore BASIC V2 + custom character graphics.

Download Poker 9 KB
How to play
  1. Install the free VICE emulator and start x64sc.
  2. Drag a .prg file onto the VICE window. It loads and runs automatically.
  3. These files also run on a real Commodore 64 using SD2IEC, Ultimate 64 or similar.
  4. For text adventures, type commands in plain letters and press RETURN. In the Turkish games, type ç→c, ş→s, ğ→g, ı→i, ö→o, ü→u. Stuck? Type YARDIM / HELP, or visit the in-game hint character.

Neon Rain is an unofficial, non-commercial fan work. Blade Runner is a trademark of its respective owners.

07 / RESEARCH · 2014

Research & publication

Early work exploring how rule-based systems can support students.

Rule-based Expert Systems for Supporting University Students

Read publication ↗

Have a complex problem?

Let’s make the next move intelligent.

For conversations about CX strategy, Agentic AI, or ambitious collaborations.

contact@gokhanengin.com ↗