Canberk Varli

software engineer · founder · actor · trained pilot

I build AI products end to end — from vector search and ETL pipelines to the pixels you tap. Currently bootstrapping ActorRise. Before that I shipped legal-AI tooling at Prevail. Based in Berkeley, CA.

Off the keyboard: on stage at Inferno Theater and licensed to fly small aircraft. ✈️

TypeScriptPython React / NextFastAPI PostgresRAG / LLMs

GitHub LinkedIn Email

🎭 ActorRise

founder & product lead · feb 2026 → now · remote

AI-powered acting career platform — bootstrapped solo and shipped to real actors with paying monthly subscriptions.

300+users & paying subs

12k+monologues indexed

solo0→1 build

AI ScenePartner — run scenes conversationally to rehearse & memorize lines faster.
RAG semantic search — pgvector cosine similarity + trigram text search across 12,000+ monologues.
Production ETL — web scraping, monologue extraction, AI analysis & batch embeddings.
Full stack — Next.js + FastAPI, Supabase Auth, CI/CD.

Next.jsFastAPIpgvector LangChainSupabase

▸ launch actorrise

💾 projects & work

ActorRise — founder

2026–now · remote

founder & product lead · Next.js · FastAPI · pgvector

AI acting-career platform — bootstrapped solo to 300+ users & paying subscribers.
AI ScenePartner + RAG semantic search across 12,000+ monologues; production ETL & embeddings.

▸ open actorrise.exe

fullcircle — wellness app

2024–2025 · app store

React Native · Expo · TypeScript · Firebase

End-to-end iOS community app: real-time messaging, Stripe/IAP payments, push notifications & location-based discovery.

app store

Prevail Legal AI

2021–2024 · SF

software engineer · Ruby on Rails · AWS · Stimulus.js

Transcript search & highlighting via CSS Custom Highlight API — attorneys navigate 10k+ line transcripts 3× faster.
RBAC org management for 50+ enterprise law firms; 1,000+ deposition sessions/month.
Transcript-video sync with ms-precision highlighting — cut case prep time 40%.

Microsoft — intern

2017 · Istanbul

Xamarin cross-platform mobile app; adopted across 3 internal teams.

education

B.S. Software Engineering — Bahçeşehir University (2014–2018)

Private Pilot Training — Airwin Flight School, Budapest (2019) ✈️

📄 resume.pdf

▸ download open in tab

✉️ contact

Building something, hiring, or just want to talk shop? Say hi.

> email canberkvarli@gmail.com

> github /canberkvarli

> linkedin /in/canberkvarli

> based Berkeley, CA