Hello and thank you for creating this perfect community. I am a 42M from Turkey and I’d like to share my current state and seek your guidance regarding the 1st stage of my application. I have a very strong background in Microsoft stack and I’m just 2 exams away from being certified in two areas:
- Azure Architect Expert
- Devops Architect Expert
Main doubt:
I established an LTD company in 2018, and I dissolved this company in 2024, thinking Sole Proprietorship will be easier for me due to bureaucracy/accounting reasons. Since 2024 I have run the Sole Proprietorship company.
Bot companies are strictly a B2B legal/tax vehicle enabling me to invoice international product-led clients for my independent DevOps/SysOps architecture services. I apply purely as a technical expert, not as a business founder.
And one of the posts here mentions, the person got the endorsement received after 2nd review.
Can I use the following items as an evidence as MC or OC?
- Upwork Expert-Vetted Program Invitation (the invitation was received in 2025, I’m still top-rated with 100% success rate) and Upwork Earnings Certificate - A pdf that shows the earnings in last 12 months
- Upwork Contracts up to 100 USD/hour.
- Microsoft Certified Trainer (since 2005) and 10 other Microsoft Certifications (some active, some expired), Online Transcript sharing is possible for these.
- Open Source Contribution - The product existed before Github so my old contributions will not be available, but my most recent pull request is merged to source code on Github last year in August. I also have a Linkedin recommendation from a Microsoft MVP. Recommendation was posted in 2010. Same MVP is not responding to my recommendation letter request yet.
Over 750,000 organizations worldwide have built websites powered by this platform.
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Reference letter by a senior partner of a Softech Health company. The author recommends me for multiple roles that involve networking, web architecture, db administration, coding etc. The company has multiple digital products.
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Reference letter by a scientist/founder in UK - For the company, I deployed a unique solution that allows using Microsoft Exchange Online and cheaper email providers side by side under same domain. The idea is to reduce annual infra costs. Although the company is not that big, imagine deploying this innovation to an enterprise with more than 1000 users.
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Reference letter by a Product Manager - For the company I planned and executed an enterprise migration from Microsoft to Google. Used Microsoft Azure Cloud VMs and open source products to bypass the limitations enforced on both ends.
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A document from Sep 2024, stating I do not have any debt for the dissolved company.
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Trade Registry Gazette Announcements
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For the active company: Tax certificate, declarations, accrual slips and payment receipts
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Forensic Log Analysis & API Protection - a 3 page PDF that explains the client’s challange about a government API will be restricted to them, due to agressive usage and my solution including screenshots, graphs etc.
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For an Enterprise Social Media Company Cost Optimization PDF file.
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Volunteer experience in Universiade Olympic Games (Unfortunately, it is not a recent activity - I worked on their HeadQuarters office as IT Expert at that time)
I believe I have strong reference letters
- CTO of Planning & Development Commission of a region in US - Their product is a high-availability, cloudbased SaaS patform utilized by hundreds of government jurisdictions across the country.
- CEO and Co-Founder of the Largest Turkish Social Media Company - Their mobile app has more than 50M downloads in Google Play & Apple App Store
Although my primary role was SysOps related, I enhanced their deployment pipelines, security posture etc. - CTO of a company from Brazil - A technology company that provides an enterprise asset management system as its main product. The product uses Oracle as its DB backend and I enhanced their deployment pipeline.
Please kindly guide me. Do you think that I’d be a strong candidate? Thank you.