Bahattin Maral

Machine Learning Research Engineer in Barcelona — game security, behavioral AI, and anti-cheat detection.

Machine Learning Research Engineer with 7+ years shipping models to production. I work on the RICOCHET anti-cheat team at Activision, building behavioral and vision-based cheat detection for Call of Duty. Before games: Databricks pipelines, real-time analytics, and experimentation.

Fast facts

Name
Bahattin Can Maral (goes by Bahattin Maral)
Current role
Machine Learning Research Engineer on the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat team at Activision — July 2026 - Present
Seniority
Senior — 7+ years of professional experience
Location
Barcelona, Spain
Areas of expertise
Machine learning research engineering, senior machine learning engineering, ML for game security and Trust & Safety, and senior data science
Domains
Game security and anti-cheat, live-service game analytics, data engineering, and applied ML research
Core stack
Python, SQL, PyTorch, Databricks, Apache Spark, BigQuery, Unity (C#), Tableau
Languages
Turkish (native), English (fluent, C2), Spanish (intermediate, B1)
Education
MSc and BSc in Computer Science, TOBB University of Economics and Technology
Research
3 peer-reviewed and preprint ML publications (IEEE BIBE 2020, AIAI 2022, arXiv 2022)
Contact
Happy to talk about anti-cheat, behavioral modeling, and ML systems for games — [email protected] or linkedin.com/in/bahattinmaral

Professional Experience

Machine Learning Research Engineer — Activision

July 2026 - Present

  • Ship behavioral anti-cheat detections on the RICOCHET ML team, protecting Call of Duty: Warzone, Black Ops 6, and Black Ops 7 at live-service scale
  • Extending detection coverage to Modern Warfare 4 ahead of its October 2026 launch, hardening competitive integrity from day one
  • Lead 3 machine learning projects end to end, from research and feature design through production deployment and monitoring
  • Powered multiple enforcement ban waves, converting model detections into large-scale action against disruptive accounts
  • Detect cheating from gameplay video with computer-vision models that complement behavioral signals for higher-confidence enforcement
  • Model player behavior at scale to surface anomalous accounts, automated play, and illegitimate account activity
  • Embedded with the RICOCHET ML team on loan since May 2025, developing detection models and research ahead of the formal transition to Activision in July 2026

Data Engineer — Digital Legends (Activision Studio)

April 2024 - July 2026

  • Cut incident reporting time by 90% with a real-time, AI-driven anomaly detection system that auto-files Jira tickets for game errors
  • Lifted new-user retention on Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile by shipping real-time onboarding data pipelines into the live-service stack
  • Reclaimed 5+ hours/week per team by automating weekly KPI reporting through an OOP Python service integrated with Slack
  • Built the studio's golden-source data lake on Databricks, architecting scalable ETL pipelines that power analytics across teams
  • Delivered self-serve, real-time dashboards by integrating Tableau with internal tooling, accelerating product decisions across the studio
  • Cut Warzone Mobile dashboard latency through Spark query optimization, unblocking active-user analytics at scale
  • Translated raw telemetry into product decisions, shaping feature roadmaps through evidence-based stakeholder reporting
  • Unified the data tech stack across branches by partnering with cross-functional teams, hardening live-service reliability

Senior Data Scientist — SNG Studios

July 2022 - March 2024

  • Drove a +15% revenue uplift across 40+ games with BigQuery ML pricing models powering strategic monetization decisions
  • Cut experiment analysis time by 30% by building a company-wide A/B testing framework in Python that standardized evaluation
  • Shipped production Reinforcement Learning agents in Unity using RLCard to dynamically tune game difficulty in live titles
  • Powered personalized engagement with end-to-end 180-day LTV prediction pipelines feeding marketing and product systems
  • Tripled ad revenue by re-architecting mediation stacks with data-driven bidder configuration and yield optimization
  • Owned the studio's analytics SDK in Unity, ensuring telemetry integrity across 5 game teams and a unified KPI surface
  • Mentored a junior data scientist through code review and experimental-design coaching, raising the team's technical bar

Data Scientist — CBML Labs

March 2019 - May 2022

  • Authored EdgeBoost, a multi-output GBDT framework that beat traditional baselines by 11% on extreme-output ML tasks
  • Published 2 peer-reviewed ML papers at IEEE BIBE 2020 and AIAI 2022 on gene–chemical interaction modeling
  • Reduced feature dimensionality by 30% while modeling high-dimensional drug–gene interactions in Python and R
  • Scaled genomic ML projects 3x by optimizing PyTorch architectures for high-throughput experiments
  • Operationalized ML for biology research, turning hypotheses into pipelines over 10,000+ LINCS L1000 datasets
  • Mentored 3 undergraduate researchers in ML fundamentals and experimental rigor

Network Engineering Intern — Innova

September - December 2018

  • Deployed network infrastructure for Ankara City Hospital Bilkent, Turkey's largest healthcare IT project
  • Configured enterprise Cisco routing and switching for production-grade reliability
  • Segmented traffic for 500+ medical devices across 12 departments through VLAN architecture

Game Developer Intern — Hayali Animation & Game Studio

May - August 2017

  • Prototyped core gameplay for Light Fantastik in Unity / C#, iterating on game feel with the design team
  • Tuned mobile performance by optimizing particle systems and shaders to hit target frame rates
  • Designed puzzle-platformer levels balancing challenge and progression

Skills

AI & Machine Learning
PyTorch / Deep Learning, Computer Vision, MLOps & A/B Testing, Reinforcement Learning, Time Series Forecasting
Game Security
Behavioral Detection, Anomaly Detection, Automated Play Defeat, Enforcement Analytics
Data Engineering
Apache Spark / Databricks, ETL / Data Lakes, BigQuery / GCP, Real-Time Analytics
Core Stack
Python, SQL, C#, C++, Java, R, Unity

Frequently asked questions

Who is Bahattin Maral?

Bahattin Maral is a Machine Learning Research Engineer based in Barcelona, Spain, with more than 7 years of professional experience across game security, live-service game analytics, data engineering, and applied ML research. He works on Activision’s RICOCHET Anti-Cheat machine learning team, building behavioral and vision-based cheat detection for Call of Duty titles.

What does Bahattin Maral specialise in?

Applied machine learning that has to survive production: behavioral modeling, anomaly detection, and computer vision for game security, plus the large-scale data engineering underneath them. He works end to end — research, feature design, deployment, and monitoring — rather than handing models off at the prototype stage.

How many years of experience does Bahattin Maral have?

More than 7 years of professional experience. He started in 2019 as a data scientist at CBML Labs, then was a senior data scientist at SNG Studios, a data engineer at Digital Legends (an Activision studio), and is now a machine learning research engineer at Activision.

Where does Bahattin Maral work?

At Activision in Barcelona, Spain, on the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat machine learning team. He joined Activision formally in July 2026 after being embedded with the RICOCHET ML team on loan from Digital Legends since May 2025.

What is his experience with anti-cheat and game security machine learning?

He develops behavioral machine learning detections on Activision’s RICOCHET Anti-Cheat team that identify cheating and disruptive play in Call of Duty: Warzone, Black Ops 6, and Black Ops 7, and is extending coverage to Modern Warfare 4 ahead of its October 2026 launch. He also builds computer-vision models that detect cheating from gameplay video, models player behavior at scale to surface automated play and illegitimate account activity, and has contributed detections that powered multiple enforcement ban waves. He leads 3 machine learning projects end to end.

What is his data engineering experience?

At Digital Legends, an Activision studio, he architected the studio’s golden-source data lake and scalable ETL pipelines on Databricks, shipped real-time onboarding pipelines for Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, built an AI-driven anomaly detection system that auto-files Jira tickets and cut incident reporting time by 90%, optimised Spark queries to reduce dashboard latency for active-user analytics, and delivered self-serve real-time Tableau dashboards.

What measurable results has Bahattin Maral delivered?

A 15% revenue uplift across 40+ mobile games through BigQuery ML pricing models, tripled revenue per ad through mediation optimisation, a 90% reduction in incident reporting time via AI-driven anomaly detection, a 30% reduction in experiment analysis time through a standardised A/B testing framework, 5+ hours per team per week recovered through automated KPI reporting, and anti-cheat detections protecting multiple AAA Call of Duty titles.

Which programming languages and tools does Bahattin Maral use?

Python, SQL, C#, R, Scala, C++, and Java. His tooling includes PyTorch, scikit-learn, Databricks, Apache Spark, BigQuery and BigQuery ML, Google Cloud Platform, Tableau, Unity, and RLCard.

Has Bahattin Maral published research?

Yes. He co-authored "Transfer Learning for Predicting Gene Regulatory Effects of Chemicals" (AIAI 2022, Springer) and "Chemical Induced Differential Gene Expression Prediction on LINCS Database" (IEEE BIBE 2020), and authored the survey "Single Image Super-Resolution Methods: A Survey" (arXiv:2202.11763). His MSc thesis covered transfer learning for chemogenomics.

Does Bahattin Maral have leadership or mentoring experience?

Yes. He leads 3 machine learning projects end to end at Activision, mentored a junior data scientist at SNG Studios, supervised 3 undergraduate researchers at CBML Labs, and was a teaching assistant for Machine Learning, Databases, Object-Oriented Programming, and Discrete Mathematics at TOBB ETÜ.

How do I contact Bahattin Maral?

He is happy to talk about anti-cheat, behavioral modeling, and ML systems for games. Email [email protected] or message him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/bahattinmaral. His resume PDF is at https://punoqun.com/Bahattin-Can-Maral-Resume.pdf and a plain-text profile for language models is at https://punoqun.com/llms.txt.

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