About

Ömer Mert Kaya is an Identity & Access Management Engineer specializing in IAM, IGA, IDM, PAM, authentication and authorization.

Welcome to my personal blog. I’m Ömer Mert Kaya.

Primary and High School

I was born on the night of March 1st, 1995, in Ankara. I completed my primary and secondary education in Akçakoca and Düzce. In the early 2000s, as home computers became widespread in Turkey, I got my own first computer in 2005. Around the same time I discovered the internet and started building what you could call Web 1.0 content sites.

I started out using Mynet’s “mysite” website builder, picking ready-made themes to put a site together quickly. Because I always wanted to know what was going on underneath the hood, and wanted my site to look better, I eventually started building pages with HTML and CSS that I taught myself along the way. There wasn’t much content about this on the Turkish internet at the time, so it took a while before I realized these were actually the foundations of the World Wide Web.

In 2009 I got into Ankara Tuzluçayır Anadolu Lisesi (Anatolian High School). Alongside school, I bought my first domain and hosting and launched my first WordPress ventures. AdSense and a local Turkish ad network called Adkur brought in my first money from the web.

University

Computer Engineering and LC Waikiki

In 2014 I was admitted to the Computer Engineering department at Süleyman Demirel University. Since the state student loan (KYK) wasn’t enough to live on, I had to support myself. When what I earned from the web wasn’t enough either, I took my first real job as a sales associate at LC Waikiki. If you’ve ever been to İyaşpark Mall in Isparta, you might have run into me there between 2015 and 2019.

Internships

Balancing school and work while also landing an internship was genuinely difficult, but I pulled it off.

I interned at Ataseven Teknoloji in April–May 2019, where I built a Flappy Bird–style game in C# with the Unity engine and published it on the Google Play Store.

In May–June 2019 I interned at Data Kontrol Bilişim Teknolojileri, contributing to CRM products built with C# on the .NET framework.

Military Service and First Job

Ministry of National Defense, Sivas

After five years of juggling university and work, I graduated as a computer engineer somewhere in the middle of my class. I started applying for jobs right away, but mandatory military service stood in the way. I gave up my deferment, and in January 2020 I was excited to be assigned as a reserve officer to the Ministry of National Defense’s Sivas Construction and Real Estate Regional Directorate.

Work Experience

Türk Telekom

Knowing I’d need a job before my service ended, I started looking around late 2020. Over 4–5 months I went through interviews for a Junior Broadcast System Engineer role at Türk Telekom. Since hiring at large corporations follows a defined roadmap and takes time, I spent January through May sharpening my skills in JavaScript, Node.js, and Django web frameworks. Since I’d be working as a systems engineer, I also reinforced my knowledge of operating systems, virtual servers, and core networking. I joined Türk Telekom in May 2021.

AgeSA

In mid-2022, with rising inflation pushing me to turn a new page in my career, I received an offer from AgeSA Life and Pension for an Identity and Access Management Associate Specialist role, and I took it, leaving a Türk Telekom job I had genuinely loved.

My time at Türk Telekom was an extremely valuable stage of my professional growth; the knowledge and skills I gained there remain one of the cornerstones of my career.

I started my career at AgeSA as an Associate Specialist and, over three years and two promotions, rose to Senior Specialist.

It was a productive period in which I both deepened my technical expertise and took on significant responsibilities at the organizational level.

Monofor

At this stage of my career, I had the opportunity to join Monofor, a US-headquartered Identity Security platform delivering end-to-end IDM, IAM, IGA, and PAM solutions. Within the vendor organization, I contribute directly to product development while also, in a consulting capacity, successfully bringing this technology to some of Turkey’s leading institutions.

Today at Monofor, I work on end-to-end Identity Security solutions spanning identity lifecycle management, identity governance and administration (IGA), privileged access management (PAM), and authentication/authorization processes.

Sports and Interests

Personal Development