A story that starts in Samsun and continues in a server room.

My name is İlyas Saltay. I am from Samsun; I spend the summers back home and the term in Kırıkkale, where I am in my final year of Special Education at Kırıkkale University. I did not come to software through the curriculum but through my own curiosity — the first sites I built were for nobody, just to see them work.

Today I work as COO at AlgowAI, founded by Mert Meriç Özmen; I run the technical and operational side. From the first client conversation to the proposal, from development to the server and post-launch maintenance, the process is mine. I also allocate the work across the software, design and social media team and control what gets delivered.

What I do

My core work is corporate web systems built on Next.js and PHP, the admin panels layered on top of them, and the Linux server infrastructure that carries all of it. I have shipped live work across sectors as different as heavy industry, food export, catering and education. Alongside that I have written desktop applications for quotations, catalogues and point of sale; network setup, domain and mail architecture — the invisible parts of the job — are also mine.

I do not consider a job finished until it is running in production. I never say "it works" without measuring; and when a fault appears I stay with it until the root cause is found rather than patching over it. Staying calm during an outage or a payment failure is worth as much as the technique itself in this line of work.

On artificial intelligence

I do not hide this: I develop code with AI support. Content, visuals, data processing and testing run through the same workflow. That is why a one-person team can ship at corporate scale. But I verify, test and measure every output myself; the responsibility and the final call on what is delivered belong to me.

Outside the work

I support Fenerbahçe. I have a calm, steady temperament; I would rather be at the head of something being built than in the middle of a crowd. Walking by the sea and taking photographs is what rests me. I also founded and run a student media organisation called Kırıkkale University Media.

For the detailed history you can download my CV (PDF); the Turkish version is here.

To talk about work: contact@ilyassaltay.com or WhatsApp. My own product for restaurants is described on the Sofra page.