About Me

I'm a Software Architect at Innovance Consultancy, a Turkish technology consultancy working with mostly fintech and banking clients. Over the past 11+ years I've built my career around React, React Native, leading small and mid-level teams and guide as a chapter lead of 30–40 engineers through everything from cross-functional architecture to client delivery inside heavily regulated environments.

Özgün Bal working on a laptop

These days a growing part of my work is shaping how AI fits into software development. I am driving institutional AI adoption, and hold a Google Cloud Generative AI Leader certification. Alongside that, I've been deliberately widening my own scope beyond frontend and mobile — spending more time in native mobile, backend, and DevOps — because I think the architects who'll matter most in the next few years are the ones who can reason across the whole stack, not just their original specialty.

Özgün Bal at a metal concert

I studied at Boğaziçi University, and I still think of myself as someone who's happiest a few steps ahead of "settled" — whether that's a new framework, a new part of the stack, or a new way of working with AI tools.

Outside of work, I've been a certified scuba diver for over 10 years, I'm a regular at metal concerts, and I recently picked up drumming — trading one kind of rhythm section for another.

Özgün Bal scuba diving by a coral reef