About us
We are Umut and Esra Şaşmaz, two engineers in Poland. Sasmaz labs is the name we build our software under.
Why we make software
We have both spent our careers keeping networks running and safe, at mobile operators, security providers and banks. Octopus grew out of that work: it is the tool we always wanted for keeping networks in order.
Paws 'N' Board is the system we built for a pet hotel in Warsaw, so the people caring for the animals spend less time on paperwork and more time with them.
Polski is the web app we built to learn Polish ourselves, and Bizi Merak Etmeyin is the blog where we write, in Turkish, about our life in Poland.
The founders
Umut Şaşmaz
Co-founder
Umut has worked in networks and security for more than ten years, and automation runs through all of it. He started as a junior network engineer at İşNet in 2015. He then spent three years in Turkcell's network security team, writing the scripts that kept daily operations moving.
At Intertech he founded and co-authored a Fortinet firewall rule automation tool. At A10 Networks he tested new designs and firmware as a resident engineer, and at ING in Warsaw he ran global DDoS and DDI infrastructure and the automation around it. Today he is a lead automation engineer at Bosch. Octopus is the tool he always wanted.
Esra Şaşmaz
Co-founder
Esra has worked in security since 2017. She started in data security operations at Turkcell, ran managed security services at Barikat and Vodafone, and worked as a cyber security engineer at KoçSistem, across Check Point, Fortinet, F5 and Cisco firewalls.
She joined ING in Warsaw in 2022 and is now a senior network security engineer there, looking after Palo Alto firewalls and F5 load balancers and writing Python to take the routine out of daily operations. She is careful with details and believes in learning every day.
How we work
We both work full time. For years, building what we wanted after work meant giving up our social life. Now that AI agents have matured, some of those tasks are offloaded to them.
Small and close
We are two founders. The people who decide what we build are the people who answer your email.
Why Claude
We use several AI agents and keep trying new ones. In our experience, Claude gives the best results.
A loop that learns
We run Claude inside harnesses built on our years of experience. It orchestrates the work, writes and tests the code, feeds its results back into the loop and learns from its own mistakes.
People stay in charge
Every issue is written together with a person, and every merge is made by a person.
Contact
Write to either of us. We answer every message ourselves.
- Founders
- Umut Şaşmaz and Esra Şaşmaz
- Umut
- umut@sasmaz.pl
- Esra
- esra@sasmaz.pl
- Based in
- Poland