Özlem Erdener Sönmez is an aeronautical engineer. She graduated with a BS from Middle East Technical University (METU) in 1999, with an MS degree at METU Aeronautical Engineering Department in 2001. She has been working for Turkish Aerospace since 1999, mainly focused on indigenous aircraft design projects. She has worked as a structural design engineer and was the senior systems engineer responsible for the technical project management in all indigenous fixed wing aircraft design projects. She has been working in the Engineering Integration Team since 2019, with the main focus on integrating Model Based Systems Engineering and digital continuity to ongoing design projects.