Mustafa CANLI was born in 1979 in Ankara. He received his Bachelor's degree from METU Mechanical Engineering, his Master's degrees in Information Systems and in Business Administration from Northeastern University in Boston, USA.

He has been in the government IT projects at management positions since 2006, creating e-government systems. Since 2023 he has been Director General of Innovation and Education Technologies at the Ministry of National Education (Türkiye), working on developing EdTech projects.