Julian Setian, president and CEO of SOSi, has received the 2026 Wash100 Award in recognition of his sustained leadership in transforming the company into a diversified provider of advanced mission systems and services supporting defense, intelligence and federal civilian agencies.
Jim Garrettson, CEO of Executive Mosaic and founder of the Wash100 Award, presented the honor to Setian during a visit to SOSi’s office on Feb. 23.
The 2026 recognition marks Setian’s third consecutive Wash100 win and his fifth overall.
“As CEO of SOSi, Julian has thoughtfully guided the company’s growth while keeping a strong focus on delivering mission-critical solutions across defense, intelligence and federal civilian agencies,” Garrettson stated. “Julian has a natural ability to pair big-picture strategy with practical execution, building lasting partnerships along the way. This continued recognition highlights the respect he has earned and the meaningful impact he’ll continue to make across federal contracting and national security missions.”
Why Did Julian Setian Win the 2026 Wash100 Award?
Setian earned his 2026 Wash100 Award for driving SOSi’s continued evolution from a pure services provider into a company that builds and delivers advanced mission systems and technology solutions aligned with national security priorities.
Over the past year, SOSi secured significant contract awards that underscore its expanding role across language services, missile defense and cybersecurity compliance.
In January, the Department of Justice awarded SOSi a potential five-year, $875 million indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to provide interpretation and language support services for the Executive Office for Immigration Review. The award supports immigration court operations nationwide, with services including on-site, video remote and telephonic interpretation, written translation and computer-aided real-time transcription.
The contract builds on a prior potential $400 million EOIR language services award in 2020, reinforcing SOSi’s long-standing role in supporting immigration proceedings and ensuring language access across the justice system.
“Our work on the EOIR program exemplifies how SOSi combines deep domain expertise with advanced technology to accelerate mission success,” Setian said. “In 2026, we plan to scale our WordBridge platform for on-demand interpretation, enabling government and commercial customers to access faster, more cost-effective and more reliable language solutions.”
SOSi also expanded its footprint in missile defense through a position on the potential 10-year, $151 billion Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense, or SHIELD, contract vehicle. SHIELD is designed to help the Missile Defense Agency and other Department of War components accelerate delivery of AI/ML-enabled, digitally engineered and open-architecture capabilities supporting the creation of a layered homeland defense.
To further strengthen its position as a trusted national security partner, SOSi achieved Level 2 certification under the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification 2.0 program following a formal audit. The certification demonstrates implementation of advanced cybersecurity practices to safeguard controlled unclassified information ahead of policy implementation deadlines.
For Setian, the Wash100 recognition reflects the collective efforts of his organization.
“In recent years, we’ve completely transformed our business from a pure services firm to one that builds and delivers advanced mission systems and solutions that help our customers modernize their tools, technology and processes,” he said. “I’m proud to represent the people behind our work and honored to be recognized alongside leaders shaping our nation’s most critical national security priorities.”
Who Is Julian Setian?
Julian Setian joined the family-founded company in 1994 when it focused primarily on foreign language translation and transcription services for federal law enforcement and has served as CEO of SOSi since 2001.
He expanded SOSi’s footprint into the DOW and the intelligence community. Under his leadership, the company secured its first unrestricted prime contract in 1996, positioning SOSi as a leading provider of language services and mission support capabilities.
Beyond SOSi, Setian is the founder and chairman of Exovera, a cloud-based media monitoring and analysis platform spun out of SOSi in 2012. Exovera provides multilingual news and social media monitoring supported by its EV3 analytics platform, delivering real-time alerts and trend analysis to government customers.
He also serves as an executive board member at Athenix Solutions Group, a company providing software development and cyber services to intelligence and defense customers, and AppTek.ai, a provider of cross-lingual communication technologies.
What Is the Wash100 Award?
The Wash100 Award recognizes the 100 most influential leaders in government contracting and the federal sector. Every year, Executive Mosaic selects honorees based on achievements over the past year and impact on the government contracting landscape.
Executive Mosaic congratulates Julian Setian and the SOSi team on this milestone achievement.
Vote for Setian in the 2026 Wash100 2026 Wash100 popular vote competition by visiting Wash100.com.
