SOSi’s Julian Setian Wins 2026 Wash100 Award for Driving Company Growth, Advancing Government Customer Missions
Executive Mosaic is proud to announce the selection of SOSi President and CEO Julian Setian as a winner of the Wash100 Award for 2026. The Wash100 Award is a prestigious accolade given out annually to the 100 most influential and impactful members of the government and the government contracting industry in recognition of their accomplishments over the past year and in anticipation of future contributions.
2026 marks the third straight year Setian has been given this honor. Overall, it is his fifth win, which Executive Mosaic CEO Jim Garrettson described as “an impressive achievement and a true reflection of the steady, trusted leadership Julian brings to GovCon year after year.”
“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,” remarked Garrettson, who founded the Wash100 Award.
“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.”
For Setian, his latest Wash100 win “speaks to our team’s talents and accomplishments.”
“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. 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,” Setian said.
Join the 2026 Wash100 Award popular vote competition and choose Julian Setian as one of your favorite GovCon leaders!
Who Is Julian Setian?
Setian has led SOSi as its chief executive since 2001. He joined the family-founded company in 1994 at a time when it focused on foreign language translation and transcription services for federal law enforcement. At SOSi he expanded business with key federal agencies and led diversification into the Department of Defense — now also known as the Department of War — and intelligence community, securing the company’s first unrestricted prime contract in 1996.
As CEO, Setian has worked to position SOSi as a leading provider of language services for DOW and set the stage for future growth into broader government contracting areas. He has also worked to foster a culture of service within the company, which supports various organizations that assist and advocate for former and active military members, their spouses and caregivers.
Apart from leading SOSi, Setian is also the founder and chairman of Exovera, a cloud-based social and traditional media monitoring and analysis service spun out in 2012 as a separate, self-funded, wholly-owned subsidiary of SOSi. It grew from an SOSi media monitoring program begun under a U.S. Strategic Command contract and now tracks news and social media sites, covering a multitude of sources worldwide. Exovera is staffed by a multilingual team with a news desk and support center and employs tools such as its EV3 platform to provide real-time alerts, trend analysis and visualization to help clients anticipate and understand events.
In addition, Setian serves as an executive board member at Athenix Solutions Group, a technology and services company that provides systems and software development, intelligence and cyber operations, and special mission and force readiness offerings to U.S. intelligence community and defense customers. He serves in the same capacity at AppTek.ai, a company that develops offerings for cross-lingual communication, specializing in technologies such as automatic speech recognition, neural machine translation, machine learning, natural language understanding, generative pre-trained transformers / large language models and text-to-speech.
Why Is Julian Setian a 2026 Wash100 Award Winner?
Executive Mosaic is honoring Julian Setian with the Wash100 Award anew for having driven his company’s growth this past year via the delivery of services and products that help customers in the U.S. government achieve their missions.
Providing Language Support
In line with SOSi’s foundational areas of expertise, the company was awarded just this January a contract by the Department of Justice that calls for the provision of interpretation and language support services. Potentially worth $875 million, the indefinite-delivery / indefinite-quantity contract will benefit the Executive Office for Immigration Review, or EOIR, by supporting immigration court operations nationwide, with specific work locations and funding determined at the task order level.
Under the award, SOSi will deliver a range of language support capabilities, including on-site interpretation, video remote interpretation, telephonic interpretation, written translation and computer-aided real-time transcription services. These services are designed to supplement EOIR’s existing interpreter workforce and ensure language access during immigration hearings, appellate reviews and other immigration-related proceedings nationwide.
The award builds on a previous EOIR language services contract awarded to SOSi in 2020, when the company received a potential $400 million agreement to provide translation and transcription support for immigration proceedings — underscoring the continuity and expansion of SOSi’s role in supporting EOIR’s mission.
Commenting on the award, Setian said, “Our work on the EOIR program exemplifies how SOSi combines deep domain expertise with advanced technology to accelerate mission success.”
“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,” the chief executive added.
Delivering Mission Systems
And in line with SOSi’s efforts to expand its offerings to various mission systems, the company was awarded a position on the potential 10-year, $151 billion Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense, or SHIELD, contract.
SHIELD is a flexible vehicle designed to help the Missile Defense Agency and other Department of War entities rapidly compete task orders and accelerate the delivery of innovative capabilities to warfighters. Through SHIELD, MDA seeks to build continuous, layered protection against air, missile, space, cyber and hybrid threats via the use of AI- and machine learning-enabled applications, model-based systems engineering, open systems architecture, digital engineering and agile processes.
In a LinkedIn post, SOSi said the SHIELD contract award enables it “to provide ground systems, communications infrastructure, and mission-critical support that advance the architectures MDA depends on—reflecting SOSi’s long-term commitment to supporting missile defense and intelligence missions in one of the nation’s most critical defense technology hubs.”
To sustain its ability to deliver the services and technologies needed by its government customers, SOSi underwent an audit to achieve compliance with the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification 2.0 program, whose requirements began going into effect in November 2025. The audit resulted in the company achieving Level 2 certification, which demonstrates the auditee’s having implemented advanced cybersecurity practices for the protection of controlled unclassified information.
“Achieving CMMC Certification is more than a compliance milestone—it reflects the discipline, teamwork, and technical maturity required to protect sensitive defense information,” Setian said, adding, “We’re proud to be among the first in our industry to reach this level ahead of policy implementation, reinforcing SOSi’s role as a trusted, technology-enabled mission partner supporting critical national security operations worldwide.”
Demonstrating Exceptional Leadership
Now more than ever, players in the government contracting space need to grow and transform to keep pace not only with the rapid advances in technology but also with the evolution of the security landscape across all domains. The leadership that Setian demonstrates at SOSi will guarantee that his company will continue to prevail as a force to reckon with in the GovCon space. It is this kind of leadership that the Wash100 Award recognizes and celebrates.
What Is SOSi?
SOSi is a government services company dedicated to advancing and safeguarding the interests of the United States and its allies globally. Founded in 1989, SOSi has evolved from a niche provider of language services into a diversified mission support organization that delivers complex technical and operational solutions across defense, intelligence and government agencies. The firm focuses on modernizing legacy information systems, developing innovative technologies, supporting intelligence analysis and managing critical infrastructure and operations for customers including the U.S. Department of War and the intelligence community. SOSi’s work spans securing IT systems, providing border enforcement and humanitarian support, and sustaining essential government facilities and operations.
Executive Mosaic congratulates Julian Setian and his team for this momentous achievement. Vote for Julian Setian as one of your favorite 2026 Wash100 Award winners this year by visiting Wash100.com!