Still curious.
The work has changed enormously since I first sat down at a DOS prompt. The reason I do it has changed less.
Hi, I’m Julian.
I’m a Bulgarian-born technology leader and founder working at the intersection of enterprise software, browsers, and security. I spent more than fifteen years at Google working on Chrome, including its enterprise capabilities. Today I work in AI security and continue to build products that begin with real frustrations I have seen firsthand.
For me, the interesting part of engineering is rarely the clever mechanism on its own. It is making a system legible enough for someone to trust it, safe enough for them to use it, and useful enough that they actually want to.
I’ve been a programmer, researcher, manager, and founder. Those roles have taught me different versions of the same lesson: you can’t replace clear thinking with a tool, a process, or a particularly impressive slide deck. You have to understand the problem and care what happens after the thing ships.
A few principles I keep coming back to
- Start with the person who has to live with the result.
- Make the system explainable before you make it magical.
- Give talented people context, trust, and room to own hard problems.
- Stay close enough to the technology to know when the abstraction leaks.
The earlier chapters are less polished and probably more fun. They are here.
Learning by making
DOS utilities, competitions, graphics, and the stubborn wish to find out how things actually work.
Computer vision and augmented reality
Research work connected software, visual computing, and real world contexts.
Building for the enterprise
More than fifteen years around a browser that became critical infrastructure for organizations.
Security, products, people
Working in AI security while co-founding and building tools that make complex technology more usable.