#SoCaltech: Julian Navarro

Julian Navarro. Credit: Sergio Solorzano

“In my first year, I didn’t get any summer jobs I interviewed for. I didn’t know how to talk. I didn’t know what they wanted to hear. Other students had way more coding experience than me coming from high school. When I started teaching at FSRI, I learned how to prepare. I also have a friend at Caltech named Favour Okodogbe who got an internship, and I learned a lot from her about how to communicate in interviews and how to express yourself—like making eye contact and sharing your thought process. That motivated me to help other students who might be in the same position I was in.

Now, with help from Caltech’s CALE (Career Achievement, Leadership, and Exploration) and our alumni network, our club brings companies to campus to do workshops. Last year, we brought NVIDIA and Roblox, and we talked about the interview process and the importance of LinkedIn. Then, we set up photo shoots so people can have a good LinkedIn picture. We also made a visit to Google’s Venice office with students interested in software engineering and quantum computing. These companies want to recruit here, and we give students the opportunity to connect with them directly in a more personal way.”

Julian Navarro is a fourth-year computer science major from San Juan, Puerto Rico. After working as a teaching assistant in 2023 with the First-Year Success Research Institute (FSRI), Navarro cofounded CS Careers @ Caltech, a club that helps students network with recruiters from tech firms and gain professional development skills. After graduation in June 2025, he plans to start a job as a software engineer at Oracle, where he completed an internship in 2024.

#SoCaltech is an occasional series celebrating the diverse individuals who give Caltech its spirit of excellence, ambition, and ingenuity. Know someone we should profile? Send nominations to magazine@caltech.edu.