How an Indian-origin engineer cold-emailed Google and became Android’s top boss

Sameer Samat presently heads the Android development team at Google, where he was responsible for crucial decisions for the future of the platform.

sameer samat
Samat, who is a computer science graduate from the University of California, San Diego, emphasised that coding is only one part of the discipline.

Leading the team of Android at Google is big. For Sameer Samat, though, it was all about his ambition and taking bold steps to reach the top.

Sameer Samat presently heads the Android development team at Google, where he was responsible for crucial decisions for the future of the platform. Samat announced the big decision of merging Android and ChromeOS into a unified, evolved operating system, – one that would redefine mobile computing in the future. While many wonder why such a decision wasn’t taken in so many years of Android’s history, it has to do with Samat’s bold decisions regarding his career choices and how he ended up at Google.

Who is Sameer Samat? A glance at his educational background

Sameer’s educational background marks him among the best of what Silicon Valley brands hire. Alongside completing his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science in the year 2000 from UC San Diego, he began his journey in the world of technology management as a Program Management Intern in 1998. This short 3-month internship was followed by a small startup called Sourcebank that focused on providing a search engine for programmers to gather reusable source code. He also registered his name as the founding member of Mohomine in 1999, which, after being acquired by Kofax, saw him being promoted to the ranks of Executive Vice President of Products.

All while he was busy founding and heading firms, he also enrolled himself on the Program for Management Development at the Harvard Business School, which helped him get a quicker insight into the MBA education.

His decisions eventually led him to Google, starting as a Product Manager Director in October 2008, where he scaled through the ranks of VP of Product Management at Google Shopping and was eventually promoted to the GM of Google Shopping and Travel. He quit Google in 2015 to become the President at Jawbone, only to return nine months later as the VP/GM of the Android Ecosystem. In April 2024, he ascended to the role of President of the Android Ecosystem.

What does Samat do at Google now?

In his current role, Samat plays a key role in shaping the future of Android. One of his recent announcements was to combine ChromeOS and Android into a single, unified platform. He also highlighted Android 16 and its “Material 3 Expressive” design language, which he described as the most substantial design overhaul for Android in several years. Based on the several interviews to the media, he ensures that Android remains at the top of the mobile ecosystem game regardless of the competition from Apple and other emerging key players from the AI world.

Stories of his cold email to the co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin, have lately been doing the rounds of the internet. In an interview with Business Insider, Samat says that he sent a cold email to Brin in the middle of the night, asking the co-founder for advice. While Brin answered spontaneously and invited him to Google’s office to discuss the problem with top engineering talent at the firm, he eventually ended up doing a job interview on the spot. Samat declined the offer in favour of his own startup, and while Brin acknowledged him, he advised him to secure solid financing and recommended people who later invested in his startups.


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This article was first uploaded on July fifteen, twenty twenty-five, at thirty-nine minutes past twelve in the night.
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