Faces of Optery: Chen Atlas

As Optery’s CTO and Co-Founder, Chen leads the company’s engineering and technology strategy, with a strong focus on building reliable, scalable, and secure products.

His day-to-day work can include discussing product and architecture decisions with the engineering team, working on security, privacy, and infrastructure, hiring, and shaping Optery’s long-term technical strategy.

As the company has grown, an increasingly important part of Chen’s role has been ensuring that Optery’s technology, teams, and processes can scale without losing the speed and sense of ownership that helped the company reach this point.

Chen co-founded Optery because personal information had become far too easy to collect, package, and sell, while removing that information remained unnecessarily difficult.

“Technology should give people more control over their lives, not make them feel powerless,” Chen said.

Optery’s mission is meaningful to him because the company produces a concrete result: helping people reduce their digital exposure and regain control over their personal information.

Seeing the Difference for Customers

The moments that have stayed with Chen most are hearing from customers who discovered that sensitive information—including home addresses, phone numbers, and information about family members—was publicly available and then saw it removed through Optery.

Some customers come to Optery after experiencing stalking, harassment, identity theft, or other situations where having personal information publicly available creates real safety concerns. Seeing them feel more secure after using the service reinforces the importance of the work for Chen.

Trust Is Part of the Product

Chen says people may be surprised by how broad the CTO role can be at a growing company. It extends well beyond writing code or selecting technologies to include product decisions, security and compliance, recruiting, organizational design, customer needs, operational risk, and helping different teams make good decisions together.

Within that wide-ranging role, Chen places particular importance on ensuring that security and privacy influence decisions across the company. 

“In a privacy company, trust is part of the product itself,” Chen said.

For Chen, that means security and privacy cannot be treated as responsibilities belonging to only one department. They need to shape how the entire company operates.

Solve the Real Problem

One professional principle guides Chen’s approach: solve the real problem, not simply the problem as it was initially described.

In engineering, it can be tempting to begin implementing a solution immediately. Taking the time to understand the underlying goal, however, often reveals an approach that is simpler, safer, and more scalable.

Chen also believes strongly in giving talented people ownership. Providing people with clear context and responsibility generally produces better results than trying to manage every decision.

Practical Security Habits

Beyond the protection provided by personal data removal, Chen recommends several everyday practices for securing your accounts and devices.

He recommends using passkeys wherever they are available. For accounts that still require passwords, he recommends using a password manager and creating a unique password for each one. When passwords are reused, a breach at one company can leave accounts elsewhere vulnerable.

Chen also strongly recommends enabling multi-factor authentication, particularly for email accounts.

“Your email is often the key to resetting passwords for everything else, so protecting it should be a priority,” Chen said.

“I’d also recommend protecting your smartphone with a strong screen lock and keeping it updated. Because phones often contain authentication apps, passwords, and access to email, securing them is just as important as securing your computer.” 

A Builder’s Life Beyond Work

Music and guitar are major interests for Chen. He plays electric guitar, enjoys experimenting with different sounds, and performs with a band that practices every week. His musical tastes span blues, rock, and electronic music, with Pantera, Chris Cornell, and Solomun among the artists he enjoys.

When he is not playing music, Chen enjoys traveling, hiking with his family and dog, exercising, meeting friends, and spending time with his baby. He prefers Mediterranean cuisine, especially good fish, fresh salads, and simple dishes made with quality ingredients.

His favorite movie is Fight Club, which he can watch repeatedly, and his favorite fictional character is Batman, particularly in The Dark Knight. The most recent book he read was a novel written by his mother.

Chen also likes repairing electronics and recently revived a drone after it landed in a swimming pool. When he was 18, he rebuilt a Ford Sierra after it caught fire, replacing its electronics, seats, air conditioning, and other components.

“I like figuring out things in general,” he said.

Whether he is guiding the company’s technology strategy, helping a team identify a better path forward, or taking on a hands-on repair or rebuilding project, Chen returns to the same principle: understand the real problem, then find the right way to solve it.