Luke Farritor

Luke Farritor (born 2001/2002)^[1] is an American software engineer who is working since 2025 at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).^[2][3]

Luke Farritor
Farritor in 2023
Education	University of Nebraska–Lincoln (dropped out)
Occupation	Software engineer
Employer	Department of Government Efficiency
Father	Shane Farritor

Early life and education

Farritor is the son of Shane Farritor, a University of Nebraska–Lincoln professor from Ravenna, Nebraska.^[4] At 19, he produced Soundtracks for the Present Future at the Contemporary arts center of Nebraska, an installation in collaboration with artist Charley Friedman featuring 59 guitars and mandolins controlled via computer.^[5]

Farritor interned at SpaceX in 2023.^[6] That year, he won a $40,000 prize from the Vesuvius Challenge for using artificial intelligence to uncover ten letters from one of the Herculaneum Papyri scrolls.^[7][8] Farritor's AI program segmented images of the carbonized scroll into 100 pixels by 100 pixels to determine the characters written in ink.^[9][6][10] In February 2024, Farritor and two other competitors he had teamed up with won the $700,000 grand prize for revealing more than 2,000 additional characters.^[11][12]

Farritor studied computer science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, before dropping out to become a Thiel Fellow in 2024.^[13][14]

Career

See also: Department of Government Efficiency § DOGE workforce

In 2025, Farritor joined Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. He is among a group of 19 24-year-olds at the agency.^[15] Farritor currently holds a General Services Administration (GSA) email and A-suite level clearance, with access to all GSA physical spaces and IT systems, according to Wired.^[15] He is also an executive engineer in the office of the secretary of Health and Human Services.^[1] CNN reported on February 6, 2025, that Energy Secretary Chris Wright had that day granted Farritor access to the department's computer systems.^[16] In this position, Farritor manually vetoed payments to the HIV/AIDS relief program PEPFAR, even after some payments had been approved by White House officials and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.^[17][18][19]

Farritor became a full time government employee effective May 31, 2025, at a General Schedule (US civil service pay scale) grade of GS-15 (the top grade).^[20]

See also

• Marko Elez
• Edward Coristine