Luke Farritor

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

Luke Farritor
Luke Farritor (2023)
Education	University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Occupation	Software engineer
Father	Shane Farritor

Early life and education

Luke is the son of Shane Farritor, a University of Nebraska–Lincoln professor from Ravenna, Nebraska.^[4] Luke interned at SpaceX in 2023.^[5] 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.^[6][7] Farritor's AI program segmented images of the carbonized scroll into 100 pixels by 100 pixels to determine the characters written in ink.^[8][5][9] 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.^[10][11]

Farritor studied computer science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, before dropping out to become a Thiel Fellow in 2024.^[12][13]

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.^[14] 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.^[14] 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.^[15] 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.^[16][17][18]

See also

• Marko Elez