Luke Farritor | |
|---|---|
 Farritor in 2023 | |
| Education | University of Nebraska–Lincoln (dropped out) |
| Occupation | Software engineer |
| Employer | Department of Government Efficiency |
| Father | Shane 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]
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]
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]
Media related to Luke Farritor at Wikimedia Commons