Everything you need to know about Elon Musk’s DOGE staffers

Though only a few weeks old, already the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is radically changing the face of bureaucracy in D.C. The Elon Musk-led agency has slashed government spending, gained full access to the Treasury Department’s payments systems, and pushed federal employees to resign. 

While Democrats and union groups have raised concerns about the effect on the American people, DOGE and Musk appear to have President Trump’s full support. “He’s a big businessman. He’s a successful guy. That’s why we want him doing this,” Trump said in a press conference on Tuesday, emphasizing that DOGE has “a lot of work, a lot of smart people involved.”

So, who are these “smart people,” who’s actually behind the organizational shake-up in Washington?  Here’s everything you need to know so far about the DOGE staffers. 

Jennifer Balajadia, 36

Balajadia worked as an operations coordinator for the Boring Company, founded in 2016 by Elon Musk, for almost eight years. According to the New York Times, she is an official member of DOGE, traveling with Musk and helping him with scheduling and daily tasks. 

Alexandra T. Beynon, 36 

Beynon was the head of engineering for her husband, Dylan’s, startup, Mindbloom, a guided at-home ketamine-therapy company. She previously worked for Symphony.com as a director in engineering and at Goldman Sachs as a software developer. According to ProPublica, when asked about her role in the new administration and DOGE, she said, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Nicole Hollander, 42

Hollander is working at the General Services Administration. She previously worked at X, where she handled the company’s real estate. Before that, she worked at JBG Smith, a commercial real estate and real estate investment trust company, as senior vice president of retail asset management. Hollander is married to Steve Davis, a longtime associate of Musk’s. 

Kendall M. Lindemann, 24

Lindemann is a member of the DOGE team, according to ProPublica. She worked as a venture associate for Russell Street Ventures, a healthcare firm, founded by another DOGE associate, Brad Smith. After graduating from the University of Tennessee, she worked as a business analyst for McKinsey & Company. 

Adam Ramada, 35

Ramada worked as comanaging partner of Spring Tide Capital, a venture capital company. Spring Tide previously invested in Impulse Space, founded by Tom Mueller, a founding member of SpaceX. According to E&E News, Ramada identified himself as an employee of DOGE in court documents involving a union fight against DOGE’s access to sensitive government information. E&E News, acquired by Politico in 2020, stated that he reportedly appeared in the Energy Department and GSA.

Ryan Riedel, 37

Riedel worked as a lead network security engineer at SpaceX before becoming chief information officer at the Department of Energy (DOE). His new position was confirmed in a LinkedIn post by Ann Dunkin, former CIO of DOE, on February 9. Riedel previously served in the U.S Army Cyber Command as a network manager. 

Kyle Schutt, 37

Schutt is a DOGE software engineer working at the GSA. He was previously chief technology officer at Revv, an online donation platform. Before deleting his LinkedIn profile, Schutt wrote that he led the development and launch of WinRed, the Republican Party’s major online fundraising program, which according to its website, raised $1.8 billion for Republicans in the 2024 election.  

Edward Coristine, 19

Coristine, a first-year student at Northeastern University in Boston, spent three months last summer at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company, according to his résumé, which was obtained by Wired. He is part of the young group of DOGE staffers detailed to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). According to internal records reviewed by Wired, Coristine is listed as an “expert” at OPM. 

Akash Bobba, 21

Bobba was listed in Wired magazine as another one of the six young engineers picked for Musk’s DOGE team. He recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. He was an intern at Meta and at Palantir, the software and data analytics firm that’s a defense contractor. Bobba has reportedly been able to access internal databases as an “expert” at OPM. 

Ethan Shaotran, 22

Shaotran is a member of the DOGE team, according to ProPublica. He recently attended Harvard University where he studied computer science. His LinkedIn account has since been deleted. When he was a student, he received a $100,000 grant from OpenAI to develop an AI scheduling assistant called Spark. He was a finalist in a hackathon organized by Musk’s AI company, xAI. According to Wired, Shaotran is one of six guys under age 24, who are now playing a critical role in DOGE, tasked with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

Luke Farritor, 23

Farritor works as an executive engineer at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), according to ProPublica. He studied computer science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, dropping out before his final semester, and interned at SpaceX, working on its Starlink Wi-Fi team, according to his LinkedIn profile. In March 2024, he received a Thiel fellowship, a two-year program founded by billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel that awards a $100,000 startup grant to students who drop out of college.

Gautier “Cole” Killian, 24

Killin has a working email associated with DOGE, where he is listed as a volunteer, according to Wired. ProPublica reported that he works at the EPA as a federal detail, which typically allows government employees to transfer between agencies. He worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, which specializes in algorithmic financial trades, and which was stated on an archived version of his now-deleted personal website. 

Gavin Kliger, 25

Kliger is a special advisor at OPM, according to ProPublica. He is listed in internal records reviewed by Wired as a special advisor to the director for information technology. Kliger spent around five years as a software engineer at Databricks, an AI company. 

Jordan M. Wick, 28

Wick is a member of the DOGE team, and a recent graduate from MIT, where he studied computer science, according to ProPublica. He was a software engineer at Waymo, where he worked on self-driving cars. He was listed as a cofounder and CTO of Intercept, which is affiliated with California-based tech incubator Y Combinator. 

Nate Cavanaugh, 28

Cavanaugh is an entrepreneur who cofounded two companies, Brainbase and FlowFi. Brainbase is an intellectual property management firm that was acquired by Constellation Software in 2022. FlowFi is an accounting and finance platform for small businesses. He has been interviewing staffers at the GSA as part of the DOGE team, according to ProPublica. 

Jacob Altik, 32

Altik is a 2021 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. He previously clerked for the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Judge Joan L. Larsen and United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee. Last year, he was selected to begin a clerkship for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. 

James Burnham, 41

Burnham is a former litigation partner at Jones Day and a high-ranking Justice Department and White House official from the first Trump administration. According to his former employer’s website, Burnham was a senior associate counsel to President Trump and “played a critical role in the selection and confirmation processes for Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and then-Judge Amy Coney Barrett.” ProPublica reported that his title at DOGE is listed internally as general counsel. 

Keenan D. Kmiec, 45

Kmiec worked in elite law before transitioning to crypto. According to his LinkedIn, he clerked on the Supreme Court for Chief Justice John Roberts in the 2006-2007 term and then worked at a corporate law firm. He was a partner in a small law firm focused on insider-trading litigation. Kmiec then worked for the Tezos Foundation, tasked with “legal project management and other tasks across a cryptocurrency ecosystem,” according to his LinkedIn. After that, he served as CEO of a now-defunct startup called InterPop. 

Anthony Armstrong, 57

Armstrong is a technology banker at Morgan Stanley who worked on Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, now X. He now has a role in the OPM, which handles personnel issues across the federal government. Under the Trump administration, OPM recently directed agencies to submit names of every employee who had underperformed in the past three years and note if any have been on “performance plans.” 

Riccardo Biasini, 39

Biasini is an engineer and former executive who worked at two of Musk’s companies, the Boring Company and Tesla. He now has taken a high-ranking role in OPM, reported ProPublica. Biasini was listed as the person of contact for the government-wide email system used to send messages directly from OPM to millions of federal employees across the government, according to a recent document. 

Brian Bjelde, 44

Bjelde has worked for SpaceX for more than 20 years, currently the vice president of people operations. Previously, he was an associate engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was referred to in press reports as a “top DOGE Lieutenant,” working at OPM to slash head count. 

Steve Davis, 45

Davis worked at SpaceX, X, and the Boring Company, as a senior executive and close associate of Musk’s for more than two decades. He was one of the first people to be associated with DOGE. The New York Times reported that he was on early calls with Musk as they explored ways to cut federal programs.  

Marko Elez, 25

Elez works at the Treasury Department, according to ProPublica. He graduated from Rutgers in 2021, where he studied computer science. He has reportedly gained access to highly sensitive payment systems of the Treasury Department, according to Wired. But Elez allegedly resigned February 6 after the Wall Street Journal reported that he has links to a social media account that posted racist comments online. Musk said publicly he planned to rehire the engineer.

Stephanie Holmes, 43

Holmes runs human resources at DOGE, according to ProPublica. She is a former lawyer with Jones Day, which frequently represented Trump. Holmes also ran her own HR consulting firm, BrighterSideHR, which advised companies to pursue “non-woke” approaches to DEI, according to 404 Media.  

Tom Krause, 47

Krause leads a team who have been granted “read-only” access to the code for the agency’s Fiscal Service payment system, which processes payments for programs such as Social Security and Medicare, according to the Treasury Department. The New York Times reported that Krause is affiliated with Musk’s DOGE team. He previously worked as CEO of Cloud Software Group, which provides enterprise software.

Katie Miller, 33

In December, Trump named Miller, who served in the first administration as a press secretary to Vice President Mike Pence, as one of the first members of DOGE. She is married to White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller. 

Justin Monroe, 36

Monroe is working as an advisor in the office of the director of the FBI, according to ProPublica. He is a seasoned information security professional who served in the U.S. Navy as an information warfare officer. According to NBC News, an unnamed SpaceX employee had been placed in the FBI director’s office, but no name was confirmed. 

Nikhil Rajpal, 30

Rajpal is listed as an “expert” for OPM. He is representing DOGE in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), according to Wired. Rajpal’s online presence has since been deleted, but Wired reported he studied computer science at UC Berkeley and worked at Twitter before Musk’s acquisition. 

Rachel Riley, 33

Riley works as senior advisor at HHS, according to ProPublica. She previously was a partner for the consultancy firm, McKinsey & Company. Riley has worked closely with Brad Smith, a former health official in Trump’s previous administration who ran DOGE during the transition period, as stated in the New York Times.

Michael Russo, 67

Russo is a high-ranking technology official at the Social Security Administration (SSA), as reported by ProPublica. Russo spent more than seven years as an executive and senior advisor with Shift4 Payments, which is an investor in SpaceX, according to his LinkedIn. Russo’s office will oversee the SSA’s more than $2 billion IT budget.

Amanda Scales, 34

Scales worked in the human resources department at xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company. She was listed as the point of contact for questions after a memo was sent to federal employees, putting them on notice that DEI and accessibility initiatives in the federal government were now barred through an executive order. Scales is now chief of staff at OPM. 

Thomas Shedd, 28

Shedd, a mechanical engineer, worked at Tesla, building software that operated vehicle and battery factories. He now is the Federal Acquisition Service deputy commissioner and runs the Technology Transformation Services, according to a GSA press release. 

Brad Smith, 42

Smith served in a series of health-related policy roles during the first Trump administration, including being part of the board on the COVID-19 vaccine development program, Operation Warp Speed. The New York Times reported that he was helping to lead DOGE. 

Christopher Stanley, 33

Stanley is an experienced information security professional who has worked at multiple