Akash Bobba, a 22-year-old whiz kid of Indian origin, is making waves as a member of a team of “young inexperienced” engineers helping Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) pare down the size of government.
Bobba is one of six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24 and most linked to Musk’s companies — identified by Wired as playing critical roles in the DOGE project. President Donald Trump has by an executive order tasked DOGE with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
READ: DOGE leaders Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy target 94% of remote federal workers (December 9, 2024)
Besides Bobba, five other engineers identified by Wired are Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran.
Bobba has attended University of California Berkeley, where he was in the prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program. According to a copy of his now-deleted LinkedIn obtained by Wired, Bobba was an investment engineering intern at the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund as of last spring and was previously an intern at both Meta and Palantir.
He was a featured guest on a since-deleted podcast with Aman Manazir, an engineer who interviews engineers about how they landed their dream jobs, where he talked about those experiences last June.
Bobba, who is listed in internal government records as an “expert” at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), reports directly to Amanda Scales, the newly appointed chief of staff. Scales, who has a background in hiring for Musk’s AI company xAI, has further fuelled speculation around Bobba’s rapid ascent.
From his beginnings as a standout coder at UC Berkeley, Bobba’s rise to a prominent position in the government is nothing short of remarkable. In addition to his technical skills, Bobba’s resume showcases expertise in AI, data analytics, and financial modelling.
A former classmate of Bobba’s, Charis Zhang, recalled an incident at Berkeley that exemplifies his coding brilliance. Zhang recounted how, just two days before a critical project deadline, Bobba’s teammate accidentally deleted their entire codebase. While the team panicked, Bobba remained calm, rewrote the entire project from scratch overnight, and submitted it ahead of schedule, securing top marks.
“During a project at Berkeley, I accidentally deleted our entire codebase. I panicked. Akash just stared at the screen, shrugged, and rewrote everything from scratch in one night—better than before. We submitted early and got first in the class,” Zhang wrote on social media.
Concerns have emerged over the level of access the young engineers hold within federal agencies. Citing sources, Wired reported that at least four of them — Bobba, Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran — have top-level clearance at the GSA, allowing them access to all physical and IT systems.
Critics argue that the presence of young, relatively inexperienced individuals in key government positions raises concerns about regulatory capture and oversight.
READ: Will Vivek Ramaswamy withdraw from DOGE? (January 20, 2025)
“This is unprecedented in that you have individuals who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan told Wired. “Congress has no real ability to intervene or monitor what’s happening.”
The DOGE initiative has sparked controversy, with reports that some of its personnel attempted to improperly access classified information at the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Top security officials who blocked the attempt were subsequently placed on leave.