22-Year-old Indian American Engineer Among Six New Hires at Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency

New Jersey native and Berkley graduate Akash Bobba is among six young engineers recently hired by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasked with modernizing software and technology to increase efficiency and productivity within government agencies. While new reports indicate that though Bobba has an impressive resume for a 22-year-old, he and his colleagues do not have any experience in government affairs. As India Today notes, the new hires, “all aged between 19 and 24, some barely out of college and one reportedly still in one, has raised concerns about their qualifications and potential access to sensitive government data.”

According to a report inWired, Bobba is listed in internal government records as an “expert” at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). He directly reports to Amanda Scales, “the new chief of staff who was previously involved in hiring at Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI,” the report said. He has been “working emails at the General Services Administration (GSA) emails and A-suite level clearance at the agency with access to all physical spaces at IT systems, Wired reported, citing sources. 

According to Wired, Bobba was featured guest on a since-deleted podcast with Aman Manazir, an engineer who interviews engineers about how they landed their dream jobs. Bobba, a Plainsboro-West Windsor High School alumni, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. He previously worked as an intern at Meta, where he delved into AI, Palantir for data analytics, and Bridgewater Associates for financial modeling. Bobba’s social media accounts, as well as his LinkedIn profile are now deleted. 

Not much information is available on Bobba’s parents, but a few posts on X claim that his father Jay Bobba, was in the U.S. on an H1-B visa. 

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Bobba’s technical prowess was highlighted by a former classmate, Charis Zhang, via an X post. Zhang recounted an incident where Bobba, under pressure, managed to rewrite an entire project’s codebase overnight after it was accidentally deleted, leading their team to secure first place in their class. “Let me tell you something about Akash. During a project at Berkeley, I accidentally deleted our entire codebase 2 days before the deadline. 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. Many such stories. I trust him with everything I own,” he said.

Bobba was the class speaker during his high school graduation in 2011. In the speech, he advised his classmates to seek discomfort. “If there’s anything South has taught us over these last four years, it’s that the answers we deserve demand discomfort,” he said in the speech, published in NJ Spotlight News. “From solving polynomials in Algebra II to breaking down Jacksonian democracy in APUSH, our quest for an understanding was often complex and difficult, challenging us as Pirates to think past the superficial,” he added. “It’s in an application of these lessons that we must similarly embrace a mindset of informed skepticism. Where we can develop our own authentic world views by embracing new perspectives with an open mind and questioning what we don’t quite understand.”