Engineers working for Elon Musk Spacex has been caused as the main advisers to the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), sources say to Wired.
Sunday, Sean Duffy, secretary of the Ministry of Transport (DOT), who supervises the FAA, announcement In an article on X, SpaceX engineers would visit the control center of the air traffic control system in Virginia to take what it positioned on tour. “Plane travel security is a non -partisan issue”, Musk replied. “Spacex engineers will help make travel by plane safe.”
As these positions were published, however, according to sources which have obtained anonymity because they fear reprisals, the engineers of SpaceX were already integrated into the agency under appendix A, special authority This allows government directors to “hire disabled people without obliging them to compete for work”, according to At the staff management office (OPM).
These new recruits arise after the dismissals of hundreds of FAA probation employees, and the deadliest month of us aviation disasters In more than a decade.
According to a source with knowledge, none of the SpaceX engineers have been fully verified on the start date. Unlike Very young technologists associated with the so-called Ministry of Government Effectiveness (DOGE) of Musk who had access to critical systems in agencies that go From OPM At Treasury Department At Oceanic and atmospheric national administration In recent weeks, however, engineers identified by Wired – Tid Malaska, Thomas Kiernan, Sam Smeal and Brady Glantz – seem to have a relevant experience for the FAA.
Malaska is currently, according to his LinkedIn, principal director of the application software in SpaceX, where he started working in May 2021. Former main director of data engineering at Capitol One and a principal architect at FINRA, he is graduate of the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2000 and co-co-co-co-co-co-co-co-co-co-co-co-co-co-coated 2015 book On Hadoop application architectures.
Kiernan is currently a main software engineer at SpaceX, according to his LinkedIn. Before joining SpaceX in May 2020, he worked at Wayfair and graduated from Dartmouth 2017.
Smeal has been a software engineer that has been working at SpaceX since September 2021, according to his LinkedIn. He graduated from Saint Vincent College in 2018.
Glantz has been a software engineer who has been working at SpaceX since May 2024 and has worked as a engineering analyst at Goldman Sachs from 2019 to 2021, according to his LinkedIn, and graduated from the University of Michigan in 2019.
Malaska, Kiernan, Smeal and Glantz did not immediately respond to requests for comments. The FAA did not immediately respond to requests for comments.
In His message on xDuffy said: “Because I know that the media (and Hillary Clinton) say that Elon’s team will have special access, let me specify that @Faanews regularly give visits to the media command center and to companies. “
