Elon Musk’s Go-to man at DOGE is SpaceX’s 22nd employee, who has also worked at Tesla and Twitter. Meet …

From pioneering space exploration at SpaceX to reshaping social media at Twitter (now X), Steve Davis has been a constant figure in Elon Musk’s orbit for over two years. Now, the 45-year-old engineer faces his most ambitious challenge yet: Helping the world’s richest man streamline the US government. According to a recent New York Times article, Davis has emerged as the de-facto day-to-day leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a bold cost-cutting initiative given to Elon Musk by the US President Donald Trump.

Davis’s relationship with Musk began more than 20 years ago when, as a Stanford aerospace engineering student, he was handpicked by Musk to join SpaceX as its 22nd employee. Since then, Davis has become one of Musk’s most trusted confidants, earning a reputation as a relentless cost-cutter and a problem-solver willing to tackle any task—no matter how daunting or unfamiliar.