Scott Kupor launches US Techforce — recruiting 1,000 engineers into federal government for 2-year tours

Summary

Scott Kupor, serving in a federal role at the Office of Personnel Management, has launched US Techforce, a two-year program targeting the recruitment of 1,000 engineers, product managers, data scientists, and AI specialists into the federal government. Every major agency is participating, including the IRS, HHS, the State Department, and the Department of Defense.

The structural problem Kupor is solving is acute. Only 7% of the federal workforce is early career, compared to an estimated 25–30% at leading tech companies, a gap of at least three to one. The program is designed to address both the talent deficit and the institutional dysfunction that has historically neutralized similar efforts.

Program design

• Recruits enter agencies as cohesive teams, not as isolated individuals, with direct reporting lines to senior political leadership rather than being absorbed into existing bureaucratic structures.
• 25 private-sector partners are co-sponsoring the initiative, including Coinbase, Robinhood, Databricks, Snowflake, NVIDIA, xAI, and OpenAI. These firms will run a speaker series, provide career development programming, and participate in a job fair at the end of the two-year term.
• OPM will centralize outbound recruitment, screening, and technical assessment, then hand agencies a pre-qualified candidate list. Agencies then compete against one another to attract those candidates.
• Participants are not required to make long-term commitments. Those who want to exit to the private sector after two years are actively supported in doing so.

Kupor identifies the IRS as a potential anchor agency, capable of absorbing several hundred recruits on its own. Other highlighted opportunities include the Department of Energy, which is running supercomputing and quantum computing workloads, and CMS, where Dr. Oz is attempting to rebuild consumer-facing systems including an integrated physician directory that does not currently exist.

Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb, is embedded at OPM and leading a parallel initiative called Design for America, focused on redesigning front-end consumer applications across federal agencies. Kupor frames the combination of Gebbia's UX work and the back-end modernization Techforce will drive as a paired effort to overhaul how government services are delivered.

If the model proves out, Kupor intends to scale it to 5,000 or 10,000 recruits and extend the centralized hiring approach to other high-volume roles including program managers, HR professionals, and financial analysts. Applications are open at techforce.gov.