A DOGE staffer now walking the halls at NASA maintained a publicly accessible Google Calendar — revealing his connections to the Trump administration initiative, the names of fellow DOGE staffers, and scheduled interviews at companies including Tesla, Palantir, and Anduril.
Riley Sennott, 26, is listed as a "senior advisor" in an internal NASA directory, similar to the nebulous titles given to some DOGE staff in other agencies. His name and involvement with DOGE have not been previously reported.
Like many other DOGE workers, he deleted his LinkedIn profile and made his X account private in recent months. However, Sennott did not make the Google Calendar linked to his personal email address private.
Anyone with the address could see every appointment Sennott had on the calendar going back to 2016.
On January 6, for example, the calendar included a 15-minute event titled "Riley Sennott and DOGE Recruiting." The invite came from a Gmail address that DOGE appeared to be using for recruiting.
While DOGE has advertised open positions for engineering and HR, among other departments, its hiring process has been relatively opaque; Sennott's calendar sheds light on how and when the group interviewed applicants.
Later that month, on January 17, Sennott was scheduled to attend a 30-minute meeting called "SGE ethics discussion." SGE is an acronym used for "special government employee," a title that's been used to describe Elon Musk. That invitation included two people with General Services Administration email addresses and other reported DOGE employees, including Derek Geissler and Brooks Morgan.
The invitation also included the personal email of another previously unreported name: Conor Fennessy. A federal employee told BI that someone by that name has a GSA email address; Fennessy didn't respond to a request for comment.
On February 19, Sennott had an interview scheduled with a person with a government email address listed on Linkedin as a special agent with the Defense Counterintelligence Security Agency. The DCSA conducts background checks on many executive branch officials.
NASA's directory indicates that Sennott works in the administrator's suite at headquarters, and an image shared with BI shows his name is followed by the letters "GSA," an apparent reference to the General Services Administration.
Sennott did not respond to an email or text message about this story. Within an hour of BI reaching out, Sennott's calendar was no longer public.
He appears to have ties to Tesla. His Google Calendar showed several scheduled meetings with Tesla employees, one of which referred to "a rotating project-based role," and a private X account under his name has his bio as "energy @tesla." Several archived posts reference Tesla, including a post in December praising the IT desk at the company's Texas manufacturing facility.
BI was unable to verify whether Sennott was an employee of Musk's electric-vehicle company. Tesla did not reply to a request for comment on Sennott's connection to the company.
In 2022, Sennott worked in crypto; archived versions of his LinkedIn and X profiles refer to him working at Syndica, a startup that creates software for blockchain developers, and his calendar showed interviews with people at the company in November 2021. His calendar also showed scheduled meetings with other major tech firms during an apparent job hunt spanning several months in 2024.
Last March, his calendar noted a scheduled Zoom call about a "venture role" with Founders Fund, one of the first investors in SpaceX. In May, the calendar showed a "recruiter call" with Palantir, the data firm cofounded by the Elon Musk ally and conservative kingmaker Peter Thiel. An April entry was titled "Anduril Opportunity Chat." Anduril is a defense technology company founded by Palmer Luckey.
Just last week, his calendar showed meetings with two partners at the venture capital firm Thrive Capital.
A calendar appointment from 2023 noted that Sennott "is currently working with a non-profit team in Ukraine to efficiently deliver aid and support evacuations." The blurb said that Sennott studied symbolic systems and environmental studies in college, "briefly dabbled in consulting," and has an "entrepreneurial spirit." His calendar also showed several events related to an internship at Booz Allen Hamilton in 2021.
Sennott's precise role at NASA remains unclear, but employees at the agency received an email last month about DOGE personnel.
"The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has arrived onsite at the agency. We anticipate that they will start reviewing our contracts to find efficiencies," the email reads, according to a copy reviewed by BI.
Representatives for DOGE and NASA did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Grace Kay contributed reporting.
