A new White House technology office is conducting job interviews without standard federal hiring procedures, according to a report published by WIRED on August 6, 2026. The National Design Studio, led by Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia, is recruiting engineers through cold pitches and video calls that sidestep the government's official job portal, echoing the opaque hiring practices of the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency. An engineer who interviewed for a position with the agency told WIRED the process was "casual to the point where I don't think there was any process established."

The National Design Studio emerged in August 2025, less than two months after Elon Musk departed from DOGE, and now operates under the Executive Office of the President. While the NDS website advertises open positions, it provides little information about the roles and no application mechanism. NDS jobs don't appear on USAJobs, the federal government's hiring portal. The engineer who interviewed received a cold pitch from Edward "Big Balls" Coristine, NDS's 19-year-old head of engineering, who had previously been terminated from an internship at a network monitoring firm after being suspected of leaking internal information. Coristine, who joined the government as part of DOGE's early core, now leads recruitment for the roughly 30-person team. The interview included only Coristine, with no recruiter present, and took place over video rather than phone, contrary to typical government screening practices designed to reduce bias.

According to the engineer who interviewed, Coristine described the role as supporting Rampart, a tool released in late June 2026 to prevent personally identifiable information from leaving a user's browser. In a podcast interview, Coristine called the project a "side quest" and said the NDS team lacked a machine-learning engineer. The tool resembles OpenAI's browser-based privacy filter, which detects and masks personal emails, addresses, and account numbers automatically. But the engineer questioned its utility in government contexts, noting that "in most instances, when you are asking for PII, you want PII." Citizens accessing government benefits typically must provide social security numbers or addresses, making automatic redaction counterproductive. The engineer speculated the project was "indicative of an organization that has no goals," pointing out that the National Institute of Standards and Technology already supports the creation of tools to solve complex technical problems around privacy.

The White House defended NDS's work, with spokesperson Davis Ingle stating that Gebbia "is doing outstanding work modernizing federal digital and physical services" and that Trump has "consistently prioritized innovation and efficiency." But the group has faced scrutiny for potentially violating users' privacy. In June 2026, The Guardian reported that NDS appeared to be building new government websites for passports and voter registration where users would enter sensitive information, using commercial tracking tools that didn't appear to comply with the Privacy Act. Akash Bobba, an NDS member who discussed the voter registration website with the National Association of Secretaries of State, reportedly told attendees, "I don't know what they retain and what they are logging." The organization's structure remains opaque, with some members retaining positions at other agencies months after reportedly moving to NDS. The rapid hiring of young engineers with limited experience, combined with projects that duplicate existing government capabilities, raises questions about whether the White House's efficiency push is creating redundancy rather than eliminating it. Organizations that bypass established processes in the name of innovation often discover those processes existed for valid reasons.