Defense

Ex-DOD chief data officer David Spirk joins Palantir

The former Defense official, who served as the Pentagon's first chief data officer, is joining Palantir as a senior counselor.

By Mark Pomerleau

August 4, 2022

Then-Department of Defense Chief Data Officer David Spirk speaks virtually to children at Mitchell Elementary in Tampa, Florida, from the Pentagon on Nov. 16, 2021. (DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jack Sanders)

David Spirk, former chief data officer at the Department of Defense, will join Palantir as a senior counselor.

Spirk, who left the Pentagon in March, will now advise Palantir and focus on helping its leadership grow the company’s government and international business.

Palantir currently has contracts with the Army to build out an intelligence data fabric as part of the Distributed Common Ground System and is competing to be the main contractor for the service’s next-generation ground system, Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node.

In his role at the DOD serving as its first chief data officer, he led the Pentagon’s data management efforts included the creation of a new data strategy and implementation of data decrees from top leadership.

“There are other near-[peer] competitors who are paying attention right now and understand these technologies. If we don’t pick up our pace and continue prioritizing moving towards that open data standard architecture that those data decrees described, then we will fall off pace,” he said.

Previously, Spirk joined CalypsoAI as special advisor.