Meritocracy Fellowship

A World-Changing Company

Palantir builds the world’s leading software for data-driven decisions and operations. By bringing the right data to the people who need it, our platforms empower our partners to develop lifesaving drugs, forecast supply chain disruptions, locate missing children, and more.

The Program

American universities have lost their way. Once incubators of meritocracy, today’s colleges prioritize other values. They reward conformity over originality, safety over risk, and comfort over truth. 

We launched the Meritocracy Fellowship to cultivate exceptional talent, increasingly overlooked, regardless of background. Based purely on merit and academic excellence, graduating high school students will be invited to interview, and select applicants will receive a Meritocracy Fellowship. Those that excel will obtain offers to join Palantir full time.

Skip the debt. Reclaim years of your life. Earn the Palantir degree.

The Curriculum

What is the West? Is it worth defending? In what ways is America exceptional within the Western world? At Palantir, Fellows begin their journey by exploring these fundamental questions through curated readings and seminars with leading experts. This initial period is designed to immerse Fellows in rigorous debate and open exchange of ideas—laying the intellectual foundation before they join forward-deployed engineering or internal software teams.

In our inaugural cohort, Fellows engaged with world-class historians, philosophers, scientists, writers, and technologists, including Gideon Rose, Edward Wittenstein, Bob McGrew, Reihan Salaam, Hal Brands, Shilo Brooks, Larry Arn, Mark Lilla, Lawrence Wright, Adam Klein, Brendan McCord, Lt. General (ret.) George Smith, Bob Langer, Itai Yanai, among others. They also learned from Palantirians such as Dr. Alex Karp, Shyam Sankar, Ted Mabrey, Akshay Krishnaswamy, Courtney Bowman, Nicholas Zamiska, Samantha Clark, Parvathy Menon, and more.

Our most vital technologies cannot be created by those indifferent to their purpose. Today’s challenges demand builders who are guided by conviction and a clear sense of mission.

The Role

Following the first part of the Fellowship, you’ll work alongside Forward Deployed Engineers and software developers to build software and deliver customer outcomes. In this role, the challenges you'll seek will require a curious and analytical approach, a sharp intuition for product, and a strong degree of user insight. You will be matched to roles based on your skills, interests, and experience.