After decades focused on building companies, Justin Fulcher moved into government work, joining President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative as a founding member. His first posting was at the Department of Veterans Affairs, an agency responsible for serving millions of veterans across the entire country.

Fulcher later moved to the Department of Defense, where he took on the role of DOGE Lead. His work there centered on acquisition reform and modernizing outdated information technology systems, tasks that drew directly on the technical background he had built over more than a decade running RingMD across multiple continents.

A Promotion at the Pentagon

His work at the Department of Defense led to a promotion to Senior Advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, placing him closer to the center of decisions about how the department modernizes its systems and manages procurement. Justin Fulcher departed the role in July 2025 after roughly six months in the position, a timeline he had apparently set for himself from the start.

In a statement released through the Department of Defense, Fulcher said he had completed six months of public service to his country as planned, framing the departure as the fulfillment of a defined commitment rather than an abrupt exit from government work.

From Startups to Systems

Justin Fulcher’s move into government work fits a broader pattern across his career: identifying systems that function poorly and rebuilding them, whether the system in question is a rural clinic network in Southeast Asia or federal acquisition processes inside the Pentagon. The technical instincts that shaped RingMD followed him directly into public service.

The move also marked a departure from the startup world he had known since his teens, trading equity and product roadmaps for the slower, more procedural rhythms of federal agencies. The same modernization instincts that once rebuilt a telehealth marketplace were now aimed at acquisition rules and legacy IT systems inside one of the largest bureaucracies in the country, a shift in scale rather than a shift in approach. Refer to this article for more information.

More about Justin Fulcher on https://x.com/JustinFulcher