2026 Palantir Meritocracy Fellow

Brady Luce

High-agency builder and analyst shipping software end-to-end as a solo founder — including a live iOS app on the App Store — with a quantitative core, a long-term orientation, and a preference for measurable output over abstraction.

Tyler, TexasSAT 1570 · ACT 35Graduating May 2026Aerospace · Econ · Theology
profile

Operating on first-principles, long-term orientation, and disciplined execution.

Interests center on engineering (aerospace-leaning), economics and finance, history, theology, and the design of high-leverage systems. Track record spans shipping production software solo, building automation and retrieval systems for real clients, and leading competitive math and athletic teams.

1570
SAT · 800 Math / 770 R&W
35
ACT composite · top 1%
top 10%
class rank, 98+ average
5 / 5
self-studied AP Calc BC & Microecon
1
solo-shipped iOS app, live on the App Store
2,000+
hrs of audio indexed in a production RAG system
fellowship

Palantir Meritocracy Fellowship

A highly competitive national fellowship emphasizing analytical reasoning, first-principles thinking, and real-world problem solving over conventional credentialing.

Fellow (Selected)Fall 2026 · Full-time · New York City
  • Intensive seminars with leading thinkers across history, philosophy, science, and technology, paired with direct exposure to how complex institutional and engineering problems are framed and solved.
  • Hands-on project work embedded with Palantir teams, contributing to real-world data and software engineering solutions on live problems — not coursework simulations.
  • Approaching the fellowship as a problem-discovery environment: prioritizing identification, scoping, and documentation of high-value problems over networking or credential performance.
projects

Building, end to end.

Solo-founder track record across a live App Store product, a full-stack SaaS, production AI retrieval systems, and client automation work.

live on the app store

Theosis

Orthodox Christian Study & Prayer App — Solo Founder & Developer

Designed, built, and shipped a live iOS application as the sole developer — owning the entire lifecycle: concept, design, architecture, development, release, and ongoing maintenance. A patristic study engine pairing Scripture with verse-anchored commentary from 85+ Church Fathers, the full daily liturgical cycle, and a deliberate design tone — reverent, ancient, calm — built free and ad-free.

theosisapp.org ↗
Patristic study engineScripture paired with verse-anchored commentary from 85+ Church Fathers, including the Catena Aurea — full searchable works, multiple translations, source provenance on every passage.
Full liturgical cycleSaint of the day, fasting guidance, appointed Gospel & Epistle readings, troparia, kontakia, and tones — across both the Old and New Calendars.
Prayer & offline accessCustomizable morning and evening prayer rule, hundreds of saint icons, and a parish/monastery finder filterable by jurisdiction.
Doctrinally validatedSourced, structured, and validated a large liturgical and patristic corpus against reliable Orthodox sources — never generating or approximating saints, readings, or prayers.
NotæRetired
AI-to-Markdown Knowledge SaaS

Full-stack SaaS converting AI chat history into structured Markdown notes. Ran brand, marketing, and outreach end-to-end. Retired deliberately after concluding the product had weak market fit — a call to reallocate effort, not a failure to ship.

Next.jsFastAPISupabaseStripe
RAG Search SystemProduction
AI Search Over 2,000+ Hours of Audio

Designed and deployed a retrieval-augmented chatbot operating over a 2,000+ hour transcribed audio corpus, enabling natural-language Q&A. Owned backend, frontend, and live operations.

EmbeddingsRetrievalPython
AI AutomationDelivered
Workflow Tooling for East Texas Businesses

Built automation replacing manual workflows for local business owners: a real-estate parcel data system, a COMEX commodity-price updater, and an automated PDF contract generator.

n8nLindyJavaScriptGoogle Sheets
leadership & activities

Leading teams on the court, in the classroom, in the room.

Varsity Basketball
Team Captain · 4 yrs

Led the program to the most wins in its history. 1st Team All-District, All-State Honorable Mention, team MVP & Offensive MVP.

Mu Alpha Theta
President · 4 yrs

Elected president of the math honor society. Placed 5th in Texas in Advanced Mathematics at the TAPPS state tournament.

Theology Club
Founder & President

Founded a theology and apologetics club; hosted monthly debates and guest speakers. Grew membership 40% senior year.

National Honor Society
Chapter President

Led officer meetings and faculty relations. Launched a peer-tutoring initiative supporting 30+ students.

NASA Aerospace Scholars
Scholar · Grade 11

Designed a Mars habitat mission plan. Led the data analysis team and earned a distinction for the team presentation.

Texas Bank & Trust
Student Board Member

Selected for the bank’s student advisory board; presented on ethics and local economic issues.

education & honors

Top 1% testing, self-studied past the curriculum.

Education
Grace Community School
Tyler, Texas · Graduating May 2026

Top 10% class rank, Highest Honor Roll every semester, Prestigious Scholar distinction.

UT Austin — Extension
Grade 12 · College credit

Completed a college-credit Latin course, building reading competency in a classical language.

Tyler Junior College
Grade 12 · Dual Credit

Calculus III — vectors, partial derivatives, multiple integrals, Green's, Stokes', and the Divergence theorems.

Awards & Honors
Palantir Meritocracy Fellowship — selected, 2026
TAPPS Advanced Mathematics State Finalist — 5th in Texas
SAT 1570 / ACT 35 — top 1% nationally
National Merit Commended Scholar — 2024
Basketball All-State Honorable Mention & 1st Team All-District
AP Calculus BC (5) & AP Microeconomics (5) — both self-studied
Highest Honor Roll every semester · Prestigious Scholar distinction
Choir State Champion — Grades 9–10
contact

Let's build something.

Open to conversations on building, fellowships, and anything at the intersection of engineering, economics, and first-principles problem solving.