As Inauguration Day approaches, Donald Trump and his team face the task of filling Cabinet posts and thousands of other government roles in his administration.

That long list will likely include a vacant spot for US chief technology officer, a role currently held by Megan Smith, the 52-year-old former Google (GOOG) executive who spent the last two years serving as assistant to the president in Washington, D.C. As the US’s second-ever CTO following Athenahealth co-founder Todd Park, Smith focused on improving three key areas during her tenure, including technology policy, creating a digital, open government, and increasing internet across the US.

Whomever the president-elect appoints as Smith’s successor ought to be a member of the tech community with vast industry experience, an impressive Rolodex to help recruit talent for other technical roles in Trump’s administration, and of course, a deep understanding of the many facets of tech infrastructure, including the cloud and big data.

Yahoo Finance has assembled a short wish list of candidates we’d like to see in the White House next year.

Mike Schroepfer
Chief Technical Officer, Facebook

Schroepfer, or “Schrep” as he’s called in Facebook’s (FB) swanky open offices, remains one of the social network’s internal stars. During his eight years at Facebook, his role has evolved from director of engineering to CTO. Simply put, Facebook’s 10-year vision encompasses three areas including artificial intelligence, connectivity and virtual reality, and Schroepfer is responsible for leading all of them. His accomplishments range from the minor, from helping improve A.I. so Facebook can better rank photos in the News Feed, to developing features that will eventually take advantage of VR. As CTO of the second-most trafficked website in the world (second only to Google), Schroepfer possesses the vision and technical chops needed to potentially serve as White House CTO.

Mike McCue
CEO, Flipboard

McCue, who was once rumored among Silicon Valley gossip circles as a potential CEO replacement for Jack Dorsey at Twitter (TWTR), is a longtime Silicon Valley veteran and serial entrepreneur, with stints at IBM (IBM) and Microsoft (MSFT). He also served as vice president of technology at the influential internet company Netscape during the late 1990s before eventually founding the digital magazine app Flipboard in 2009. Besides having decades of industry experience, McCue is extremely well-liked in tech and has the virtual Rolodex to match.

“The world is under massive disruption as we move to digital,” McCue told me in 2014 in an unpublished interview. “It’s the web, mobile and social. There’s a threat but also an opportunity to help people think and operate differently and really thrive.”

What better perch for McCue to do that than from the White House?

Raji Arasu
Senior Vice President, Intuit

Arasu has worked in tech since the early 1990s, starting as a senior software engineer at companies such as Oracle (ORCL) before spending 10 years at eBay (EBAY) in technical roles and finally landing at Intuit (INTU). As senior vice president of platform and services, Arasu oversees the group responsible for enabling business teams to develop many of Intuit’s products.

Like Smith, she is also deeply invested in addressing the issue of gender diversity in Silicon Valley. In a recent conversation with Yahoo Finance, Arasu said she counsels and mentors women contemplating tech careers. She also serves as an advisory board member for Code.org, a nonprofit focused on introducing computer science to students, particularly women and underrepresented students of color.

Werner Vogels
Chief Technical Officer, Amazon

Vogels is Amazon’s tech whiz. Before joining Amazon (AMZN) in 2004 as director of systems research, Vogels was a research scientist in the computer science department at Cornell University. At Amazon, he was one of the key architects behind Amazon Web Services, the No. 1 public cloud provider with over 1 million paid customers, including NASA, Netflix (NFLX) and Comcast (CMCSA). Vogels clearly has the skills necessary to help advance the country’s push towards analyzing and leveraging large amounts of government data for good.

JB Straubel
Chief Technical Officer, Tesla

A Stanford University alum, Straubel was named one of MIT Technology Review’s top 35 innovators in 2008. Indeed, Tesla’s CTO has been instrumental in driving the company’s success. Among his many accomplishments: pushing for the switch from analog to digital controllers in the electric motor, so the motors can be controlled by software and updated remotely. That decision is one of many that contributed to Tesla (TSLA) being considered one of — if not the — innovative carmakers today. The White House could benefit from Straubel’s gutsy decision-making when it comes to tech infrastructure and data.

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JP Mangalindan is a senior correspondent for Yahoo Finance covering the intersection of tech and business. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

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