Joe Rospars, chief digital strategist

The brilliant mastermind of the Obama digital strategy, Rospars was key to Obama’s internet drive that took America by storm in 2008, raising millions of dollars along the way. Rospars comes from a political and writing background, having got his start on Howard Dean’s failed run for the Democratic nomination in 2004, but now devotes himself to the search for the perfect digital operation.

He is also a consummate entrepreneur and businessman, co-founding the now international and lucrative Blue State Digital, which works alongside the Obama team and has clients in the UK that include trade unions the Tate and Cadbury. His mantra is that technology should make people smarter, and his idea of heaven is a digital campaign that flows quietly, smoothly and without surprises. He has but one goal: to win.

Michael Slaby, chief integration and innovation officer

A man with a long title, and a big job: to develop the online tools in Obama’s Chicago digital dream factory that it is hoped will drive the president on to re-election in November. More geeky than Rospars, he runs an impressive-sized team of analytics experts and digital programmers. Six staffers are dedicated just to A-B testing – road testing different variations of web page design and architecture to see which has the best consumer feedback. Such A-B testing in 2008 discovered that just by including a photograph of the Obama family on the front page of MyBarackObama.com they raised almost $3m more in small donations. The Chicago team is now using a tool developed by a start-up called Optimizely that allows for far more sophisticated testing.

Teddy Goff, digital director

Goff began as a lowly intern in the 2008 Obama campaign, but quickly rose up the food chain, running the battleground desk for the new media team. Between 2008 and the re-election campaign he spent two years at Rospar’s Blue State Digital. A good people motivator, he helps manage the team.

Harper Reed, chief technology officer

The CTO for Obama for America looks the part – he is the model of a hipster tech freak, with multiple piercings, spacers and a scraggly beard. With a background in crowd-sourcing and cloud-computing, his appointment gives a significant clue to what the Obama team hopes to achieve in 2012. He is an innovator to his bones, with a passion for open source technology that will encourage engagement with voters.

Expect him to come up with some cool new tricks this election cycle.

Andrew Bleeker, online advertising chief

If 2012 is to be the year in which online advertising comes of age in politics, then Bleeker will have something to do with it. Director of internet advertising for Obama in the 2008 election, where he helped to develop the campaign’s explosive online marketing, he is also playing a leading role in this year’s Obama for America online ad campaign.

After 2008 he founded his own company, Bully Pulpit Interactive, developing the lessons of Obama’s first run on the White House and putting it to commercial use. Now he’s reinjecting that knowledge back into the re-election campaign, and his company has already been paid $5m by the Obama campaign for 2011.

The work of Bully Pulpit suggests that Facebook is likely to rank very highly in Bleeker’s list of priorities. Last year the company was employed to help Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff, in his successful bid to become mayor of Chicago.

The company used the power of Facebook to spread Emanuel’s message. Some 30,000 Facebook users in Chicago became fans of Emanuel’s campaign, which in turn extended like a spider’s web across their friend networks to 2.5 million Facebook users in the city.