"Loose lips sink ships." When you have access to government secrets, it's not in the government's best interest, nor in your best interest, to loudly advertise your role. Among other things, doing things not in the government's best interest is an excellent way to end up fired.

For such jobs, you want the government and your colleagues to respect you, take you seriously and promote you, etc. If you want fame and public recognition, being a civil servant isn't the best career choice. If you want to accomplish things and mostly be left alone by the prying eyes of the world, it can be an excellent career choice.

My sister is a high ranking civil servant at a major federal organization. Most of her career has involved working for the government. She's testified before Congress on, I think, at least two occasions that I know of. Most people have no idea who she is. She seems to have little to no internet presence.

When I worked at Aflac, high ranking people, like department heads, also seemed to keep a pretty low profile. The world knew who the CEO was, but the three highest ranked people in my department appeared to have a LinkedIn account and I recall being unable to readily find any further public records online in their names -- other than a Twitter account where the department head posted mostly lightweight comments about his favorite sports team while not calling attention to the power he wielded at this Fortune 500 company.

I have at times tried to search for info from "big names" I know of via Hacker News. In some cases, I can find little or nothing about them online.

The cult of personality that gets so much attention is not actually as important as it appears to be. Private trust from influential people matters vastly more for opening doors and getting things done.