Kairan Quazi becomes SpaceX Software Engineer at 14

Kairan Quazi has become the newest recruit at Elon Musk’s SpaceX but what’s unique is that he is just 14 years old.

In a LinkedIn post, he wrote: “I will be joining the coolest company on the planet as a software engineer on the Starlink engineering team.

“One of the rare companies that did not use my age as an arbitrary and outdated proxy for maturity and ability.”

He is expected to become the youngest person to graduate from California’s Santa Clara University.

Afterwards, he and his mother will move from Pleasanton, California, so he can start working at SpaceX in Redmond, Washington.

Kairan said: “I’m really excited for this new chapter of my life.”

Kairan’s journey started at age two when he was reportedly able to speak in complete sentences. His doctors realised his intellectual and emotional intelligence was off the charts.

By preschool, Kairan was telling other children and teachers about news stories he heard on the radio.

In the years since, Kairan has been qualified as “profoundly gifted”, with an IQ above the 99.9th percentile of the general population.

He said: “I think by third grade, it became painfully obvious to my teachers, parents and paediatrician that mainstream education wasn’t a great fit for my exponential learning abilities.”

He ended up enrolling at a community college by the time he was nine.

At age 10, he landed an internship at Intel Labs as an AI research co-op fellow.

By age 11, he transferred to Santa Clara University, where he focused on computer science and engineering.

While at university, Kairan was a member of the Association for Computer Machinery and served as senior senator in the Associated Student Government.

He tutored other students and soon became one of the most requested on the staff.

Kairan’s academic advisor Ahmed Amer said he was a “delight to teach” because he was constantly ready to dig into the course material and ask insightful questions.

Kairan said: “When I first started (at Santa Clara University), people were really intrigued.

“But after a few days, I think the novelty wore off and I think a lot of them realised that I’m a pretty normal person.”

Now at age 14, Kairan will graduate alongside nearly 1,600 other students on June 17, 2023.

In 2022, he spent four months as a machine-learning intern at the cyber-intelligence firm Blackbird.AI.

Kairan Quazi helped design an “anomaly detection statistical learning pipeline” to flag social-media content that had been manipulated, according to his profile.

He said: “I think there’s a conventional mindset that I’m missing out on childhood, but I don’t think that’s true.

“I think, again, that mindset would have me graduating middle school now.”

Despite landing the SpaceX job, it was not all easy.

Kairan applied for dozens of jobs, a process that resulted in 95 rejections and just three full-time offers.

Many employers struggled to take him seriously due to his age. In the future, Kairan hopes he can continue to realise his potential without judgement.

“I always try to remember this phrase my mom says, which is: we’re always where we are supposed to be.”

Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite-internet service, started operating in January 2023 in Nigeria – its first African market.