Meet Kairan Quazi, a 14-year-old software engineer hired by SpaceX
SpaceX has hired a new software engineer, named Kairan Quazi. What's unique about their new employee is that he is just 14 years old. This makes Quazi the youngest-ever employee at the Elon Musk-led space company. He will graduate from Santa Clara University's School of Engineering this month, becoming the youngest person to do so. Here's more about Quazi and his extraordinary journey.
Quazi joined community college when he was 9 years old
Quazi was incredibly smart from a young age. By two, he could speak in complete sentences. By kindergarten, he was telling other kids about news stories he had heard on the radio. When he reached third grade at age nine, he found his academics was not "challenging enough," which led his parents to enroll him at Las Positas, a community college in Livermore.
Quazi graduated with the "highest distinction" at Las Positas
Quazi ranked above the 99.9th percentile of the general population in an IQ test. He graduated with the "highest distinction" and was the "youngest admit" at Las Positas, according to his LinkedIn profile. Soon after that, Quazi landed an internship as an AI research fellow at Intel Labs. By 11, he was transferred to Santa Clara University to pursue computer science and engineering.
He was an intern at Blackbird.AI last year
Last year, Quazi worked as a machine learning intern at cyber intelligence firm Blackbird.AI for four months, according to his LinkedIn profile. He helped design an "anomaly detection statistical learning pipeline" to determine if social media content has been manipulated.
Quazi likes reading science fiction articles in his free time
Quazi recounts his college experience as the happiest years of his life, per The Seattle Times. His list of hobbies includes playing games set in the historical era, like the Assassin's Creed series. He also takes a keen interest in reading science fiction articles by Philip K. Dick and the works of Michael Lewis, an American author and financial journalist.
He will graduate this month from Santa Clara University
Earlier this year, Quazi took to social media saying he was preparing for a 'major' job interview. A few weeks later, he shared a screenshot of his job acceptance letter from SpaceX. He will graduate from Santa Clara University on June 17. After that, he will be shifting to Washington with his mother to commence work at SpaceX.
Quazi will be a part of SpaceX's Starlink team
At SpaceX, Quazi will work as a software engineer on the Starlink engineering team. "It is my dream to have a career tackling challenging issues and effecting radical innovation in service of the common good," reads his LinkedIn biography. He referred to SpaceX as "one of the rare companies" that didn't use his age as an "arbitrary and outdated proxy for maturity and ability."
