Kairan Quazi skipped elementary school and was the youngest AI fellow at a Fortune 100 company global research organization.
At 14 years old, he is set to graduate this week from Santa Clara University‘s School of Engineering.
Soon he’ll be the newest team member of SpaceX.
“Next stop…SpaceX!!!,” Quazi posted on Instagram alongside an excerpt of an email from the spacecraft manufacturer company offering him the job. “I accepted a position as Software Engineer at one of the coolest companies on the planet! Thank you everyone for continuing to follow my crazy journey!”
While some may be shocked at his many accomplishments as a teenager, Kairan does not let a number impact his success.
“I can’t believe so many people would want me to be graduating middle school right now,” Kairan told USA TODAY Tuesday. “It feels cruel to infantilize my intellectual and emotional needs and demand that I be trapped in a linear environment where the only metric is age.”
Kairan wants to ‘be part of something bigger’
The Bay Area teen prodigy, who received his high school diploma from the state of California at age 10, said he accepted the offer letter in late April and will begin work for Starlink − the satellite internet team at SpaceX − next month.
“They (SpaceX) have been really accommodating of my schedule,” Kairan said. “I was elated and surprised by how quickly they made the decision. The SpaceX opportunity resonates with my deep desire to be part of something bigger.”
SpaceX could not immediately be reached by USA TODAY Tuesday, but the teen said he went through 10 rounds of interviews with the Elon Musk-led company before being hired.
Now he plans to move with his mother to Redmond, Washington for the job.
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3 job offers and 95 rejections
Kairan, who currently lives in Pleasanton, Cali., said he applied for 97 jobs. Three offered him one.
He picked SpaceX to work for because the company did not use his age as a proxy for maturity.
“The rejections would come literally within hours of the recruiters seeing me on the Zoom interviews so I never even got to meet the hiring managers at these 95 companies. All three offers were from companies where the leadership values matched the talent acquisition process. Nobody winced at my age.”
Kairan said he chose SpaceX because he’s “excited by the challenge of applying multidisciplinary skills toward expanding communication capabilities across the globe.”
“They draw people who are similarly driven by radical innovation and collaborative impact. SpaceX has something like a 0.2% acceptance rate for applicants. So the fact that their hiring managers believe I have the potential to be among the top engineers in the country is humbling.”
Under Washington state labor laws, SpaceX does not need special permission to hire the teen because he meets the minimum legal age to work.
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‘My soul was slowly dying’
Kairan’s mother, Jullia Quazi, said she and her husband are beyond proud.
“We are elated that he ended up with SpaceX,” she told USA TODAY. “We know their hiring bar is set really high. Once again, her proved us wrong.
When asked about skipping most of primary school, the teen joshed about its simplicity.
“My soul was slowly dying in elementary school,” the teen quipped. “I finished third grade though, barely.”
Here’s how his educational path went instead:
- 2018: Started college at age 9.
- 2019: Got high school equivalency diploma from the state of California at age 10. (Also started co-op internship at Intel Labs where he was the first undergrad and youngest ever AI Fellow at Intel Labs.)
- 2020: Received Associate of Science degree in Mathematics at age 11.
- 2022: Interned at a cyber intelligence startup.
- 2023: Slated to graduate this month from college.
He hasn’t met Elon Musk yet
Kiaran’s hobbies include gaming, reading and traveling (he said he’s been as far away from home as Malaysia).
In his online bio, the teen describes his personality as “fun, fearless, and driven by an intense intellectual curiosity.”
“I haven’t met Elon yet but I think his hiring philosophy is infused in the entire talent acquisition process,” the teen told USA TODAY when asked if he had spoken to SpaceX’s CEO.
Kairan will graduate from college on Saturday with a degree in Computer Science and Engineering.
Natalie Neysa Alund covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on Twitter @nataliealund.
