All eyes have been on Elon Musk’s new hire at Twitter over the past week, with Linda Yaccarino replacing Musk himself as the troubled social media platform’s CEO.
But another new recruit at a company run by one of the world’s richest men also hit headlines over the weekend: A prodigy who graduated college eight years early is getting ready to start work at SpaceX—or, as the teenager describes it, the world’s “coolest company.”
SpaceX’s latest staffer, 14-year-old Kairan Quazi, is graduating later this week with the class of 2023 at Santa Clara University (SCU), thus making him the youngest graduate in the institution’s 172-year history.
He will be joining SpaceX next month as a software engineer on the firm’s Starlink team.
Quazi took to LinkedIn on Thursday to announce his postgraduation career move, which will see him relocating to Washington state with his mom.
“Next stop: SpaceX!” he wrote. “I will be joining the coolest company on the planet…one of the rare companies that did not use my age as an arbitrary and outdated proxy for maturity and ability.”
Representatives for SpaceX were not immediately available for comment.
“A huge thank you to my team at SpaceX for the most transparent, technically challenging, and fun interview process,” Quazi added in Thursday’s LinkedIn post. “I am packing my rain boots and ready for July!”
He credited SpaceX recruiter Colin Compton for helping him realize that “I found my people.”
In a separate LinkedIn post last week, Quazi’s soon-to-be alma mater shared more detail about his time at SCU, noting his involvement in extracurricular activities like student government as well as his success as a tutor.
Quazi told local newspaper the Mercury News in a profile published Wednesday that he was “really excited for this new chapter of my life” as he prepared for his new job at SpaceX.
Despite his youth, Quazi has built up an impressive résumé.
According to his interview with the Mercury News, Quazi started attending Las Positas community college in California at the age of 10, landing an internship at the same age with Intel Labs as an A.I. research co-op fellow. He transferred to SCU by age 11, focusing his education on computer science and engineering.
Quazi wrote in his LinkedIn post that his Intel internship had set him on his career path, and thanked the director of the company’s intelligent systems research lab, Lama Nachman, for giving him a chance at such a young age.
“I walked into a meeting with Lama Nachman at Intel Labs and walked out with a generative A.I. opportunity that would change my career trajectory,” he wrote. “Lama recognized that outlier circumstances demanded outlier access to influential mentors and challenging opportunities. In a sea of so many ‘no’s’ [from] Silicon Valley’s most vaunted companies, that one leader saying ‘yes’ changed everything.”
However, Quazi’s intellectual capabilities haven’t stopped him from facing obstacles—before securing a position with SpaceX, he reportedly applied for dozens of jobs and was left with 95 rejections and three full-time job offers. His academic advisor told the Mercury News that Quazi struggled with being taken seriously because of his youth.
“I always try to remember this phrase my mom says, which is, ‘We’re always where we are supposed to be,’” Quazi told the newspaper.
