Who Is Kairan Quazi, The 14-Year-Old Software Engineer At Elon Musk's SpaceX?

Kairan Quazi, 14, is joining Elon Musk's space research company SpaceX as a software engineer. San Francisco-based Quazi is also the youngest student to graduate from the Santa Clara University (SCU). Musk's company took to Twitter to announce his appointment. Quazi also revealed in a Linkedin post that he is going to work in the SpaceX's Starlink team.

Quazi has landed a job at one of the most advanced space research organizations in the world when his peers are yet to finish school. He was an AI fellow at Intel Labs as well. How did he do all that?

Who is Kairan Quazi?

Kairan Quazi was born in 2009 to Mustahid and Julia Quazi. The San-Francisco-based couple had recognized their son's extraordinary talents early on. He was just nine-year-old when he joined the Las Positas Community College, where his eagerness to learn led him to be a STEM tutor. He joined the Santa Clara University's School of Engineering, from where he will soon graduate as the youngest student in the history of the university.

He went on to pursue a degree in Associate of Science (Mathematics) and worked on generative AI under Lama Nachman, the Director of the Intelligent Systems Research Lab at Intel Labs. Kairan said that Nachman's training changed his "career trajectory" forever.

What are His Interests?

Apart from AI learnings, mathematics, and cyber security, Kairan is really into history and politics. He is an avid reader and is a huge fan of George RR Martin's "Game of Thrones" series. His favorite book, however, is George Orwell's "1984".

Kairan is also a black belt in Kajukenbo, the American Karate system. Kairan likes all the things that any 14-year-old likes, including Pokemon, video games, magic tricks, and especially, making new friends.

“Being an extrovert has helped me make a lot of friends in college ― they even ask me to tutor them,” Qazi said.

Kairan On His Teacher's "Naughty List"

Kairan has been a bit different from other kids his age. He has always been idealistic and opinionated and has never been scared to speak his mind, his parents said.

He would often get into trouble during his school days."In kindergarten, I learned that telling my friends that Bashar al-Assad was using chemical weapons against his own people would cause kids to cry on the playground. My parents received a call from an unhappy principal that day. And telling my third-grade science teacher that her knowledge of gravity lacked depth earned me a spot on her naughty list for the rest of the year," as per Braingain Magazine. 

Road to SpaceX

The prodigal boy will be joining the SpaceX Redmond HQ as a software engineer. After passing SpaceX's 'technically challenging' and 'fun' interview process, Kairan got the job offer last month. He shared the news on his Instagram handle and wrote that he had "accepted a position as Software Engineer at one of the coolest companies on the planet!"

"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 wrote on LinkedIn.