Kairan Quazi’s education and career: How a 16-year-old prodigy graduated early, left SpaceX, and is now joining Citadel Securities

Elon Musk’s youngest hire, Kairan Quazi, is trading rockets for trading algorithms. At just 16, the Bangladeshi-American prodigy has left SpaceX’s Starlink division after two years to join Citadel Securities in New York City as a developer.

The move marks his entry into one of Wall Street’s most competitive arenas, where engineering talent is increasingly being courted by finance giants vying with AI labs and Big Tech for the brightest minds.“I felt ready to take on new challenges and expand my skill set into a different high-performance environment,” Quazi told Business Insider in an exclusive interview.But how did a teenager manage to leap from middle school to Wall Street in less than a decade?

A childhood marked by acceleration

Quazi’s journey has been anything but conventional. Skipping from third grade directly to college at age nine, he enrolled at Las Positas College, where he graduated with highest honors in mathematics at just 11.

By 14, he had already become the youngest graduate in Santa Clara University’s 170-year history, completing a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering cum laude, alongside graduate-level coursework in advanced algorithms, NLP, and data mining.During his undergraduate years, he combined academic rigor with teaching responsibilities, serving as a college tutor in calculus, statistics, and chemistry — an unusual role reversal for someone barely in his teens.

From research labs to rocket science

Even before completing his degree, Quazi built an impressive portfolio of research and industry experience. At age 10, he became the first undergraduate intern at Intel Labs’ Human AI group, working on predictive speech generation platforms — a stint that stretched over three and a half years. He also delivered keynote addresses at the Linux Foundation North America Summit and SHIFT AI Global Conference.In 2022, he joined the cyber-intelligence startup Blackbird.AI as a machine learning intern, developing pipelines to detect disinformation threats across social media.

But it was his leap to SpaceX in 2023 that placed him on a global stage.As a software engineer at Starlink, Quazi worked on network beam planning and optimization, designing production-critical systems that determine how satellites target internet beams worldwide. “It required a deep understanding of low-latency, high-performance computing and real-time programming,” his LinkedIn profile notes.

Why Wall Street over AI labs

Given his track record, Quazi had no shortage of offers from leading AI labs and technology firms. But he chose Citadel Securities for its blend of intellectual complexity and speed. “Quant finance offers a pretty rare combination: the complexity and intellectual challenge that AI research also provides, but with a much faster pace,” he explained to Business Insider. “At Citadel Securities, I’ll be able to see measurable impact in days, not months or years.”The firm’s meritocratic approach also appealed to him. Unlike many institutions that might hesitate at his age, Citadel evaluated him solely on skill.

Life beyond algorithms

Moving to Manhattan represents more than just a career pivot. For the first time, Quazi will live independently, walking to work instead of relying on his mother to drive him to SpaceX’s Redmond office — a reminder that despite his resume, he is still a teenager navigating milestones most reach much later.

Lessons from Quazi’s path

For students and educators, Quazi’s story is not just one of precocity but of possibility. His journey highlights how alternative educational pathways — early college, project-based learning, and industry immersion — can cultivate talent far earlier than traditional timelines allow.As Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and AI labs compete for minds like his, the deeper lesson is clear: The future belongs to those willing to blur the boundaries between age, discipline, and convention.TOI Education is on WhatsApp now. Follow us here.