Who is Kairan Quazi, the 16-year-old prodigy leaving Elon Musk’s SpaceX?

Kairan Quazi joined Elon Musk’s SpaceX as an engineer when he was only 14. Now, after two years, he has now decided to move on.

The Bangladeshi-origin tech prodigy gained attention as one of the youngest university graduates in the United States.

Now 16, he has revealed that he will be joining Citadel Securities in New York as a global trading infrastructure engineer.

But who is he? And why is he leaving?

Let’s find out:

Who is Kairan Quazi?

The 16-year-old of Bangladeshi origin is among the youngest people to complete a university degree in the United States.

In 2023, at the age of 14, he joined SpaceX as its youngest employee, working in the Starlink division. There, he worked on building key systems to maintain satellite precision.

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Kairan’s achievements stand out for someone his age. Doctors noticed his extraordinary intellectual and emotional abilities when he was just two.

He later became a member of Mensa International and joined the Davidson Institute’s Young Scholar programme, which set him on the path of a prodigy.

By 14, he had graduated from Santa Clara University with a degree in computer science and engineering, becoming the youngest graduate in the university’s history. Between 2021 and 2023, he also served as an elected senator in the Associated Student Government.

His journey started even earlier. At 10, he interned at Intel Labs. In 2020, he earned an AS in Mathematics from Las Positas College.

In 2022, he worked on machine learning at the cyber-intelligence startup Blackbird AI.

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Reports say his work focuses on engineering and solving quantitative problems, with skills in low-latency computing, high-performance systems, and real-time programming.

For his new role, Kairan has moved to New York. He will be staying in Manhattan, only a short walk away from his workplace.

Why is he leaving SpaceX?

Kairan told Business Insider that he was ready to take on fresh challenges and build new skills in a different high-performance setting.

“Citadel Securities offered a similarly ambitious culture, but also a completely new domain, which is very exciting for me,” he said.

At a time when quant trading firms are competing with AI labs such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI for top talent, securing the young engineer is seen as a big win for Citadel Securities, one of the leading names in global finance.

Linked to billionaire Ken Griffin’s hedge fund Citadel, the firm is one of the biggest players in high-speed trading. Every day, it processes enormous volumes of shares, options, currencies and other financial products.

The firm uses advanced technology and algorithms to execute trades for institutions and retail clients, while also running its own trading strategies. According to Business Insider, it handles about 35 per cent of US retail stock trades.

Reports say it generated close to $10 billion in revenue in 2024 and a record $3.4 billion in the first quarter of 2025.

For Kairan, the move also has a personal side. His mother worked in mergers and acquisitions, which gave him early insights into finance. Later, while at university, he saw how much interest there was among computer science and maths students for quant jobs.

In his new position, Kairan will work on the company’s global trading infrastructure, combining engineering with quantitative problem-solving and collaborating closely with both traders and engineers, a company spokesperson told the publication.

“It felt like a very natural transition from the high-performance culture at SpaceX,” Kairan said.

This time, his commute is much simpler. Unlike at SpaceX, where his mother drove him to work in Redmond, Washington, he now makes his way on his own.