Elon Musk’s SpaceX has made an intriguing new hire: a 14-year-old Bangladeshi-American boy who recently graduated from Santa Clara University as the youngest student ever.

Kairan Quazi announced his new position on LinkedIn last week, stating that he would shortly be joining “the coolest company.”

“A huge thank you to my team at SpaceX for the most transparent, technically challenging, and fun interview process,” Quazi wrote in a Thursday LinkedIn post, according to Fortune. “I am packing my rain boots and ready for July!”

Next month, he will join SpaceX’s Starlink team in Washington state as a software engineer.

Quazi was scheduled to receive a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from SCU on Saturday.

This makes him the youngest student to ever graduate from the school and one of the youngest students in the United States to graduate from college at the age of 14.

According to the Mercury News, Quazi attended Las Positas Community College before transferring to SCU. At the age of 10, he was granted an apprenticeship as an AI research co-op fellow at Intel Labs.

In an interview with Mercury News, Quazi stated that before applying to SpaceX, he was rejected by 95 companies and only received three full-time job offers.

He thanked SpaceX for not being like the rest in rejecting him for his young age, which he told Fortune, is “an arbitrary and outdated proxy for maturity and ability.”

Meanwhile, LinkedIn has deleted his profile because Quazi does not satisfy the platform’s minimum age requirement.

“We’re excited by your enthusiasm, energy and focus. We can’t wait to see what you do in the world,” LinkedIn said in a message that was shared by Quazi on Instagram.

“Because you currently do not meet the age eligibility criteria to join, we have restricted your account. You are welcome back on the platform once you turn 16 or older,” the message read.

Quazi told People Magazine, in discussing his life and what he expects to accomplish at SpaceX, that his “personal journey has really been about disrupting the status quo.”

Noting the plethora of opportunities that Starlink – an internet satellite constellation – presents to humanity, Quazi stated that he desires to work toward something that can provide “the greatest good for the greatest number.”

Julia, his mother, told the outlet that they discovered Quazi’s extraordinary intellect when he took an IQ test at the age of nine.

“He’s an extreme extrovert. His verbal fluency was so strong. So a lot of the things that seemed strange to us for years, we just chalked it up to very strong vocabulary and a strong personality,” she told People.

More on this story via The Western Journal:

Struggling to keep up with him, even as a child, Quazi’s parents actually felt as though they were failing him. CONTINUE READING…