Remember Kairan Quazi, the prodigy who joined Elon Musk’s SpaceX as a software engineer at just 14? Well, he’s back on LinkedIn! The platform had deleted his account for being underage in 2023, but now, the US-based company has allowed him to access the platform.
“Now that I’m 16, LinkedIn has let me back on the platform,” wrote Quazi in a post on Instagram. Welcoming him back, one social media user commented, “Welcome back! We missed you.” Another added, “Back where he belongs.”
An Internet user had a rather unexpected request, saying, “Please start posting videos on YouTube again.”
Quazi has been working as a software engineer at SpaceX since 2023, contributing to the Starlink project. His role involves data-oriented design for optimisation problems, specifically in beam planning. It requires a deep understanding of low-latency, high-performance computing, and real-time programming.
He previously spent four years as an intern at Intel Labs, where he became the first undergraduate intern to collaborate with the Human AI Lab on advancing open-source predictive speech generation platforms. In addition to his work at Intel, he served as a keynote speaker at the Linux Foundation North America Summit and the SHIFT AI Global Conference.
Quazi graduated with a BS in Computer Science from Santa Clara University in 2023, making history as the college’s youngest graduate in its 170-year existence. During his time there, he also served as an Elected Senator in the Associated Student Government from 2021 to 2023.
At just 11 years old, in 2020, he earned an AS in Mathematics from Las Positas College.
What happened back in 2023?
In 2023, Kairan Quazi took to Instagram to announce that LinkedIn had deleted his account, citing their minimum age requirement of 16. “LinkedIn just sent me this notice that they are deleting my account because I’m not 16,” he wrote.
Calling the platform’s decision “illogical” and “primitive nonsense”, Quazi expressed his frustration, “This is the illogical, primitive nonsense that I face constantly. I can be qualified enough to land one of the most coveted engineering jobs in the world, but not qualified enough to have access to a professional social media platform? LinkedIn showing everyone how regressive some tech company policies are.”
He then urged his followers to help him reconnect with his LinkedIn contacts on Instagram. “Can people please share this screenshot on their LinkedIn for me and ask people to connect with me on Instagram?”