Kairan Quazi, the 14-year-old who became one of Elon Musk's engineers at SpaceX, is departing; says: I felt…

Elon Musk's teenage prodigy Kairan Quazi is hanging up his rocket for trading algorithms, leaving SpaceX after two years to become a developer at quantitative trading behemoth Citadel Securities in New York City. "I was ready to challenge myself and grow my skillset into a new high-performance environment," the 16-year-old said in an exclusive interview with Business Insider.

Quazi, the youngest graduate of Santa Clara University before enrolling at SpaceX's Starlink team at age 14, will begin this week at Citadel Securities, one of the world's leading market making firm. The hire is a huge win for the financial sector as it vies with AI labs and large tech companies for the top engineers.

From satellite beams to trading algorithms: Why Kairan Quazi chose finance over AI

In spite of being offered jobs at top AI labs and top tech firms, Quazi chose Citadel Securities for the compound intellectual challenge and quick feedback loops. At SpaceX, he engineered production-critical systems, developing software that dictates where Starlink satellites point their beams in order to provide stable internet connectivity to millions of users.

"Quant finance provides a very unusual mix: the depth and intellectual challenge of AI research, but much more quickly," Quazi told Business Insider. "At Citadel Securities, I'll have the ability to see tangible impact within days, rather than months or years."

Teen genius welcomes Wall Street meritocratic culture

Kairan Quazi lauded Citadel Securities' meritocratic culture, observing that the firm never let his age stand in the way of opportunity. The Bangladeshi-American child genius who leaped from third grade to college when he was 9 and interned at Intel Labs when he was 10 will work on international trading infrastructure at the nexus of engineering and quantitative problem-solving.

Living on his own in Manhattan, Quazi will have a 10-minute commute to work, a huge improvement from having his mother drive him to SpaceX's Redmond headquarters, since he still hasn't obtained his driver's license.