A young Azerbaijani, Asim Manizada, has been hired by SpaceX.
According to Linkedin profile, he is working as a cybersecurity engineer at SpaceX since March, working on securing the first human mission to Mars. Previously he joined a US military program, Military Accessions Vital to National Interest (MAVNI), which offers US citizenship within months to immigrants with skills of strategic importance to US.
In years between 2014 and 2016, he was a superforecaster with Good Judgment Project, "geopolitical forecasting project funded through the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA)." The project used only publicly-available information to beat CIA analysts with classified information on geopolitical forecasts.
Before this appointment, Manizada worked at Facebook for more than 7 years as e-crime investigator and security engineer. In this time, he became an author of the US Patent.
Manizada studied at Carleton College in years between 2009 and 2013 and graduated with honors in mathematics and economics. He is a "Rising Experts" Fellow on Russia and Eurasia with the Center on Global Interests and a part of Young Transatlantic Network of Future Leaders with the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Billionaire businessman Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the purpose of colonizing Mars. Musk said in an interview that SpaceX hires only Americans.