Id hardly call this ageism. The person went from being part of engineering on a major space faring project to managing a callcenter. Thats like going back to zero on the career ladder, as far as engineering is concerned. I would have also been questioning whether or not their skills have collected dust, were still relevant, and most specifically why they went from engineering in aerospace to managing a callcenter, and why they want back into engineering again (probably hates callcenter).

We have interviewed and hired plenty of people even older (age is not something ever known/discussed and illegal to factor in - but it isn't hard to make a good guess anyway)

senior engineer could be a project manager who never wrote code.

i remember this because it is one of the faw 'no' I have had where it wasn't proved the person would be bad at the job. Normally the no hire signal is because the person would obviously be bad.

The person was 23.