Jacob Balaj

Co-Founder & CTO, Hop Aero

Orange, United States

Jacob Balaj co-founded Hop Aero in 2024 and serves as CTO. He served in the US Marine Corps performing avionics quality assurance on MV-22 tiltrotors, then moved into commercial and government spaceflight: at SpaceX he worked on Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, building a booster refurbishment process that cut test time in half; at Virgin Orbit he worked on the LauncherOne program; at Masten Space Systems he led systems integration and test on a lunar lander for NASA's CLPS program; and at SpinLaunch he worked on satellite systems. The idea for Hop Aero traces back to a Marine Corps typhoon-relief mission in Okinawa, Japan, where he watched aircraft sit grounded while supply lines failed.

Expertise

• Systems Integration & Test
• Aerospace Engineering
• Defense Tech
• Launch Vehicles