Jacob Balaj is Co-Founder of Hop Aero, a defense aerospace startup building hypersonic rocket cargo vehicles that deliver supplies to contested environments in minutes.

Jacob served as an avionics QA engineer on MV-22 tiltrotors in the US Marine Corps before building deep expertise across SpaceX, Virgin Orbit, Masten Space Systems, and SpinLaunch.

At SpaceX, Jacob built the Falcon 9/Heavy booster refurbishment process, cutting test time in half, and later served as Lead Systems Integration and Test at Masten Space Systems on a NASA lunar lander.

Prior to Hop Aero, Jacob co-founded porkchop, an electric propulsion company for satellites that launched on SpaceX Transporter-3 and built a $400M+ sales pipeline before its IP was sold.

Hop Aero has raised $3M pre-seed and won a $1.25M SBIR grant from the US Air Force, aiming to give the US and its allies an asymmetric logistical advantage in future conflicts.