JIM HOFFMAN

Vice President, Engineering

Prior to joining Kinemetrics, Jim served as a Principal Engineer at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he most recently led instrument engineering for REASON, the radar instrument aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper mission. His work spans the investigation of deep planetary atmospheric structures through microwave spectroscopy and the development of advanced radar systems to probe the subsurface structure of Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon. As a member of NASA’s InSight Entry, Descent, and Landing team, Jim led the development of landing sensors that contributed to the mission’s successful touchdown on Mars.

As Chief Technologist for JPL’s Radar Science and Engineering Section, he pioneered the space qualification of gallium nitride (GaN) power amplifiers and real-time digital calibration techniques for multi-channel radar systems—technologies that became mission-enabling capabilities for NISAR, SWOT, and Europa Clipper. Beyond his technical leadership, Jim served for more than a decade as Paper Review Chair for the IEEE Aerospace Conference, helping guide the review and selection of leading aerospace research. He joined Kinemetrics as Vice President of Engineering in 2021 and holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.