Matt Jenkins joined Maxar Intelligence as the Chief Space Systems Officer in September 2024. He brings two decades of systems engineering leadership, including extensive experience in serving remote sensing and highly technical government missions. With extensive technical expertise in passive and active electro-optical and infrared systems, lasers and radio frequency (RF) systems, he has helped build dozens of advanced spacecrafts that are on orbit today.
Prior to joining Maxar Intelligence, Matt was Head of Engineering for Amazon Project Kuiper’s Government Solutions team, where he led the design of advanced and resilient systems to support U.S. national security priorities. Before that, he was the Director of Space Engineering at Pacific Defense Strategies, where he led the development of innovative RF payloads for national security and space domain awareness missions.
Earlier in his career, he spent more than 15 years at Raytheon, including serving as Chief Systems Engineer for the company’s missile warning and defense systems business, as well as leading Raytheon’s Space System Engineering team. During his time there, he led the team responsible for designing the optical imaging instrument in Maxar’s WorldView Legion satellites.
Matt earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Optics from the University of Rochester, and a Master’s degree in Systems Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. He also holds two remote sensing-related patents, and developed 20+ trade secrets in optical system assembly integration and test.