Christopher F. Hoeber is Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Technology & Innovation at SSL. He is responsible for identifying and leveraging innovative ideas to improve SSL’s products, improve the design and manufacturing processes, and enter new markets.

Mr. Hoeber has over 40 years of experience in R&D, systems engineering, program and functional management, and was the leader of the systems engineering team that developed SSL’s industry leading geostationary satellite platform, the modular 1300.  He was also the program manager for the Superbird satellites, built for Space Communications (SCC) of Japan, which were the first implementation of the 1300 platform.

Mr. Hoeber has previously served the company as senior vice president of program management and systems engineering, senior vice president of business development and chief engineer.

Before to joining SSL in 1975, Mr. Hoeber was with Hughes Space and Communications Corp. for five years, where he led a group that performed payload testing of Intelsat IV and the first generation of domestic communications satellites.

Mr. Hoeber is a Fellow in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and a member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE). He is also a member of the AIAA Technical Committee on Communications, and served in the past as chairman of the board of directors of the California Space Authority. He has written extensively on the communications satellite industry.

Mr. Hoeber holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Cornell University. He and his family live in Los Altos, California.