Tom Markusic

CEO
GIG Aerospace

Dr. Tom Markusic is an American rocket scientist and space tech entrepreneur. He founded Firefly Aerospace, where he led the company to develop spacecraft and rockets that have gone to space and will soon land on the moon. The company achieved “unicorn” valuation status and continues to rapidly grow revenue through high-value government and commercial contracts, and a strategic partnership to develop next generation rockets with Northrop Grumman.

Tom has a broad background in the space industry. At the US Air Force and NASA he worked in propulsion research and program management. He served in senior positions at several emerging space companies: SpaceX (Principle Propulsion Engineer, Director of Texas Rocket Development Site), Blue Origin (Senior Systems Engineer), and Virgin Galactic (VP of Propulsion). He holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University.

Tom recently founded GigEngineer, which aims to disrupt the traditional approach to engineering and production to ultimately lower the cost and increase the speed of product engineering, while also introducing synergistic methods to operations technology. “Gig” will accomplish this by changing how companies interface with external engineering services and by fundamentally changing how the engineering and production operations work itself is done.