Dr. Hays retired from The Boeing Company in April 2017.  Prior to that he was a Senior Technical Fellow there, and on the staff of the Vice President and Senior Chief Engineer for Mission Systems, Payloads and Sensors. He also served as the Boeing technical Director for HRL Laboratories, a Boeing subsidiary in Malibu, CA, as well as working on sensors of various types. Ken has a B.A. in physics and math, a masters in physics, and Ph.D. in condensed matter physics, all from UCI. He paid for school by working at Carl's Jr. for 2½ years, followed by three years writing software for a small computer company, and then by stints as a T.A. and an R.A. in grad school at UCI. He began his first post–UCI job in 1984 at the Northrop Corporation's electronics division, working on inertial measurement units for the MX missile (a.k.a. "Peacekeeper") project. He left Northrop after 1½ years and joined Rockwell International's Science Center, where he worked on infrared sensors, superconducting electronics and vibrating microscopic gyros. When Boeing bought part of Rockwell in 1996, Ken became the Principal Scientist of their Research & Technology Center at Boeing North American. About two years after that he moved over to their Naval Electronics and Navigation group where he worked on fiber optic gyros and ballistic missile submarine guidance.

Following that assignment, he became the Director of Technology Integration for their Air Force Systems business, and then Chief Scientist of the Anaheim site, and then Director of Mission Assurance for their Command, Control, and Communications Networks business area. Ken holds eleven patents.