Born in Munich he served as assistant professor at the Technical University Munich where he educated students in mechanical engineering and finished his PhD thesis in aerospace engineering in 1999.
Jens served since then more than 20 years as senior technology executive with influential leadership in different areas and began his professional career at Fairchild Dornier in Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich where he led the flight physics team for the development of the 728, a 70-seater jet aircraft and became chief engineer for the whole 728 development program later on.
After the insolvency of Fairchild-Dornier he joined Airbus in Feb. 2003 to became shortly after VP and chief engineer for the German workshare of the A330/340 program ensuring the safety of the flying fleet. Further positions at Airbus included the program management for  A350 for the carbon fibre fuselage driving a fundamental change of production and design technology for Airbus and SVP for freighter conversion at the Airbus subsidiary EFW in Dresden.
Jens Henkner joined Suzlon in 2010 as VP responsible for Program Management and Product Policy and was appointed as President Technology and MD of Suzlon Energy GmbH later on heading the technology and the program management teams of the Indian wind turbine OEM in India, Germany, The Netherlands and Denmark.
In 2018 he co-created CertX the first Swiss certification body for functional safety and security located in the canton of Freiburg (Fribourg) close to Bern.
Jens is 55 years old, living in Freiburg with his wife and his son, in his free time he enjoys all kind of mountain sports