Jacobs is a co-founder of QUALCOMM, Inc., where he served as chief executive officer until 2005 and chairman of the company's board of directors until early 2009. Jacobs was an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT, and a staff member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics. He was a NASA Resident Research Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Jacobs serves on the National Academy of Engineering Industry Advisory Board. He is the recipient of the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal and was awarded the Ernst & Young Leadership Award for Global Integration by the Computerworld Smithsonian Award Program for outstanding contributions to the global integration through the use of information technology. In 1994, he was awarded the United States National Medal of Technology Award, the highest award bestowed by the President, "for extraordinary achievements in the commercialization of technology or the development of human resources that foster technology commercialization".