Simon Epstein

Simon studied Chemistry at St. John's College, Oxford, an experience he sought to extend by undertaking a DPhil in Asymmetric synthesis at the Dyson Perrins laboratory. Under the dilligent supervision of Prof S.G. Davies, his research blossomed leading to a number of publications in international journals.

After submitting his thesis Simon chose to pursue a career in web development, thereby turning a hobby into a vocation. He cut his teeth as a J2EE developer whilst working as a technology consultant with Accenture. There he was involved in the specification, design and implementation of large scale web applications for a variety of blue chip clients. He was also able to see the world, passing a number of happy months in a portacabin on an industrial estate in Northern Ireland, with only burnt cappuccinos and espressos with ice cold milk to distract him.

After leaving Accenture Simon worked for a small company as the technical lead responsible for the design of a streaming media publishing platform. There he developed an interest in agile Java development, including modern frameworks such as Struts, Hibernate and Spring. The platform is used by 30% of FTSE 100 companies to communicate investor relations material, and consequently the company was the subject of numerous aquisitions.

In 2005 Simon returned to Oxford, and after a brief stint at CSW found his home at Torchbox, where he is currently part of the team developing the NEMs application. To complement his J2EE experience, he is particularly interested in investigating the potential for developing enterprise web applications using frameworks based on scripting languages such as Python or Ruby.

Email: simon.epstein@torchbox.com