Simon Wills

I'm a systems engineer first and foremost, with specialist depth in system integration, technical assurance, and requirements engineering.

I started in applied physics and algorithm development, working on underwater acoustics for naval sonar. I then took an active sonar system from concept, through sea trials, into service on the Royal Navy's Trafalgar class submarines.

Since then I've worked in defence (including nuclear), space, and air traffic management, and above all in rail. I've led teams and run businesses: I built a transport practice with full profit-and-loss responsibility, and co-founded Integrate Systems Engineering, which I ran as managing director for nine years. I set up Xabrio in 2012.

I'm also a software engineer. From my early days of developing analytical software to support research activities, I graduated to designing and writing operational software for sonar data processing. For years, I designed and built commercial extensions to IBM DOORS, used by clients from the Ministry of Defence to NASA, and I still build DOORS-based tools for the projects I work on. That means the processes I set up come with information systems that support them, not spreadsheets bolted on afterwards.

I'm based in the Cotswolds.