I am Simon Burrows and a Senior Motion Control Engineer for Micromech Systems Ltd where my role involves the design and implementation of motion and control systems. I am still a relatively recent addition to the Micromech team but I have already been in involved in many projects over the past year. I find my role very varied, interesting and challenging, making me pleased and happy to be working in a career that I enjoy.

I fell into this career as a controls engineer, unplanned and unexpectedly as when I left college was convinced that my chosen path would solely be in computer programming. But by chance noticed a small advert for a Design Engineer in a trade magazine and thought at the time, just out of interest, ‘lets see what happens’ and sent the company in question my CV.

My change of direction resulted in me ending up accepting a job at Doel Engineering Limited, an engineering company in Witham, Essex that specialised in building machines for cutting and packaging paper and film.
I worked at Doel Engineering for 11 years developing my career as a Controls Engineer, and then moved onto an automotive engineering company before joining Micromech Systems Limited. During my career I have gained extensive experience of programming various motion control, PLC and computer systems as well as designing and building complete control systems. My background has meant I have been able to quickly work on some major projects almost from day one of taking up my post.

I was born in Colchester in Essex and have lived there all of my life. Colchester is the oldest town in Britain first established by the Romans and there are still many Roman sites and archaeological things to see. I am married to Louise and we have a 5 year-old son George. I am quite a family orientated person and not just to my close family as most of my relatives live in and around Colchester.

In my spare time, I go touring car racing at my local club. Unfortunately my touring car is a 10:1 scaled ‘nitro-powered beast’ and is under the control and command of my left and right thumbs. I’m known as the Red Rabbit having gained quite a reputation at the club, hence the body shell design of my car. Why the name I hear you ask? The reason why I got this name goes back to when I was young and because my name is Simon Burrows, some imaginative school kids gave me the moniker Rabbit Burrows. When I joined my racing club I thought it would be amusing to have a 'racing' name and so I elaborated thinking Red Rabbit sounded OK. However, I think that some of my racing colleagues thought that I was serious about this name and it has stuck with me ever since. In fact not many people at the club any longer call me Simon!

I am also interested in the full size ‘motorsport’ vehicles and regularly follow Formula 1 racing. I have recently started to learn to ski at a nearby dry ski slope much to the detriment and probably fear of other slope users!