After graduating with a First Class Honours degree in Computer Science from the University of Hertfordshire, Jill spent two years working on formal specification languages such as VDM and Hope at Imperial Software Technology in London, working closely with Professor John Darlington’s research team at Imperial College. She then worked for Prime Computers at their headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts for four years. Her time there was spent in the CAD/CAM division working on algorithms to remove ‘hidden lines’ from wire frame diagrams of car and plane components.

On returning to the UK, Jill joined the Santa Cruz Operation, a Californian company who developed the Unix operating system for Intel x86 PCs. Initially she worked as a technical account manager for OEMs such as Olivetti, IBM and Siemens where her role was to ensure compatibility between the operating system and the OEM’s hardware (in particular, innovative new features). She later worked as Vendor Manager for Veritas, helping to integrate their clustering software into the OS. She also spent time working on scripts for Product Integration and on the revamp of the OS installation mechanism.

After 11 years at the Santa Cruz Operation, Jill joined Sun Microsystems at their UK engineering group in Watford. She was the technical product lead of a team of engineers responsible for producing the Companion CD, a comprehensive collection of freeware utilities (e.g. KDE, gcc) that enhanced the base Unix operating system. The Companion CD was released on a quarterly basis and shipped with the OS.

More recently Jill has been working for a start-up company specialising in web-based applications. She is currently combining development of websites using Visual Studio and .NET with account management for the company’s customers.