Simon Firth

Director of Technical Services

Simon's 10 year career in IT has been predominantly in the education sector but has included time in the private sector too giving him a broad grounding in the industry.

After achieving a Degree from Huddersfield University, Simon’s IT career began on the internal IT helpdesk at British Gas where he found a natural talent for troubleshooting and a desire to learn more.

Three months later an opportunity presented itself for Simon to realise this desire and he took a position as trainee IT Technician at a specialist school run by the RNIB charity. Simon’s knowledge and skills rapidly grew over the next 3 years at the RNIB, achieving several Microsoft qualifications and becoming stand-in network administrator for the last 18 months. The return of the permanent network administrator provided the catalyst for Simon’s next step up the ladder.

In July 2003 Simon took a position as a field-based IT Consultant with eSource Ltd, who outsourced to big names in Financial Services (HSBC, HBOS, Barclays etc) and to Research Machines (RM), one of the UK’s biggest educational IT providers. Over the next three years Simon spent the majority of his time working solely for RM, commissioning network installations in schools across the UK. During this time he progressed rapidly within RM’s installations department, delivering non-standard and more complex projects.

Through his connections at RM Simon met Charlie Bennett who was in the early stages of building a new ICT services provider called Matrix. Matrix was growing and Charlie was looking for a like-minded person to join his then small team and help build the company. Following a number of discussions and meetings with Charlie and from his 3 years experience in schools whilst with RM, Simon could see that the Matrix business model filled a huge gap in the market that their competitors were not providing. He saw that the ethos of Helping Schools Take Control of ICT set Matrix apart from the competition. A business based on such ethical underlying principals as impartiality, transparency and taking no commission or kick-backs was the kind of company Simon wanted to work for. And being in its infancy provided a fantastic opportunity for him to make his mark.