Dr Joe Silmon is a railway systems engineer with 18 years of varied experience encompassing academic research, railway vehicles, stations, infrastructure, signalling and electrification. Over time he has become firmly convinced of the need for more holistic skills and awareness among engineers in order to achieve success in the modern world where complexity of technology is constantly increasing.

Joe graduated as a Master of Engineering (Electrical and Electronic) from the University of Birmingham (UK) in 2004 and trained as a graduate with a railway vehicle manufacturer for a year before returning to Birmingham to study for a PhD in fault detection and diagnosis for mechanical actuators, graduating in 2009. He worked as a research fellow in the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education until 2011, publishing five peer-reviewed journal papers, before returning to the railway industry as a systems engineer at a signalling equipment supplier. In 2012 he joined Europe's then-largest engineering consultancy and provided systems engineering support to several of the railway industry's largest and highest-profile infrastructure projects, a theme that continued in 2015 when he again joined a signalling equipment supplier that was engaged on the delivery of a highly complex automation upgrade of the oldest metro railway in the world.

Joe moved from the UK to Germany in 2019 and is now a senior system architect working on a rail industry sector initiative to digitise and further automate railway operation across the whole German railway network.