In college Jones realized that a living could be made combining music and technology, so he "wrote the usual kind of letter" to all the studios in England asking for an assistant's job. Receiving no replies, Jones decided he'd better get more experience in the general field, and ended up as a junior trainee technical operator with BBC Radio in '74. Showing an aptitude for the job, Jones was promoted to junior studio manager: the radio equivalent of recording studio engineer. When told that he would not be directly involved with recording music for at least five more years, Jones wrote to the studios once again. This time he got a response from the owner of a small eight-track, Pathway, in London.

After working at both the BBC and Pathway for six months, Jones left the former to be a full-time recording engineer at the latter. Though at first he felt like he was "jumping off the deep end" at the studio - on his first session the drummer asked him to turn up the snare and he didn't know which drum that was ("Not the one that goes BOOM, the loud slappy one in the middle," quoth the drummer) - his work at Pathway was "excellent training because I had to deal with lots of quick projects with different bands and different kinds of music," he says.

At Pathway, Jones' engineering projects included Madness' first single, "The Prince" ('79), and John Foxx' first solo album after he left Ultravox, the minimalist electronic milestone Metamatic ('80). Foxx then formed a collective with several other artists. Together they bought a warehouse which was converted into artist's studios, including a recording studio called the Garden. Jones helped create the starkly elegant studio, and became staff engineer.

In '83 Depeche Mode was looking for a place to record their third album; until then they had worked at Blackwing Studios, owned by Eric Radcliffe (of Yazoo's Upstairs At Eric's fame). Jones was living in Brixton in South London at the time and listening to a lot of underground music and reggae. He had no interest in Depeche as they seemed to be a commercial synth-pop band. Depeche loved the Garden but didn't like the engineer they were working with, so Jones was brought in despite his negative predisposition. As these things often go - Jones, the band (Martin Gore - synths, songwriter; Dave Gahan - vocals; Andy Fletcher - synths; Alan Wilder - electronics) and their producer Daniel Miller (owner of Mute Records) got on famously and began an ongoing relationship that continues to this day.

The album recorded at the Garden, Construction Time Again, was a stylistic change for Depeche in that they wanted to move away from bouncy synth-pop into darker, moodier soundscapes: as on the classic anti-avarice single "Everything Counts." Besides engineering the album, Jones contributed ideas such as recording the band's synths through amplifiers, affording a broader sonic reach through the use of distortion and the like.