Chris Espinoza is a senior employee of Apple Computer, officially employee number 8. He joined the company at the age of fourteen in 1976 when it was still housed in Steve Jobs' parents' garage, writing software manuals and coding after school. Espinoza entered the University of California, Berkeley, where his freshman advisor was Andy Hertzfeld.

In 1981 Espinoza became a member of the Apple Macintosh team and has worked on many projects at Apple since, including Mac OS, A/UX, HyperCard, Taligent, Kaleida Labs, AppleScript, and Mac OS X. He is now a development engineering manager on the Xcode team.