Inside the work2 min read
What an RFQ actually contains
An RFQ looks like a document. It is closer to a scattered set of claims, each hiding somewhere else. How engineers read one, and how software should.
Read the postBlog
Notes from an undercounted industry
Original research, method notes and engineering notes from building Kabaido. Every number carries its confidence grade.
Industry research
Original sizing of a workforce no occupation code captures, every figure graded.
Industry research2 min read
You cannot hire your way out of a quoting backlog
The UK posts about 900 new application engineer adverts a month against a 27,200 base. What continuous re-hiring of a hard-to-define role really signals.
Read the postIndustry research2 min read
Where £1.36bn of quoting capacity sits
UK application engineer pay barely varies by domain, so headcount is the whole map. Three domains hold 41.7% of it. A tour of a top-heavy market.
Read the postIndustry research3 min read
The job title the labour market cannot see
Around 27,200 people in the UK do a job that official statistics cannot find. Here is what happens when a role spreads across sixteen occupation codes.
Read the postInside the work
What an application engineer's day actually holds, and where the orders gate.
Inside the work2 min read
Five tasks gate every industrial order
An application engineer's week holds fifteen different jobs. Follow the orders instead of the diary and it collapses to five, all of them specification.
Read the postMethod notes
How we measure what nobody counts, and the rules that keep the numbers honest.
Method notes3 min read
How to measure a market nobody counts
No occupation code, no analyst report, no number to borrow. How we sized the UK application engineer market by triangulation, and kept it honest.
Read the postEngineering notes
Decisions from building Kabaido, from grounding a model to counting in pence.
Engineering notes3 min read
Teaching software to read like a domain engineer
A general AI model knows what a milling cutter is. It does not know your milling cutter. What it takes to ground a model in a real industrial domain.
Read the postEngineering notes2 min read
Why quoting software should count in pence
Binary floating point cannot hold a tidy decimal exactly. Charming in a tutorial, less so on a 4,000-line quote. A short defence of integer money.
Read the postSee the work these notes come from
Kabaido turns RFQs, POs and service requests into structured, cited, priced responses. Test it with a real one.