News, Trends & Insights

On 9 June, timed to London Tech Week, Peter Kyle and Rachel Reeves announced a scheme to reimburse visa fees for scale-ups hiring international talent, alongside a new concierge service for high-growth firms. In the same week, Cursor announced its European headquarters in London, with plans to reach roughly 200 EMEA employees by the end […]

I do mathy, dry computery things to squishy, wet living things. That’s how Paul Agapow describes his work, which is one of the most memorable and yeah, I get it ways of describing what we’re doing in this field. He’s someone I’ve known for a while now and an absolute fountain of knowledge, which is […]

So, you’re making the first hires for your venture. You need to attract exceptional people, the type who can build something from nothing, but you can’t be too upfront about what they’re joining. You can’t really sell on brand or IP, so you need to sell on trust, vision and people. For founders and early […]

Skills shortages are now a defining issue across the space sector, particularly in systems engineering, electronics, RF, software, and AI. This has been going on a while; UKSA’s Space Sector Skills Survey flagged the same issues almost two years ago. But for many teams, those challenges still haven’t changed. Recruitment difficulties are then being compounded […]

A forward deployed engineer is a technical implementer embedded with a customer to configure a complex platform, build workflows/data models around real users, drive adoption, and keep the deployment healthy. It’s a position adjacent to solutions engineering and professional services. They’re responsible for the architecture as it applies to the customer, and involves the same […]

A common theme in the defence sector right now is how companies work with contractors. The reliance on this workforce has always been there, but following chats at this year’s DSEI UK, it’s clear the UK defence sector is facing challenges. In many ways, these challenges are unique to defence. The sector already faces a […]

Update: June 2026 Since this piece was first published, the legal position on the $100,000 H-1B fee has changed. On June 8, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston struck down the Trump administration’s policy imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas, ruling that the charge amounted to an unlawful tax that had not […]

We spoke to more than 500 professionals in the UK, France, Germany and Italy working across mechanical, manufacturing, systems, and design engineering roles. The aim was to understand what shapes their decisions to stay or move. Here are some of the main takeaways: Pay is on the rise for many, averaging 6–8% in the past […]

I spent most of my time at DSEI last week following those firms operating in the AI and robotics realm, looking at where software stacks are maturing and where the interesting platforms are coming from. These are the companies and the tech that stood out. PhysicsX They’re building a platform that combines physics-based simulation with […]

A Discussion with Mush Khan, CEO of Alchemy Industrial. Following the pandemic-era shortages, geopolitical disruption, and growing national interest in reshoring, the phrase “manufacturing independence” has started cropping up both in boardrooms and in policy briefs. But what does that actually look like in practice and is it even a realistic goal? To dig into […]

We’re really pleased to share that we’ve partnered with MassRobotics, the largest independent robotics innovation hub in the world, and a key part of the ecosystem driving robotics forward in the States.   Last month, while we were in Boston for the Robotics Summit, we were invited to visit their HQ in the Seaport District. […]

With insights from Benoit Bely, Associate Director of Bioinformatics at Tropic Biosciences Earlier this month the UK Government laid some secondary legislation under the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act of 2023, enabling the commercial use of gene-edited crops in England. The legislation’s rollout had been delayed since March 2023, perhaps in part because of the […]