Ethics above fees
If the work doesn’t qualify, we say so, even when it costs us the engagement. We never file a claim we wouldn’t defend.
Expert-led. AI-accelerated.
R&D tax expertise, engineered with AI for rigour
Built by advisers behind the UK’s most complex claims, with AI that stress‑tests every claim.
- Backed by Warburg Pincus
- 50+ years of combined R&D tax experience
- FTSE, PE-backed and scale-up expertise
Why Unity exists
R&D shapes the world. We sustain the funding behind it.
- HMRC enquiry defence included
- Senior specialist sign-off on every claim
- Audit-ready from day one
Four standards we don’t compromise on.
Frictionless autonomy
Teams engage on their terms, not around advisor availability. Evidence is captured naturally as the work happens, without repetitive interviews.
Efficiency, with rigour
AI accelerates the heavy lifting, experts focus on judgement. Speed never comes at the cost of quality.
Compliance, strengthened
Consistent criteria, clear audit trails and early HMRC risk flags. Every claim built to stand up to scrutiny.
R&D advisory hasn’t evolved in a decade. Evidence expectations have.
The old model was never built for speed, scale, or the defensibility today’s claims demand.
Endless data gathering
Months of collection across teams, scattered over spreadsheets, email chains and shared folders.
Resource intensive
Manual advisory effort that doesn’t scale. Every cycle restarts from scratch.
Inconsistent quality
Varying standards across advisors. What passes one year may fail the next.
Lost time in meetings
Technical staff pulled off delivery for hours of repeated interviews.
Painful enquiries
Weak audit trails and thin narratives push the burden back on you.
How we deliver
A clear route from scope to submission
Six stages, led by our experts throughout. Technology takes the administrative weight out of the work; it never makes the judgement.
Book a discovery call-
Stage 01
Discovery & scoping
We map the business, claim history, relevant scheme and notification deadlines, pressure-testing eligibility before anything is claimed.
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Stage 02
Cost mapping
A transparent qualifying-cost population built from payroll, ledger and contractor data, with a full audit trail from ledger to claim figure.
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Stage 03
Evidence capture
Competent-professional input gathered through focused technical sessions and guided questions, live or asynchronous, in your team’s own words.
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Stage 04
Technical & AIF drafting
Evidence becomes clear project narratives and the Additional Information Form content. Nothing is invented; everything stays traceable to source.
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Stage 05
Senior review & approval
A senior specialist challenges eligibility boundaries, allocations and evidence gaps before you approve the final position. Nothing goes to HMRC that we would not defend.
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Stage 06
Submission & defence
We coordinate the filing outputs with your tax agent and lead any HMRC enquiry from start to finish, included in the fee.
How we work
Experts lead every stage. AI compounds every step
From first diagnostic to AIF approval, our specialists own the judgement. Our AI technology helps assess eligibility, capture technical evidence, manage every project and prepare the AIF—so each step builds on the last.
Claim Dashboard
See the whole claim at a glance
Monitor total R&D credit, active engagements, project counts, year-on-year trends and progress by accounting period.
Built with rigour
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Expert oversight
Every critical decision is handled by our specialists. AI supports the process; it does not make the calls.
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Data protection
Encryption and GDPR compliance by default, with the same rigour we apply to the claim itself.
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Continuous monitoring
Evaluation for accuracy and model-drift prevention. Our AI tools are tested and refined continuously.
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Comprehensive audits
Digital trails showing who did what, when, and why. A defensible record, end to end.
Trust, engineered
AI augments our speed and precision. It never replaces our judgement.
Trusted by finance and technology leaders
Our credentials
Meet Our R&D Leadership Team
Veteran R&D tax expertise fused with deep AI engineering. Claims that are compliant, defensible and built to last.
Part of Unity Advisory, founded by
Marissa ThomasFormer Managing Partner & COO, PwC UK
Steve VarleyFormer UK Chair, EY
Souvik Dey, MSc., B.Tech
Director, R&D Tax
- 15+ years advising C-suite and board-level stakeholders on R&D tax strategy across FTSE-listed, PE-backed, and high-growth businesses.
- Former Big Four Associate Director and Disruptive Technology Lead. Audited 1,000+ R&D projects, identifying £800M+ in qualifying expenditure across technology, financial services, defence, gaming, and manufacturing.
- Built and scaled an advisory practice as Managing Director, serving some of the world's largest FTSE-listed businesses across financial services, insurance, technology, and life sciences.
- Building Unity's AI-powered R&D platform. Proprietary technology to transform how claims are prepared, evidenced, and defended.
- MSc in Information Systems (Sheffield) and B.Tech in Computer Science Engineering. Brings a technologist's lens to every claim, not just an accountant's.
Carrie Yan, PhD, BSc
Senior Manager, R&D Tax
- 15+ years advising CFOs and Heads of Tax on R&D tax strategy across FTSE-listed, PE-backed, and high-growth businesses.
- Former Big Four Manager. Managed 400+ R&D tax claims end-to-end, securing over £200 million in innovation funding across UK and Canadian businesses.
- PhD in Pharmacology (UCL). Engages directly with the science and technology behind a claim, not just the financials.
- HMRC enquiry specialist. Experienced in leading and supporting claim defence under scrutiny.
- Architect of Unity's claim methodology. Built around rigorous quality assurance, ethical standards, and claims that are audit-ready from day one.
Our Broad Industry Expertise
Questions
What clients actually ask us
Straight answers from our advisory and engineering teams. No jargon, no hedging.
Most R&D firms sell senior expertise then hand delivery to juniors, creating inconsistent advice and weaker claims. Others rely on checkbox SaaS that HMRC has learned to scrutinise. Unity is senior-led and AI-centric: the people who advise you are the people who do the work, accelerated by purpose-built technology.
Some of the most experienced former senior leaders across the Big Four. Unity was founded by Marissa Thomas, former Managing Partner and COO of PwC UK, and Steve Varley, former UK Chair of EY and Global Vice-Chair Sustainability, who now chairs DWF Group.
No. Our technology is purpose-built for R&D tax, using frontier AI while remaining model-agnostic. A complex orchestration of AI agents, each trained with expertise derived from senior practitioners, works across R&D tax, science and technology domains, built to the highest security standards. Every output is reviewed by a specialist before it goes anywhere near your claim.
Always. AI handles the heavy lifting (document analysis, narrative drafting, consistency checks), but a senior advisor signs off on every claim. We use AI to be faster and more thorough, not to cut corners.
Often we find long-standing claims have drifted. We’ll benchmark your existing claims against current HMRC scrutiny levels and typically identify both missed eligible work and areas of over-claiming risk. A fresh pair of eyes, backed by AI analysis, almost always finds something.
Minimal. Our approach autonomises the workload across your engineers and scientists, with deep guidance throughout. AI does the heavy lifting to gather details, supported by our technology and experts working in tandem, not weeks of interviews pulling people off delivery.
We stand behind every claim we prepare. If HMRC opens an enquiry, we handle the full defence at no extra cost: all correspondence, technical arguments, and meetings with inspectors. Our claims are built to withstand scrutiny from day one.
Typically 3 to 4 weeks for a standard claim, though complex multi-project claims can take longer. Our AI accelerates the parts that traditionally drag: document review, narrative drafting, eligibility mapping.