Kainos delivers digital services — covering cloud and engineering, data and AI, and user-centred design — alongside a dedicated Workday practice that includes deployment, testing, auditing and application management. They also sell a proprietary product suite called Kainos Smart that sits on top of Workday.

Where is Kainos based?

Kainos was founded in Belfast and maintains offices across the UK, Europe and the Americas, including Birmingham, London, Derry, Dublin, Gdansk, Helsinki, Paris, Buenos Aires, Indianapolis and Toronto. They operate in 18 countries in total.

When was Kainos founded?

Kainos was founded in 1986, giving them close to four decades of delivery experience. They describe themselves as having 39 years of innovation and creativity.

Kainos employs 3,132 people and is listed on the FTSE 250. They claim to have positively impacted 60 million people through their work with clients.

Who does Kainos work with?

Named clients include the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), Dentsu International and Funds-Axis. They serve sectors including government, financial services, insurance, healthcare and life sciences, payments and education.

Kainos runs an active careers programme including a graduate scheme, the Kainos Academy, and open opportunities listed on their website. They describe their people as central to everything they do and encourage applications across all levels.

Digital Services / Platform Engineering · 2000+ employees (Leeds office ~50+)

Kainos

Digital services and Workday platform engineering at scale

kainos.com ↗Founded 1986

Kainos is a FTSE 250 digital services and technology firm with over 3,100 people operating across 18 countries. They work with public sector bodies, financial services firms, healthcare organisations and others on cloud and engineering, data and AI, and Workday platform services. Founded in Belfast in 1986, they have nearly four decades of delivery behind them.

What they do

Kainos splits its work into two main practices: Digital Services and Workday.

The Digital Services arm covers cloud and engineering, data and AI, AI business solutions, digital advisory, user-centred design and managed services. Clients include government departments — the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is a named reference — as well as financial services firms and healthcare organisations. The DVSA work involved building the Driving Examiner Service, which changed how driving tests are conducted across the examiner workforce. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is another named client, with Fidelma Holland of the TUO Business Lead team citing Kainos's technical ability and relationship management. Funds-Axis, an investment data firm, used Kainos's AI team to build a document analysis and NLP solution for extracting data from KIIDs (Key Investor Information Documents).

The Workday practice is substantial enough to carry its own product suite. Kainos helps organisations deploy, test, audit and extend Workday, and offers Application Management Services (AMS) for ongoing support. Dentsu International is a named AMS client, with Caroline Mellor, Global Director of HR Effectiveness, citing alignment of values and Workday expertise as the reasons for choosing Kainos.

Beyond services, Kainos has built a proprietary product family called Kainos Smart, which sits on top of Workday. The suite includes Smart Test (automated Workday testing), Smart Audit, Smart Shield, Employee Document Management, User Access Review and Workday Adaptive Planning support. These products address a specific operational gap: keeping Workday implementations stable and compliant as the platform updates twice a year.

Industries served include financial services, insurance, payments, education, government, and healthcare and life sciences. That breadth is deliberate — Kainos has been building sector-specific delivery experience since 1986, and the 39-year track record is something they cite directly.

What sets them apart

The headline numbers are worth stating plainly. Kainos employs 3,132 people, operates in 18 countries, and claims to have positively impacted 60 million people through its work. They are a FTSE 250 company, which puts them in a different weight class from most digital consultancies operating in the UK regions.

Their dual-track model — combining bespoke digital services with a packaged Workday product suite — is relatively uncommon. Most Workday partners are either pure-play implementation consultancies or software vendors. Kainos does both, which gives them recurring product revenue alongside project work.

The Kainos Academy and a graduate programme signal investment in growing their own talent rather than relying entirely on lateral hires. For nearly 40 years they have been building people pipelines, which matters in a market where experienced engineers are scarce.

Offices in the UK include Belfast, Birmingham, Derry, Dublin and London. European offices cover Gdansk, Helsinki, Paris and Wommelgem (Belgium). In the Americas they operate from Buenos Aires, Indianapolis, Nova Scotia and Toronto. Leeds is not listed as an office location in the available source material, though the researcher notes Kainos as relevant to the Leeds tech community given the scale of their UK public sector and digital services work.

For engineers considering Kainos, the client roster spans some of the largest and most complex digital programmes in UK government and enterprise. The DVSA and DWP engagements in particular are the kind of long-running, high-stakes delivery work that is hard to find outside a handful of firms of this size.

What they offer

Kainos Smart Test — automated testing tooling for Workday implementations, designed to reduce regression risk across the platform's twice-yearly update cycle.
Smart Audit — audit and compliance tooling sitting within the Workday ecosystem.
Smart Shield — a security and access control product for Workday environments.
Employee Document Management — document handling within Workday, covering storage and retrieval of employee records.
User Access Review — tooling to manage and review user permissions inside Workday.

FAQs

What does Kainos do?: Kainos delivers digital services — covering cloud and engineering, data and AI, and user-centred design — alongside a dedicated Workday practice that includes deployment, testing, auditing and application management. They also sell a proprietary product suite called Kainos Smart that sits on top of Workday.
Where is Kainos based?: Kainos was founded in Belfast and maintains offices across the UK, Europe and the Americas, including Birmingham, London, Derry, Dublin, Gdansk, Helsinki, Paris, Buenos Aires, Indianapolis and Toronto. They operate in 18 countries in total.
When was Kainos founded?: Kainos was founded in 1986, giving them close to four decades of delivery experience. They describe themselves as having 39 years of innovation and creativity.
How large is Kainos?: Kainos employs 3,132 people and is listed on the FTSE 250. They claim to have positively impacted 60 million people through their work with clients.
Who does Kainos work with?: Named clients include the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), Dentsu International and Funds-Axis. They serve sectors including government, financial services, insurance, healthcare and life sciences, payments and education.
Is Kainos hiring?: Kainos runs an active careers programme including a graduate scheme, the Kainos Academy, and open opportunities listed on their website. They describe their people as central to everything they do and encourage applications across all levels.