How a Context Engine Helped Compare the Market Scale

January 6, 2026

Compare the Market helps millions of customers find the best deals on insurance and financial products. Behind the scenes, James Ford, Principal Engineer for Developer Experience, focuses on helping their 300 person engineering team move faster and work more effectively.

When the company began growing from a handful of core products to dozens, James noticed a critical challenge: knowledge wasn’t scaling with the teams.

The Problem: Growth Revealed Context Blind Spots

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Each of Compare the Market’s original eight products had its own dedicated team of product managers, engineers, and subject matter experts. That model worked until more products were added. As people moved across teams, essential context went with them.

With information scattered across Confluence, Slack, and GitHub, engineers could spend hours asking around for answers. “If something broke on a weekend or holiday, you might not even know who to ask,” said James. “Without Unblocked, we’d be back in the dark ages — searching across systems, guessing keywords, and stitching it all together by hand.”

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The Solution: A Context Engine for Engineering Teams

Unblocked gave Compare the Market a context engine. It pulls from all the existing code, product specs, and past discussions, giving engineers the right knowledge exactly when they need it.

“Unblocked is game-changing for information availability. Most AI tools are siloed. This one connects all of our documentation across the disparate systems to give answers we trust.” — James Ford, Principal Engineer at Compare the Market

Compare the Market uses the Unblocked Context engine to power three key scenarios:

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Reducing Interruptions for Subject Matter Experts

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One of the first wins came in Slack support channels, where engineers were fielding the same questions again and again.

Instead of pulling someone away to type the same response, Unblocked provides the answer directly with cited references. James recalled, “You could see this sigh of relief across our team: I don’t have to answer it, everything I would have said has just been said by Unblocked.”

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Shipping Faster with Contextual CI Fixes

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Unblocked’s context engine also sped up CI debugging by putting root cause analysis and fix suggestions directly in pull requests. Engineers no longer waste time sifting through logs or chasing down cryptic errors.

James shared: “The explanations from Unblocked feel like they came from someone who knows our system. This is better quality debugging in minutes.”

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Onboarding New Engineers Without Bottlenecks

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New hires once relied on buddy systems, which meant waiting on the right people and long conversations before they could contribute. Now, they can self-serve from day one.

“New developers on the team just ask Unblocked any questions they have,” James said. “Our onboarding is faster, lighter, and engineers love it.”

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The Outcome: Team Autonomy at Scale

Unblocked didn’t require Compare the Market to change how they documented or worked. It simply made existing knowledge usable at scale. This context engine quickly became part of daily workflows, bridging the gaps that once slowed teams down.

By keeping important knowledge accessible, Unblocked enables Compare the Market’s engineering organization to move faster, stay autonomous, and scale with confidence.

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