In 1964, Jackson joined the new consultancy firm John Hoskyns and Company in London, before founding his own company Michael Jackson Systems Limited in 1971. In the 1960s, he had started his search for "more reliable and systematic way of programming." He contributed to the emerging modular programming movement, meeting Larry Constantine, George H. Mealy and several others on a 1968 symposium. In the 1970s, Jackson developed Jackson Structured Programming (JSP). In the 1980s, with John Cameron, he developed Jackson System Development (JSD). Then, in the 1990s, he developed the Problem Frames Approach.