The engineers developing the new software platform, working closely with the lead designer who has decades of experience in user...

Let's begin by understanding the meaning of this sentence. We'll use our understanding of pause points and segment the sentence as shown - understanding and assimilating the meaning of each segment bit by bit!

Sentence Structure

• The engineers developing the new software platform,
• working closely with the lead designer
  • who has decades of experience
    • in user interface development,
• [?] confident that the project will meet its deadline.

Where [?] = is / was / has been / are

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start reading from the beginning:

"The engineers developing the new software platform..."

• We're talking about a specific group: the engineers
• They're developing a new software platform

"working closely with the lead designer..."

• This tells us more about what these engineers are doing
• They're collaborating with a lead designer

"who has decades of experience in user interface development"

• This describes the designer – someone very experienced

Now here's where we need to fill in the blank:

• "The engineers... _____ confident that the project will meet its deadline."

Let's look at our choices:

• We have: is, was, has been, are
• These are all different forms of linking verbs
• I'm deciding between singular vs. plural, and different tenses

What do we know from what we've read?

• The subject is "The engineers" – that's plural
• "developing the new software platform" and "working closely with the lead designer..." are phrases that describe these engineers
• But the subject itself is still "engineers" (plural)

So we need a plural verb: are

What do we notice about the structure here?

• The subject "engineers" is separated from the verb by long descriptive phrases
• These phrases tell us what the engineers are doing and who they're working with
• But they don't change the fact that "engineers" is plural
• The verb must agree with "engineers," not with any of the singular nouns in those descriptive phrases (like "platform" or "designer")

The complete meaning:

• The engineers (who are developing a platform and working with an experienced designer) are confident about meeting the deadline
• This is talking about their current state of confidence about a future event

The correct answer is D: are

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Making Verbs Agree with Subjects Despite Intervening Phrases

The fundamental rule of subject-verb agreement (the technical term for making subjects and verbs match in number) is that your verb must match your subject – if the subject is singular, use a singular verb; if plural, use a plural verb.

The challenge comes when the subject and verb are separated by long descriptive phrases:

Pattern that can be tricky:

• [Plural Subject] + [long phrase with singular nouns] + [verb – must still be plural!]
• The engineers developing the platform, working with the designer, are confident
• Subject: "engineers" (plural)
• Intervening phrases: "developing..." and "working with..."
• Verb: must be "are" (plural) to match "engineers"

Why it's tricky:

• Your ear might be pulled toward the nearest noun ("designer" – singular)
• But the verb must agree with the actual subject, not with nouns inside descriptive phrases

How to handle it:

1. Find the true subject (who or what is doing/being something?)
2. Mentally remove or skip over the descriptive phrases
3. Check: Does the verb match the subject?
   • "The engineers... are confident" ✓
   • "The engineers... is confident" ✗

In our question:

• Subject: "The engineers" (plural)
• Intervening material: Both "developing the new software platform" and "working closely with the lead designer who has decades of experience in user interface development"
• Correct verb: "are" (plural) – agrees with "engineers"