Ing was employed by IBM Canada from 1985 to 2012, with assignments as a management consultant, solution architect, industry sales specialist and headquarters planner.

From 1988 to 1993, David Ing was assigned by IBM to roles in market development of decision support systems with retail industry customers.

In this role, he developed prototype applications in merchandise planning and category management on the Metaphor Data Interpretation System, as it evolved to become an IBM product.

In 1990, Ing was a cofounder of the Canadian Centre for Marketing Information Technologies at the University of Toronto Faculty of Management, with Andrew A. Mitchell and Ray Serpkenci.

It demonstrated the following key features:[7] The declaration of an organizational context and commitment protocols were influenced by the Language Action Perspective, as developed by Fernando Flores and Terry Winograd.

Between 1997 and 2001, David Ing was assigned as adjunct faculty to the IBM Advanced Business Institute, located in Palisades, New York, as Stephan H. Haeckel was writing the Adaptive Enterprise book.

During this time, Ing collaborated with Ian D. Simmonds at IBM Research, on shearing layers approaches to the design of organizations and information technologies, based on the idea of the evolutionary view of How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand.

[10] In his research, Ing has been most influenced by the work of Russell L. Ackoff, C. West Churchman, David L. Hawk and Timothy F. H. Allen.

David Ing was early in the development of research into service science, management and engineering, due to his affiliation with Jim Spohrer since the ISSS 2005 Cancun[22] meeting, and through communities internal to IBM.

Through Kyoichi Kijima, David Ing has been a visiting scholar to the Tokyo Institute of Technology in the development of their Service Systems Science Research in 2012,[23] 2011, 2010, 2009[24] and 2008.

In parallel, he was co-developer and instructor in the master's degree Program in Service Business Management[27] at Helsinki Polytechnic Stadia.