Archie Buxton
Software Engineer at Bentley Motors — working forward-deployed
MEng Product Design Engineering (1st Class) graduate from Loughborough University, now a software engineer at Bentley Motors. I work forward-deployed — I go and sit with the people who own a problem, scope it first-hand, and ship production software they end up using every day. HAWK is what that looks like in practice. I was handed a cross-departmental process owned by all and optimised by none — one my manager had spent over a year trying to get fixed. I ran the stakeholder discovery myself, took the business case to the Bentley board and won approval, taught myself the delivery stack, and shipped it: live-tested with around 200 R&D engineers, fully launched in May 2026 and now in daily use, projected to save £11.5m over six years. I joined on Bentley’s graduate scheme — and at its end, I was one of the few graduates offered a full-time role.
Education
Loughborough University
Product Design Engineering (MEng)
Fully accredited by the IED, IET and IMechE
My MEng in Product Design Engineering was deliberately broad — modules ran from software engineering, human-computer interaction and mechatronics through to manufacturing, project management, and finance and law, on top of a rigorous grounding in engineering science. That breadth is why I can move between engineering, business and domain-expert conversations without needing a translator.
Key 1st Year Modules
- CAD (NX11)
- Electronics
- Engineering Science
- Materials and Manufacturing Processes
- Product Design
- Mathematics
Key 2nd Year Modules
- Engineering Science 2
- Finite Element Analysis
- Software Engineering
- Manufacturing Technology
- Machine Design
- Industrial Design
- Management Modelling
Key 3rd Year Modules
- Advanced CAD (NX11)
- Sustainable Product Lifecycle Engineering
- Year Long Individual Project
- Materials and Manufacturing Processes
- Finance and Law
Key 4th Year Modules
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Mechatronics and Machine Control
- Project Management
- Sustainable Product Design
- Year Long Group Project
Interests & Experience
Technology
I’m self-taught at heart — my start was a Raspberry Pi and Python, then UiPath and Alexa skills, each one picked up because I wanted to build something specific. That habit scaled into HAWK, a production platform at Bentley Motors built on a stack I taught myself for the job. That’s the pattern I enjoy most: being dropped into someone else’s problem domain, learning it fast, and shipping the thing that fixes it.
University Activities
At university I was involved in a wide range of activities — from representing Loughborough in rowing to instructing with the Gliding Society. I was treasurer for the Rowing Club, secretary for the Gliding Society, and Peer Mentor for the Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering. These roles reinforced something I've carried into professional life: the best outcomes come from organised, committed people who genuinely care about what they're part of.
Gap Year
During my gap year I worked across three very different roles: technical assistant, chalet host and sailing instructor. Each taught me something different about leadership and working with people. The consistent thread was that a warm, enthusiastic approach opens more doors — and unlocks more from a team — than almost anything else.
“The more organised with your time you become, the more you can achieve.”