Manufacturing
Software engineering for Automotive
Automotive software is not one problem, it is a lifecycle: a vehicle is configured, ordered, built, retailed, financed, serviced, connected, and eventually resold or scrapped, across an OEM, a dealer network, an aftermarket and increasingly the driver’s own phone. The value is in the unglamorous seams between those parties, where the DMS, the VIN, the parts catalogue and the telematics stream have to agree. We build for that reality, not for the configurator render that wins the pitch.
Why the domain matters
Automotive is a lifecycle business pretending to be a product business, and software that misunderstands that dies at the first handover. A single vehicle passes through configuration and ordering, manufacture, distribution to a dealer, retail sale, finance and insurance, registration, servicing and parts over years of ownership, connected-vehicle telematics throughout, and finally used-car remarketing or end-of-life, and at almost every step it changes hands between a manufacturer, an importer or national sales company, a franchised or independent dealer, an aftermarket parts and service network, a finance house and the driver. The interesting, valuable, hard software lives in the seams between those parties, where a vehicle identity, an order, a parts number or a telemetry stream has to survive being passed from one organisation’s systems to another’s. This is deliberately not factory-floor software (that is the manufacturing problem, MES and production lines), this is everything that happens to a vehicle once it has an identity and needs to be sold, owned, serviced and connected.
The market has a shape worth naming, because software lands differently at each point. OEMs and their national sales companies care about the brand, the order-to-delivery pipeline, the configurator and the connected-vehicle platform, and they exert enormous gravity over the dealers who carry their franchise. Franchised dealers live inside a dealer management system that is the operating system of their business: new and used sales, service bookings, parts, workshop, accounting and manufacturer reporting all run through it, and it is almost always an entrenched incumbent. Independent dealers and the aftermarket run leaner, care about used-car retail, parts fitment and service, and are far more willing to adopt something new if it plainly makes them money. Fleet and leasing operators are a business of their own again, obsessing over total cost of ownership, utilisation and telematics. And connected and electric vehicles cut across all of it, turning a car into a data-emitting, remotely-updatable, charge-consuming device whose software never stops mattering after the sale.
We are a senior-led team and we operate what we build, so we start from where the vehicle identity and the money actually flow rather than from the screen we would like to demo. The recurring failure mode in automotive software is the beautiful configurator or the slick retail front end that cannot get a clean order into the DMS, cannot resolve a VIN to the right parts and options, or assumes the manufacturer’s feed is tidy when it is anything but. We would rather build the unglamorous DMS integration, the VIN and vehicle-data plumbing and the parts-fitment logic that survives contact with a busy service department than the showroom render that impresses a marketing director and then strands every order in a spreadsheet. The hard part here is almost never the interface. It is the integration, the vehicle data, and the handover between parties who each think they own the customer.
The challenges in automotive
The DMS is the operating system, and you have to live with it
A franchised dealer runs new and used sales, service bookings, the workshop, parts, accounting and manufacturer reporting through a dealer management system that is the single source of truth for the business. New software has to integrate with it, sit alongside it, or migrate off it with great care, never rip it out mid-flight, because that stops the dealership trading. The DMS incumbents are entrenched, their integration surfaces are variable, and any plan that assumes a clean greenfield is ignoring the system every department depends on hourly.
Vehicle identity and data that never quite agree
A vehicle is a VIN, a registration, a set of build options and an evolving service history, and those facts live in the OEM’s systems, the DMS, the DVLA, parts catalogues and telematics, in formats that rarely match. Resolving a VIN to the correct options, the correct parts fitment and the correct recall status, and keeping that consistent as it crosses systems, is a large part of the real work and where most of the defects hide. Get vehicle identity wrong and you order the wrong part or quote the wrong car.
Everyone thinks they own the customer
The OEM wants the brand relationship and the connected-vehicle app, the dealer owns the sale and the service, the finance house owns the contract, and the aftermarket owns the ongoing parts and repair. Software that assumes one clean customer record ignores that the customer is claimed by several parties with genuinely competing interests, and that data-sharing between OEM and dealer is often contractual and political, not merely technical. We design for that reality rather than pretending it away.
Connected and electric vehicles never stop being software
A connected car emits telemetry, accepts over-the-air updates and depends on backend platforms for years after it leaves the forecourt. An EV adds charging, state-of-charge, battery health and public-charging interoperability on top. This is long-lived, safety-adjacent, always-on software with real operational and security obligations (not a feature you ship and forget), and treating it like a marketing app is how you end up with a fleet of vehicles you cannot reliably update or a charging integration that silently drops sessions.
Used-car retail is a data and trust problem, not a catalogue
Selling a used car online means accurate condition, provable history, honest pricing against a volatile market, part-exchange valuation, finance and delivery, all for a high-value purchase buyers are rightly cautious about. The hard parts are the vehicle-history and valuation data, the finance integration and the reconditioning workflow behind the listing, not the photo gallery. A used-car platform that looks great but misprices stock or hides a history problem does real commercial and reputational damage.
Franchise, distance-selling and consumer-credit rules reach into the build
Vehicle retail sits inside block-exemption and franchise arrangements, consumer rights and distance-selling rules for online sales, and FCA-regulated consumer credit for the finance that funds most purchases. These are not paperwork bolted on at the end. They shape what the software must present, disclose, capture and retain at the point of sale, and getting the finance journey or the disclosures wrong is a regulatory exposure for your client, not just a UX blemish.
What we build for automotive
The systems this sector most often needs, built by engineers who understand the domain, not just the code.
Dealer management and retail systems
Software that runs the dealership day, new and used sales pipelines, service and workshop scheduling, parts, and the manufacturer reporting that keeps the franchise, built to integrate with the incumbent DMS rather than pretend it away. We treat the DMS integration as the core problem, because a sales or service tool that cannot get a clean deal or job into the system of record has failed however good the front end looks, and a busy department will abandon anything that makes them double-key.
Vehicle configurators and ordering
Configurators that let a buyer or a salesperson build a valid vehicle (models, trims, options, packs, dependencies and pricing), and, crucially, turn that into a clean, valid order that reaches the OEM ordering system and the DMS. We build the options-and-rules engine and the order plumbing as first-class work, because the value is in an order that is actually buildable and correctly priced, not a render that strands the customer between a beautiful screen and an empty pipeline.
Used-car retail and remarketing platforms
Online used-car retail covering listings, provable history, part-exchange valuation, finance, reservation and delivery, plus the reconditioning and stock workflow behind it. We build the vehicle-data, valuation and finance integrations that make a high-value online purchase trustworthy, because in used cars the commercial risk sits in mispriced stock and hidden history, not in the gallery, and buyers are rightly cautious with this much money.
Parts, service and aftermarket systems
Parts catalogues with VIN-accurate fitment, service booking and workshop management, digital service records and the aftermarket ordering that keeps vehicles on the road. We build the fitment logic and the service history carefully, because ordering the wrong part or losing a service record costs real time and trust, and the aftermarket lives or dies on getting the right part to the right vehicle quickly and being able to prove what was done.
Connected-vehicle and telematics platforms
Backend platforms that ingest vehicle telemetry, support over-the-air updates, and power connected-car and driver apps, treated as long-lived, security-conscious, always-on systems rather than a marketing feature. We build for the reality that these vehicles depend on the platform for years, so reliability, update safety and data governance matter far more than a flashy dashboard that cannot be trusted at fleet scale.
EV, charging and fleet software
Charging integration, state-of-charge and battery-health handling, and fleet systems covering utilisation, total cost of ownership and telematics for operators. We build the charging and fleet plumbing honestly (public-charging interoperability is genuinely messy, and battery and energy data need care), because an EV or fleet product that silently drops charging sessions or miscounts utilisation undermines the exact decisions operators are trying to make with it.
Where we help
A configurator whose orders actually reach the DMS and the factory
A brand or dealer group wants an online configurator that lets buyers build and reserve a vehicle. The real work is not the 3D render: it is the options-and-rules engine that only allows buildable combinations, correct pricing including manufacturer campaigns, and an order that lands cleanly in the OEM ordering system and the DMS with the right specification. Get that right and a configured order becomes a real sale; get it wrong and every configuration strands the customer between a lovely screen and a salesperson re-keying it by hand.
A used-car platform that prices stock honestly and sells online
A dealer group wants to retail used cars online end to end, accurate listings, provable history, part-exchange valuation, FCA-compliant finance and home delivery. We build the vehicle-history, valuation and finance integrations and the reconditioning workflow behind the listing, because the commercial risk lives in mispriced stock and undisclosed history on a high-value purchase, not in the photo carousel. Done properly it wins cautious buyers’ trust; done as a skin over bad data it loses money quietly on every deal.
A service and parts workflow that stops the double-keying
A franchised service department wants online booking, an accurate quote, VIN-correct parts and a digital service record, without entering everything twice into the DMS. We build the booking and workshop flow to resolve the VIN to the right options and fitment and to write the job and parts back into the system of record, because the value is removing the manual re-entry and the wrong-part errors from a busy workshop, not adding another screen the technicians ignore.
A connected-vehicle backend a fleet can actually rely on
An OEM or fleet operator needs to ingest telemetry from thousands of vehicles, push updates safely, and surface health and utilisation. We build the ingestion, the update pipeline and the data governance as long-lived infrastructure, because at fleet scale the failure modes are dropped telemetry, an update that bricks a vehicle, or data that cannot be trusted for a maintenance or safety decision. The dashboard is the easy part; the reliable, secure platform underneath it is the deliverable.
How we build for automotive
We start from the vehicle identity, the money and the integrations, not the screens. Before designing anything we want to see how a deal, a service job or an order actually moves: where the DMS sits, how a VIN resolves to options and parts, where the OEM feed comes in, and where the manual re-keying and the wrong-part errors happen today. In automotive the constraint is almost always integration and data consistency across parties, so we design for the busy negotiator, service advisor or fleet manager who will use this all day, not for the configurator that impresses a marketing director.
We are blunt about which parts of the lifecycle are worth digitising and which just move work around. Removing real friction: an order that strands in a spreadsheet, parts ordered against the wrong VIN, a used car mispriced against a volatile market, telemetry nobody can trust, is worth building. Digitising a step that then hands back to an entrenched DMS or an OEM process nobody controls, or automating a valuation or a finance decision that carries real risk, needs to be done with clear eyes about the limits. We would rather tell you that early than ship something that looks impressive and then leaks money or trust.
We treat DMS, OEM and vehicle-data integration as the core of the work, resourced accordingly. The dealer management system, the manufacturer ordering and reporting feeds, and the VIN-to-options-to-parts data are where these projects are won or lost, and their integration surfaces are variable and occasionally hostile. We plan for the awkward formats, the sync edge cases and the political data-sharing boundaries between OEM and dealer from day one, rather than discovering them late when the front end is finished and the order will not flow.
Because we operate what we build, the people designing an order flow or a telematics pipeline are the ones called when an order does not reach the factory, a part is ordered against the wrong car, or a fleet stops reporting. That concentrates the mind on the failure modes that actually matter (the seams between OEM, dealer, aftermarket and driver), and it keeps us honest about trade-offs up front rather than discovering them in production on your behalf, on a vehicle a customer is standing next to.
Regulation and compliance
Vehicle retail sits inside a framework the software has to respect. Franchised distribution operates under block-exemption and franchise arrangements that shape data-sharing and who may do what; online sales fall under consumer rights and distance-selling rules that dictate disclosures, cancellation and the information a buyer must see before committing to a high-value purchase. Where our software takes a customer from configuration to order, it has to present and capture the right information at the right moment, because these obligations live in the point-of-sale flow, not in a policy document beside it.
Most vehicles are bought with finance, and consumer credit is regulated by the FCA. A retail or configurator journey that presents finance has to handle the regulated credit process (affordability, disclosures, representative examples and the associated record-keeping), properly rather than as a marketing widget bolted onto the price. Getting the finance journey wrong is a regulatory exposure for your client, so where we build it we build the disclosures, the checks and the audit trail in deliberately, and we are clear about where the regulated activity begins.
Data protection under UK GDPR sits across all of it, and connected vehicles sharpen it considerably. A modern car generates location, driving-behaviour and usage data that is genuinely personal and genuinely sensitive, and the question of who (OEM, dealer, insurer, fleet), may see it, for what purpose, and for how long, is a real one. We engineer for lawful basis, minimisation, retention limits and clear consent from the start, because connected-vehicle data is exactly the sort of flow that becomes an incident or a scandal when it is accumulated loosely.
We build systems that meet these obligations, but we are engineers, not your legal or compliance advisers. The rules around consumer credit, distance selling, franchise arrangements and vehicle data, and vehicle-safety obligations such as recalls and type approval where they touch the software: carry real legal weight, and sign-off rests with your own compliance and legal functions. Our job is to build software that captures, discloses and retains what those obligations require, and to work alongside the people accountable for them.
Integration
The dealer management system is the gravitational centre for anything dealer-facing. New and used sales, service, parts, the workshop, accounting and manufacturer reporting all run through the DMS, so retail, service and CRM software has to read from it and write to it cleanly: a deal, a booking or a parts order that cannot reach the system of record is worthless however good the interface. DMS integration surfaces are variable and sometimes awkward, so we build resilient integrations that cope with their quirks rather than pretending the connection is a simple export, and we treat migration or coexistence as first-class engineering because the DMS is not going anywhere on the timescale of a project.
OEM and national-sales-company systems are the other pole. Vehicle ordering, manufacturer campaigns and pricing, warranty and recall data, and connected-vehicle backends all flow from the manufacturer, often through feeds that are contractual as much as technical and rarely as tidy as the brand would like. We build to those feeds carefully, including the reality that data-sharing between OEM and dealer is frequently a negotiated boundary rather than an open pipe, and we design around the politics as well as the payloads.
Vehicle data providers and registries tie it together: VIN decoding and build data, DVLA registration and MOT data, parts catalogues and fitment, vehicle-history and provenance checks, and valuation feeds for used stock and part-exchange. These arrive in formats that rarely agree, and the recurring engineering problem is resolving a single vehicle consistently across all of them (the right options, the right parts, the right history, the right value), so that the workshop orders the correct part and the sales floor quotes the correct car.
Connected-vehicle, charging and finance integrations round it out. Telematics ingestion and over-the-air update backends, EV public-charging interoperability, and FCA-regulated finance and insurance providers all plug into the operational flows. Charging interoperability in particular is genuinely messy across networks and standards, and money and telemetry both have to reconcile reliably, so we integrate these carefully, because a dropped charging session, a mis-posted finance agreement or a lost telemetry stream is how you lose an operator’s or a customer’s trust fast.
Security and data protection
Automotive software holds a rich and varied store of data: customer identity and finance details for high-value purchases, vehicle identity and history, and (for connected vehicles), location, driving behaviour and continuous usage telemetry. That combination is an attractive target and a serious liability, so we build with access controls scoped to genuine need, encryption in transit and at rest, and retention limited to what a lawful basis actually supports, with particular care over who between OEM, dealer, insurer and fleet may ever see a driver’s data.
Connected and electric vehicles raise the stakes beyond ordinary data protection. Over-the-air updates and remote commands touch physical, safety-adjacent systems, so the platforms behind them need strong authentication, signed and verified updates, and defence-in-depth thinking about what a compromised backend could do to a fleet of real vehicles on real roads. We treat this as security-critical infrastructure, because the failure mode here is not a leaked spreadsheet, it is an unsafe or unavailable vehicle at scale.
Finance and payment flows are a direct financial-fraud surface on some of the largest consumer transactions there are. We build these paths with strong authentication, careful handling of finance and bank details, and processes that make discrepancies visible rather than silent, because a mis-booked finance agreement or a compromised retail account does immediate, tangible financial harm to a buyer and a dealer, and consumer-credit data deserves stricter handling again.
Because we operate what we build, security here is not a report handed over at the end. We instrument for the access patterns and anomalies that indicate a problem (in the retail systems and in the connected-vehicle backends alike), keep the audit trail an investigation, a recall or a data-subject request would need, and treat the ability to reconstruct exactly what happened to a customer’s data or a vehicle’s software as part of the deliverable, not something you find missing after an incident.
What changes
Orders and deals that reach the systems of record cleanly
Because we treat DMS and OEM integration as core engineering rather than an export, configured orders, deals, bookings and parts land correctly in the dealer management system and the manufacturer pipeline (no stranded configurations, no double-keying), so the front end actually turns into buildable orders and completed jobs instead of work re-entered by hand.
Vehicle data you can trust across the lifecycle
By resolving VIN, options, parts, history and valuation consistently across OEM, DMS, DVLA and provider feeds, the software quotes the right car, orders the right part and prices used stock honestly, removing the wrong-part errors and the mispriced-stock losses that quietly erode a dealer’s margin and a customer’s trust.
Connected-vehicle and fleet platforms that hold up at scale
Because we build telematics, updates and charging as long-lived, secure infrastructure rather than a marketing feature, the data can be trusted for maintenance, safety and utilisation decisions, updates ship safely, and charging and fleet metrics are reliable, which is what actually lets an OEM or operator run a business on the platform instead of second-guessing it.
What we build for automotive
From a first platform to modernising what you already run. The disciplines this sector draws on most.
How we deliver
- 01
Discover
We map the system, the constraints and the business it serves, including the parts nobody documented.
Architecture brief
- 02
Architect
Decisions get made, written down and defended before a line of production code exists.
Decision records
- 03
Build
Short cycles against working software. You see progress in the product, not in a status deck.
Shipping increments
- 04
Operate
Monitoring, incident response and iteration. The system is alive, so the engagement is too.
Runbooks & SLOs
Building something for automotive?
Tell us the problem and the constraints you are working under. A senior engineer will give you a straight view on what it would take, and say so plainly if we are not the right team for it.
Technologies we work in
Chosen per problem, not per fashion. A selection of the stack we most often reach for.
Why teams in automotive choose us
We build for the whole lifecycle, not the showroom render
Automotive software fails at the handovers, order to factory, sale to service, vehicle to driver’s app. We start from those seams and the vehicle identity that has to survive them, because a configurator or retail front end that cannot get a clean order into the DMS and the OEM pipeline has delivered a demo, not a working system.
We treat DMS, OEM and vehicle-data integration as the hard part it is
The dealer management system, the manufacturer feeds and the VIN-to-parts data are where these projects are won or lost, and their integration surfaces are variable and sometimes political. We resource that from day one instead of discovering it late, which is what separates a retail or service tool that works from one that ships half-connected.
We are honest about where digitisation adds value
The vehicle lifecycle is long and not every step is worth automating, and some (valuations, finance decisions, connected-vehicle claims), carry real risk if oversold. We will tell you plainly which friction is worth removing and which digitisation just relocates the work or hides a data problem, rather than selling you software for its own sake.
We operate what we build
The people who design an order flow or a telematics pipeline are the ones paged when an order does not reach the factory, a part is ordered against the wrong car, or a fleet stops reporting. That keeps us focused on the failure modes that matter across OEM, dealer, aftermarket and driver, and honest about trade-offs up front rather than in production on your behalf.
Related sectors
Part of Manufacturing. Adjacent sectors we also know.
Common questions
We already run a dealer management system, can you work with it rather than replace it?
Almost always, and we plan for it from the start. The DMS is the system of record for new and used sales, service, parts, the workshop and manufacturer reporting, so a dealership cannot trade without it: new software has to integrate with it, sit alongside it, or migrate off it very carefully, never rip it out mid-flight. We treat that coexistence and migration as first-class engineering, and we build resilient integrations that cope with the variable, sometimes awkward DMS integration surfaces rather than assuming a simple export. A sales or service tool that cannot get a clean deal or job into the system of record has failed however good the front end looks, so we resource that connection as the core of the work.
Can you build a vehicle configurator that produces real, buildable orders?
Yes, and the render is the easy part. The value is the options-and-rules engine and the order plumbing. We build the logic that only allows valid combinations of models, trims, options and packs with their dependencies and correct pricing including manufacturer campaigns, and we make the resulting order land cleanly in the OEM ordering system and the DMS with the right specification. That is where configurators usually fail: a beautiful screen that strands the customer between the configuration and a salesperson re-keying it by hand. We treat the buildable, correctly-priced, cleanly-transmitted order as the deliverable, not the 3D model on top of it.
How do you handle connected-vehicle and EV software safely?
As long-lived, security-critical infrastructure rather than a marketing feature. Connected vehicles emit telemetry, accept over-the-air updates and depend on backend platforms for years, and EVs add charging, state-of-charge and battery health on top, with public-charging interoperability that is genuinely messy across networks and standards. Because updates and remote commands touch physical, safety-adjacent systems, we build with strong authentication, signed and verified updates, and defence-in-depth about what a compromised backend could do to real vehicles. We also engineer the vehicle data (location, driving behaviour, usage), for lawful basis, minimisation and clear consent, because who may see a driver’s data, for what purpose and for how long, is a real question and a real liability.
Can you build an online used-car retail platform, finance and all?
Yes, end to end, listings, provable history, part-exchange valuation, FCA-compliant finance, reservation and delivery, plus the reconditioning and stock workflow behind the listing. The commercial risk in used cars lives in mispriced stock and undisclosed history on a high-value purchase buyers are rightly cautious about, so we build the vehicle-history, valuation and finance integrations carefully rather than treating the platform as a photo gallery. Because most cars are bought on finance, we handle the FCA-regulated consumer-credit journey (affordability, disclosures and record-keeping), as a proper regulated flow, not a widget bolted onto the price. To be clear about the boundary: we build to those obligations, but sign-off on consumer-credit and distance-selling compliance rests with your own legal and compliance functions.
How is automotive software different from the manufacturing systems you also build?
They meet at the vehicle but solve different problems. Manufacturing software is the factory floor: production lines, MES, scheduling and quality on the plant. Automotive software in our sense is everything that happens once a vehicle has an identity and needs to be sold, owned, serviced and connected: the dealer management and retail systems, the configurator and ordering, used-car remarketing, parts and service in the aftermarket, and the connected-vehicle, EV and fleet platforms that keep mattering for years after the car leaves the line. The hard part here is not making the vehicle, it is the lifecycle and the handovers between OEM, dealer, aftermarket and driver, so we build for the seams where the DMS, the VIN, the parts catalogue and the telematics stream have to agree, which is a different discipline from running a production line.
Building for automotive?
Tell us what the system has to do and what it cannot get wrong. A senior engineer reads it, and if automotive is not a domain we know well enough to be useful in, we will say so rather than learn it on your budget.
- 01A senior engineer reads it. Not a form queue, and not an account manager.
- 02We reply either with questions or with a straight answer that we are not the right fit.
- 03If it looks like a fit, a technical call with the person who would actually run the delivery.
- 04Then scope, effort and risk in writing, before anyone signs anything.