Q&A: Jack Biltcliffe, design engineer

January 2026

A childhood fascination in discovering how things worked sparked Jack Biltcliffe's interest in engineering. He has since been involved in the development of several products that are having an impact on people's daily lives, including the Divya hand-cranked washing machine, which is for use in areas where people don't have access to electric washing machines.

Why did you first become interested in science, engineering or STEM?
I have always been fascinated by understanding how things work. I grew up taking things apart and mostly putting them back together again. Both my dad and my grandad were engineers and I spent summer holidays helping out in my dad’s machining workshop. I loved walking around the machines and seeing all the parts being made. On weekends I often went to classic car shows with my grandad. That combination of curiosity and hands-on making is what pulled me into engineering.

Quick-fire questions

Jack's favourite tech helps him get to work

Age: 31

Qualifications: BSc product design engineering

Biggest engineering inspiration: the people around me. I am lucky to work with incredible groups of people from engineers to users and partners. Working on problems together and bouncing ideas around is where the best thinking happens.

Most used technology: probably my phone and laptop. They are incredible tools for staying connected and collaborating with teams around the world.

Favourite technology: my bicycle. I cycle to work and it is the perfect tool for getting around the city. It makes exploring places fun and helps me feel connected to everything happening around me.

Three words that describe you: empathetic, purposeful, committed

How did you get to where you are now?
I knew early on that I loved engineering but I had no idea which direction to take. While looking through university courses, I found product design engineering. It combined engineering with real-world problems. When I visited Brunel University and brought home the Made in Brunel book, I was excited by the culture and the type of challenges students worked on.

After graduating I joined the graduate programme at Dyson. I worked on four products that made it to market with some more still in development. I had the chance to take a design from an early concept all the way to setting up a manufacturing line in Malaysia. During my time at Dyson, I also helped set up sustainability initiatives and worked on early lifecycle assessments.

A group of children and an adult gather around a manual washing machine outside a building, watching as someone demonstrates how to use it. — Jack with a women's group in Jinja, Uganda. The Washing Machine Project trains local women’s groups to assemble, maintain, and repair the Divya Washing Machine. Since it doesn't have global service centres, the machine has been designed to be easily serviced by the users themselves or local mechanics.

I then moved to Elvie, where I learned how purposeful products can be in improving lives. I helped launch Elvie Stride, a low-cost cordless breast pump available through insurance in the US. It gave new mothers more flexibility in how and where they pump.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to join The Washing Machine Project. Within the first few months of joining I was hand-building Divya washing machines with volunteers and then travelled to Uganda to research handwashing clothes and distribute pilot machines. It has been an incredible journey ever since.

What has been your biggest achievement to date?
For me it is launching products that make a meaningful impact on people’s lives. I have been fortunate to bring several products to market and each one has taken a lot of time and effort. Product development is challenging and you don’t always get it right. So, seeing something go from an idea to a real product in someone’s hands is incredibly rewarding. Hearing feedback from users and knowing it has made their daily life better is the thing I am most proud of.

Two people in a workshop stand beside a large metal drum covered in handwritten signatures — In partnership with Whirlpool, volunteers assemble Divya Washing Machines for distribution across the globe. It’s now a tradition for every person who builds on this line to leave their mark by signing a special production-line machine.

What is your favourite thing about being an engineer?
The breadth. Every day is different, depending on the stage of the project I might be testing products, building prototypes, doing CAD (computer-aided design), running user research, working with suppliers or running safety reviews. No matter what I am doing, it always comes down to breaking down problems and finding a way to solve them, and I love that.

What does a typical day involve for you?
It varies a lot. Right now we are developing the next generation of the manual washing machine. A typical day involves speaking with our in-market partners, shaping user research objectives and breaking the overall challenge into smaller problems for the engineering team. We brainstorm ideas, build rough prototypes, run tests and then turn the strongest concepts into designs we can send out for quotation with manufacturers.

What would be your advice to young people pursuing engineering?
If your school offers design and technology, take it. Beyond that, make things, experiment and follow your curiosity. Engineering is all about solving real problems and the best way to learn is by building, testing and seeing what happens. Things generally won’t work the first time, failure is part of the process, so stay resilient, learn from it and keep going.

What is next for you?
I am incredibly passionate about the work we are doing at The Washing Machine Project. It feels like a dream job to be working on challenges that have real positive impact on people’s lives. We are setting up localised manufacturing and developing the next generation manual washing machine to expand access even further. There is a lot of exciting work ahead.