David Shaman

Chief Legal Officer and Secretary Bentley Systems

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

David Shaman is Chief Legal Officer and Secretary of Bentley Systems, Incorporated (NASDAQ: BSY), the Exton, Pennsylvania infrastructure engineering software company whose applications are used to design, build and operate roads, bridges, rail networks, water utilities and other public works. He joined Bentley in 1998 and has led its legal function since the middle of the following decade, with responsibility spanning legal affairs, regulatory compliance, government relations, licence compliance and corporate philanthropy. Unusually for a general counsel of a US-listed company, much of his career has been conducted from outside the United States, and his background is as much mathematical as legal: he holds a mathematics degree, a Cambridge diploma in mathematical statistics and a Harvard law degree, and worked inside both a European Union institution and a British software company before settling into an in-house career that has now run more than twenty-five years at a single employer.

Career Highlights

• Named as an executive officer of Bentley Systems in the company’s DEF 14A proxy statement filed 10 April 2026, under the title Chief Legal Officer and Secretary, and signed the notice of the 21 May 2026 annual meeting in that capacity.
• Joined Bentley Systems in 1998 in the company’s Netherlands office and has remained with the company for more than twenty-five years, the whole of his in-house career.
• Served as Bentley’s Deputy General Counsel from 2006 to 2015 before taking over leadership of the legal department.
• Led Bentley’s legal operations from outside the United States for roughly eight years, according to the company’s 2026 proxy statement.
• Responsible at Bentley for legal, regulatory compliance, government relations, licence compliance and corporate philanthropy.
• Practised as an associate in the Brussels office of the Washington, D.C. law firm Covington & Burling LLP before joining Bentley.
• Worked earlier at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Informatics in Brussels and at Harlequin Limited, a software company based in Cambridge, England.

Professional Journey

Shaman’s route into technology law ran through mathematics and through Europe rather than through a conventional US corporate ladder. After a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania and a diploma in mathematical statistics at Cambridge, he took a law degree at Harvard Law School. His early working life was spent on the European side of the Atlantic: a period at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Informatics in Brussels, a spell at Harlequin Limited, a Cambridge-based software company, and then practice as an associate in the Brussels office of Covington & Burling LLP, the Washington firm with a long-standing European regulatory practice.

He joined Bentley Systems in 1998, based in the company’s Netherlands office, at a point when Bentley was a privately held engineering-software business a long way from a public listing. He became Deputy General Counsel in 2006 and held that post until 2015. A Business Wire announcement dated 8 October 2015 records his appointment as the company’s General Counsel; Bentley’s own executive-bios page says he was named Chief Legal Officer in 2016, while the 2026 proxy statement describes him as having led the legal team since 2015. The two accounts are compatible if the general counsel appointment in late 2015 was followed by the chief legal officer title a year later.

By the company’s own account he spent about eight years running Bentley’s legal operations from outside the United States, which shaped a legal department built for a business selling into infrastructure markets in dozens of jurisdictions. That international footing became more consequential after Bentley’s September 2020 initial public offering on NASDAQ, which brought the company under US public-reporting obligations while leaving its revenue base heavily international.

His current remit as Chief Legal Officer and Secretary is broader than litigation and contracts. Bentley’s proxy statement assigns him legal, regulatory compliance, government relations and licence compliance, the last of which matters commercially for a company whose products are licensed seat by seat to engineering firms, as well as corporate philanthropy. He continues in the role under Nicholas H. Cumins, who became Bentley’s chief executive in July 2024.

Education

Harvard Law School

J.D.

University of Pennsylvania

Bachelor’s degree, Mathematics

University of Cambridge

Diploma, Mathematical Statistics