Director Advanced Design

McLaren Automotive Ltd; Bicester; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days’ holiday

Enhanced company pension

Discretionary annual bonus

Private medical insurance

Life assurance

Sabbatical after two years

Job summary

McLaren Automotive is seeking a Director of Advanced Design to lead the Advanced Product Design team and shape future-focused concepts aligned with McLaren’s strategy. You will translate brand vision into tangible design directions, guiding cross-functional teams across planning, engineering, and leadership to drive innovative, performance-led products.

The role emphasizes strategic leadership, brand translation, and collaboration with engineering to ensure feasible, market-leading design

Qualifications

• Significant experience in automotive design leadership within premium, luxury, or performance brands.
• Proven experience leading advanced or future product design teams.
• Strong understanding of strategic design development, concept generation, and product planning interfaces.
• Experience collaborating closely with engineering and technical development teams.
• Track record of translating brand and business direction into future-facing design solutions.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Advanced Product Design team in creating future-focused design proposals that support McLaren’s long-term product vision.
• Define and communicate a design direction reflecting brand values, market opportunity, and technology progression.
• Translate strategic objectives into compelling design thinking and development themes.
• Provide creative and strategic guidance across all advanced design activities.
• Collaborate with future product planning teams to align exploration with portfolio strategy and timing.
• Contribute design insight to long-range product roadmaps and opportunity identification.
• Identify future design directions supporting the evolution of McLaren’s product line.
• Ensure design work contributes to business and product strategy.
• Interpret and digest brand values and future ambition into advanced design output.
• Ensure concepts are authentic to McLaren and consistent with the brand’s identity.
• Support development of design language that strengthens brand differentiation.
• Maintain understanding of how design expresses the brand in future products.

Skills

Automotive design leadership

Strategic thinking

Brand interpretation

Design language translation

Stakeholder influence

Visual communication (sketching/render

Job description

What to Expect

The Director of Advanced Design leads McLaren’s Advanced Product Design team and is responsible for developing visionary, strategically aligned design concepts that anticipate future product opportunities and reinforce McLaren’s brand direction.The role acts as a key link between future product planning, brand interpretation, and advanced engineering, ensuring that design thinking is informed by business strategy, technical opportunity,and customer desirability. The Director of Advanced Design digests the brand, translates long-term product intent into tangible creative direction, and helps define what McLaren should become in future product cycles. This role requires a balance of creative leadership, strategic insight, and technical understanding. The Director will ensure that advanced design work is not only visually compelling, but also relevant, feasible, and aligned to McLaren’s future portfolio, performance ambitions, and innovation agenda.

What You’ll Do

Strategic Design Leadership

• Lead the Advanced Product Design team in creating future-focused design proposals that support McLaren’s long-term product vision.
• Define and communicate a clear design direction that reflects brand values, market opportunity, and technology progression.
• Translate strategic objectives into compelling design thinking and development themes.
• Provide strong creative and strategic guidance across all advanced design activities.

Future Product Planning Interface

• Work closely with future product planning teams to align advanced design exploration with portfolio strategy and timing.
• Contribute design insight to long-range product roadmaps, programme definition, and opportunity identification.
• Identify and evaluate future design directions that support the evolution of McLaren’s product line.
• Ensure design work contributes meaningfully to business and product strategy.

Brand Translation

• Interpret and digest McLaren’s brand values, heritage, and future ambition into advanced design output.
• Ensure concepts are authentic to McLaren and consistent with the brand’s performance-led identity.
• Support the development of design language that strengthens brand differentiation and desirability.
• Maintain a clear understanding of how design can express the brand in future products and market segments.

Advanced Engineering Collaboration

• Build strong links with advanced engineering teams to ensure design concepts are technically credible and development-ready.
• Collaborate on feasibility, packaging, architecture, materials, surfacing, and innovation opportunities.
• Support the integration of engineering intelligence into early-stage design exploration.
• Help identify where advanced design can influence technical direction and unlock new possibilities.

Team Leadership

• Lead, develop, and inspire a high-performing Advanced Product Design team.
• Set clear expectations, priorities, and standards for creativity, quality, and delivery.
• Provide coaching, feedback, and professional development support to team members.
• Foster a collaborative, ambitious, and accountable team environment.

Concept Development

• Oversee the creation of advanced design concepts, sketches, renderings, models, and

• Ensure concepts are original, strategically relevant, and consistent with McLaren’s future

• Champion experimentation and innovation in form language, proportion, customer

• Drive strong design narratives that communicate direction clearly to senior stakeholders.

Strong integration of brand, future product planning, and advanced engineering inputs.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Present design thinking and proposals confidently to the Chief Design Officer and other senior stakeholders.
• Influence cross-functional stakeholders through clear storytelling, evidence-based design thinking, and strong visual communication.
• Support alignment between design, planning, engineering, and leadership teams.
• Represent advanced design in strategic discussions where future opportunity and brand direction are being shaped.

Key Accountabilities

• Delivery of future-focused advanced design direction that supports McLaren’s product

• Effective leadership of the Advanced Product Design team.

What You’ll Bring

Required Experience

• Significant experience in automotive design leadership, ideally within premium, luxury, or performance brands.
• Proven experience leading advanced or future product design teams.
• Strong understanding of strategic design development, concept generation, and product planning interfaces.
• Experience collaborating closely with engineering and technical development teams.
• Track record of translating brand and business direction into future-facing design solutions.

Technical and Professional Skills

• Excellent automotive design leadership and strategic thinking capability.
• Strong ability to interpret brand identity and translate it into design language.
• Good understanding of product planning, feasibility, packaging, and technical constraints.
• High-level visual communication skills, including sketching, rendering, and presentation.
• Ability to influence senior stakeholders and communicate complex ideas clearly.

Leadership Attributes

• Visionary and commercially aware.
• Confident, articulate, and persuasive.
• Collaborative and highly effective across functions.
• Strategic, analytical, and brand sensitive.
• Strong in setting direction, building momentum, and leading teams through change.

Personal Qualities

• Passionate about automotive design and innovation.
• Strong appreciation for brand, proportion, and future customer expectations.
• Curious, ambitious, and forward-looking.
• Resilient and comfortable working in a fast-moving, high-performance environment.
• Committed to excellence, creativity, and continuous improvement.

Success Measures

• Clear contribution of advanced design to future product planning and strategy.
• Strong alignment between design direction, brand identity, and engineering feasibility.
• High-quality, innovative, and influential design output from the team.
• Effective leadership and development of the Advanced Product Design team.
• Positive impact on McLaren’s future product competitiveness and desirability.

What We’ll Do for You

We offer a wide – ranging benefits package, which includes:

• Structured career development framework
• 25 days’ holiday, plus bank holiday. Annual buy & sell up to five days
• Enhanced company pension scheme
• Discretionary annual bonus award
• Private medical insurance and health cash plan
• Life assurance benefit
• Ability to apply for a sabbatical of up to one year after only two years’ service
• Benefits you can adapt to your lifestyle, such as discounted shopping
• Generous parental leave policies
• A range of wellbeing initiatives, such as employee assistance programme and free financial & mortgage advice

Who Are We?

No restraints. No limitations. We don’t simply push boundaries. We completely rethink them. McLaren Automotive exists to create breath-taking performance road cars.

It takes a community to do what we do. A diverse group of people with many areas of expertise, united by their passion to deliver visionary products and set new benchmarks.

McLaren Automotive commits to equal opportunity for all. Diversity, Equality and Inclusion is at the heart of our impact, it drives our innovation and enables us to truly create something special. Join us on our journey.