Senior Specialist, Performance and Development

Arrow McLaren IndyCar; Durnford Farm; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading international racing team is seeking an expert in performance and development to enhance their high-performance culture. The role involves designing and delivering leadership programs, optimizing onboarding experiences, and engaging with diverse stakeholders across the organization. The ideal candidate should have a robust background in people development, strong project management skills, and the ability to influence at all levels. The position offers hybrid working with a state-of-the-art work environment and a competitive benefits package.

Benefits

Private healthcare

Car schemes

Life insurance

Generous pension contributions

Qualifications

• Experience in a matrixed organization within engineering or technology.
• Solid experience in people development and designing initiatives.
• Strong project management skills and the ability to engage stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Embed high-performance culture and improve onboarding experiences.
• Deliver high-performance leadership programs to leaders.
• Design and implement innovative development interventions.

Skills

People development

Project management

Coaching

Stakeholder engagement

Performance Psychology

Job description

At McLaren Racing, we’re not just here to try to take the chequered flag. We’re here to excite our fans, inspire our people and deliver for our partners. And we’re also committed to evolving our sport, our industry, and our technology, too.

Purpose of the Role

The People Team is a highly valued and dynamic business performance partner, offering services across a range of diverse functions and departments within our highly competitive racing teams. It’s a unique and fast‑paced sports environment, so we are looking for the best in our industry to lead change and keep pushing boundaries.

In this role you’ll be the subject‑matter expert within McLaren Racing who will design and deliver a range of performance and development experiences that will embed and enhance our high‑performance culture and enable our team to perform at their peak. We are looking for an individual that can bring a different perspective to the traditional learning and development space – either from Performance/Sports Psychology, Coaching or other high‑performance specialisms or who has worked in people development within sport.

From management and leadership development to digital learning and early careers programmes, you’ll work across McLaren Racing to support our team to continuously learn, improve and challenge themselves through immersive and impactful interventions.

Day‑to‑day, you’ll work closely with the wider People Experience, Business Partnering, DEI and Talent teams on initiatives with a focus on optimising performance through our people. The role will also see you collaborating with our Internal Communications teams on the delivery and evaluation of activities and interventions.

Given the high‑performance environment, this role requires credibility, adaptability, and a performance‑focused approach, along with being a strong collaborator, communicator and relationship builder.

Your day‑to‑day

You’ll spend your time:

• Embedding our high‑performance culture into the way we operate as a team, whether that’s induction and onboarding, performance or development.
• Responsible for the delivery of our high‑performance leadership programme to ensure that leaders across McLaren Racing are equipped to inspire, enable and set high standards every day.
• Identifying and engaging with world‑class providers, speakers and tools that enhance our development offering.
• Designing and delivering best‑in‑class high‑performance development interventions in an agile and accessible way to a complex group of stakeholders, including inspiration speakers, informal networking, experiential learning and coaching.
• Delivering 1:1 or group coaching to select individuals and teams in order to optimise individual and team performance and cohesion, utilising coaching and psychometric tools to deliver content and sessions.
• Enhancing our new‑starter onboarding and induction experiences to ensure new team members are embedded culturally and practically as quickly as possible into their teams.
• Supporting leaders and team members to have continuous and impactful performance conversations, providing expertise and toolkits to embed our high‑performance culture at all levels of the organisation.
• Owning the relationships with providers within our learning ecosystem including systems, consultants and facilitators.

Your story

To join our race for performance, you’ll need:

• A background working in, or with, a matrixed organisation within the engineering or technology sector either in‑house or with a consultancy/training organisation.
• A knowledge of people development, with solid experience of scoping, designing and delivering initiatives that support it.
• Experience of building strong partnerships to deliver creative and innovative solutions, and an ability to prioritise, that enables you to craft solutions that support a variety of needs.
• Knowledge of apprenticeship programme set up, management and optimisation would be beneficial.
• The confidence to deliver content in an engaging way, whether it’s delivering training, pitching strategies, or presenting to large audiences.
• Strong project management skills, and an ability to switch from big‑picture thinking to operational detail.
• A creative and proactive approach to continuously improving the way we work.
• An ability to engage, influence and persuade stakeholders at every level of the organisation.

What can McLaren offer?

We constantly strive to be better tomorrow than we are today. Our ambition is to be the most pioneering and exhilarating racing team in the world, and our collective task is to set the standards for high performance in sport. We show up every day with energy and enthusiasm, ready to play our part.

We encourage and support diversity, equity and inclusion. We will actively promote a culture that values difference and eliminates discrimination in our workplace.

McLaren Racing is based at the iconic McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) near Woking. Here at McLaren, we offer hybrid working with 3 days a week based in the MTC.

Our state‑of‑the‑art, sustainable campus offers many facilities including a gym, restaurant and indoor and outdoor breakout areas, as well as direct access to park and common land. The MTC is connected to Woking mainline station via regular shuttle buses, from which London Waterloo is a 30‑minute train ride.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including private healthcare, car schemes, life insurance and generous pension contributions.