Lead, Operational Excellence & Transformation Manager (12 Month FTC)

At McLaren Racing, we believe only by chasing performance in everything we do can we give ourselves the best chance of success.  Performance on track and in the factory. Performance for our people, our business and our partners.  It’s about more than winning.  It’s about hitting the highest standards, and then raising the bar again.

Purpose of the role

At McLaren Racing, performance is everything. As our Lead, Operational Excellence & Transformation Manager (12 Month FTC) you'll help shape how our Marketing & Commercial function operates at its best.

This is a high-impact role focused on transforming the way we work. You'll diagnose current ways of working, redesign processes for a high-performance environment, and establish frameworks that make us faster simpler and more effective. Working at the intersection of process, technology, data and AI, you'll help build an operating model that enables our teams to scale, move with greater pace, and deliver measurable results.

Most importantly, you'll be accountable for delivering tangible improvements - creating better ways of working and demonstrating the impact through increased productivity, efficiency and delivery performance.

What You'll Do

• Lead process engineering across the Marketing & Commercial function, defining the standards, methodologies and governance that drive consistency and continuous improvement.

• Diagnose end-to-end workflows, identifying friction points, inefficiencies and opportunities to simplify how work gets done.

• Design and implement future-state processes that support a high-performance operating model and enable teams to move faster with greater clarity and accountability.

• Establish performance baselines, define KPIs, and measure the impact of process improvements across productivity, capacity, efficiency and delivery outcomes.

• Partner closely with Marketing & Commercial leaders, Technology teams and wider transformation programmes to ensure process, systems and data evolve together.

• Design processes with automation, AI and data-driven decision making embedded from the outset.

• Define governance models, ownership structures and decision-making frameworks that support effective cross-functional collaboration.

• Influence and challenge senior stakeholders to drive adoption of new ways of working and raise organisational performance.

• Contribute to broader transformation initiatives across McLaren Racing, ensuring alignment and consistency where appropriate

What You'll Bring

Essential

• Proven experience leading process design, optimisation and continuous improvement in complex, fast-paced environments.

• Experience operating within large-scale transformation, organisational change or operating model programmes.

• Strong capability in end-to-end process mapping, redesign and implementation.

• The ability to establish frameworks, standards and methodologies rather than simply applying existing ones.

• Strong stakeholder management skills, with the credibility to influence senior leaders and drive alignment across diverse teams.

• Experience integrating process design with technology, automation and/or data-led initiatives.

• The ability to demonstrate measurable business impact from process improvements.

Desirable

• Experience within marketing, media, sport, consumer brands or similarly fast-moving commercial environments.

• Experience partnering with technology teams to translate business processes into system-enabled solutions.

• Exposure to AI, automation and data-driven process optimisation.

Personal Attributes

We're looking for someone who embodies the mindset of a racer:

• Structured and analytical, but always pragmatic and focused on outcomes.

• Comfortable operating in ambiguity and able to bring clarity to complex challenges.

• Naturally collaborative, working across teams to achieve collective success.

• Confident challenging the status quo and influencing through expertise and credibility.

• High-energy, resilient and relentlessly delivery-focused.

• Driven by continuous improvement and motivated by raising the standard every day.

• Thrives in a high-performance environment where pace, accountability and ownership matter.

• Embraces challenge, pushes boundaries and never stands still.

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. Our state of the art, sustainable campus offers many facilities including a gym, restaurant and indoor and outdoor break-out 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.