CMF Designer — Luxury Color & Material Strategist in Bicester

We're looking for a CMF Designer to join our established, forward‑thinking design team. Reporting to the CMF Design Manager, you support driving the execution of McLaren's creative strategy through being a helping hand in multiple design programmes, building strong creative narratives and delivering world‑class materiality. You will work in a diverse design team within the ‘creative strategy’ specifically, alongside CMF, Digital Visualisation, Graphics and UX design, to build upon our world‑class design strategy.

Responsibilities

• Assist in delivery of CMF content across multiple vehicle programmes and supporting projects where creative support and synergies lie.
• Develop new, innovative and forward‑thinking colour strategies, material executions and finishes in line with our McLaren creative strategy, with support from the CMF engineering team and R&D teams.
• Work closely with cross‑functional counterparts inside design as well as across engineering, purchasing, PQ and product teams for ultimate collaboration.
• Ensure key design documentations are accurate, up to date and referenced for streamlined process adhesion accordingly.
• Communicate clearly and efficiently design decisions through the design programmes process, with ability to present concisely and with confidence autonomously.
• Collaborate with the CMF Manager on executing the wider creative strategy specific to your vehicle programmes and beyond, linking all design work back to the bigger picture.
• Implement impeccable luxury design DNA into all creative work, through extensive research of analogous industries to put your work at the forefront of modern luxury design.
• Experience seeing a vehicle programme at key stages of the design process, preferable but not essential, with ability to use hindsight to guide foresight.
• Understanding and keen to learn luxury materiality design principles, colour work and design thinking, supported by a strong portfolio and multiple years of experience proving this.

Essential Functional / Technical Skills

• Degree in Textile Design (or similar) or equivalent work experience in a CMF related role.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills and being an excelling team player.
• Ability to clearly articulate design decisions and the rationale behind them.
• Problem‑solving abilities, with the capacity to iterate and refine designs based on feedback and testing outcomes.
• Digital design skills across the Adobe suite as well as graphically across Microsoft Office, utilizing to create world‑class design presentations.

Personal Attributes / Competencies

• A calm collected individual that thrives at a fast pace whilst being efficient with their time and workload.
• A keen eye for detail, both in luxury design execution and operational excellence to CMF documentation.
• Strong resilience to feedback, design direction changes and team support, being agile with time, working location and work travel.
• Flexibility: agile with working across multiple locations whether manufacturing sites, design offices or model workshops.
• Being clever with remote working parallel to reacting to the needs of the business week by week.

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.

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