Motorsport & MSO Procurement Leader in Woking

Reporting to the Head of Commodity Procurement - Niche Products (MSO, Motorsport & Aftersales), the Procurement Manager will have responsibility for the successful development and deployment of sourcing for their team's commodity areas. With a team of buyers and senior buyers reporting to them, the Procurement Manager will have strategic responsibility for multi-million £'s of direct material spend per annum with McLaren's suppliers and will drive best in class strategies across the whole team (with an annual spend of over £20m).

Purpose of the role: The Procurement Manager – Motorsport & MSO will be responsible for leading and mentoring a high performing, agile team, demonstrating “what good looks like” in fast‑paced, bespoke procurement delivery. They will be a role model for Procurement professionalism and the right behaviours. They will manage supplier sourcing and relationships for Motorsport and MSO programmes, ensuring access to leading technology and specialist capability at the best achievable total cost, while maintaining flexibility, responsiveness and robust risk mitigation to support low‑volume, high‑complexity vehicle build activity.

What You’ll Do:

• Leading and mentoring the team, developing capability and ensuring delivery of key objectives across fast-moving, bespoke procurement requirements.
• Working closely with Engineering and Programme to understand programme requirements, technical specifications and bespoke configurations, ensuring alignment and rapid response to evolving needs.
• Ensuring optimal supplier selection and sourcing approaches that support one-off, prototype, low-volume or motorsport specific projects, prioritising agility, performance and reliability.
• Leveraging commercial and technical understanding to deliver the best total cost and value, including negotiation of commercial terms, cost improvement initiatives and support of programme timing needs.
• Serving as a role model within the team and wider Procurement community, demonstrating professional behaviours and best practice in bespoke and low-volume Procurement environments.
• Maintaining expert knowledge of key suppliers, niche manufacturing technologies and motorsport grade components, including industry trends and specialist processes.
• Building a strong business partnering culture with internal stakeholders by demonstrating the value of Procurement and driving collaborative working.
• Delivering annual cost-down activity and commercial improvements for Motorsport & MSO categories, while supporting programme specific commercial targets.
• Interrogating and validating supplier quotations and cost breakdowns to ensure commercially competitive outcomes.
• Owning key supplier relationships, ensuring McLaren is treated as a priority customer and delivering Supplier Relationship Management appropriate to low-volume operations.
• Demonstrating best practice in supplier performance management and supporting the team to apply consistent, high-quality supplier engagement.
• Developing strong working relationships with Engineering and Programme teams to ensure aligned supplier communication and delivery against performance and timing targets.
• Using strong supplier networks and relationships to secure favourable commercial and delivery outcomes in critical negotiations.
• Leading contract negotiation and working with Legal to ensure robust contractual protection.
• Managing Motorsport & MSO Procurement activity throughout the supplier lifecycle, providing specialist procurement support for prototype, bespoke and limited‑series programmes.
• Delivering all procurement activities aligned with the overall Procurement strategy while tailoring approaches to low-volume environments.
• Ensuring effective management of supplier performance, delivery and quality, including rapid escalation and resolution of supply issues for critical builds and events.
• Deputise for the Head of Commodity Procurement and lead key meetings, where appropriate across the functions of MSO, Motorsport and Aftersales.

What You’ll Bring:

• Comprehensive knowledge of the complete supply chain within Automotive, Manufacturing or similar businesses.
• An excellent understanding of Procurement processes, systems and best practice, ideally within both McLaren and at another Automotive OEM, or similar: a Procurement professional.
• A full understanding of the 'partner' functions that Procurement must work with and influence, in order to deliver Procurement's strategic objectives.
• An understanding of McLaren processes, systems, and procedures would be beneficial.
• A university degree in Business or Engineering (ideally automotive, aerospace or mechanical), or similar, is preferred but not essential.
• Professionally qualified to MCIPS level or equivalent, or working towards completion, is preferred.
• Deep understanding of the Procurement function and processes, and demonstrable experience of managing multi‑national suppliers.
• Broad amount of experience as a buyer and senior buyer with an Automotive Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), ideally with previous people management experience.
• Alternatively, a good amount of experience as a senior buyer within a manufacturing business or First Tier Automotive supplier, ideally with management experience.
• Experience of delivering multiple Category Strategies / Commodity Strategies through cross functional collaboration with Engineering.
• Well versed in successfully delivering multi million pound negotiations and contracts for direct materials at senior level with suppliers.
• Able to coach team members and to be a role model to demonstrate 'what good looks like'.
• Experience of low volume and niche vehicle Procurement, with the ability to apply best practice as appropriate.
• Experienced with financial analysis for assessing supplier's health and for building business cases internally.
• Fluent written and verbal English is essential.

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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