Head of, People Engineering - McLaren Endurance Racing & Business Performance in Woking

At McLaren, our mission is to set the standard for high performance in sport. Everyone, in every part of the team, has a role to play. High performance starts with you.

Purpose of the Role

The Head Of, People - McLaren Endurance Racing & Business Performance will support the end to end delivery of a progressive people agenda into the functions (approx. 200 employees). You’ll be a trusted strategic partner to Leaders - crafting people first solutions, challenging the norm, and translating high performance into team success. This isn’t traditional HR; it’s hands‑on, sleeves‑up collaboration and people engineering that connects people initiatives directly to car performance. You will need to foster strong relationships through deep understanding of the teams operations and challenges and via a no nonsense, high impact delivery.

We are looking for an individual that can bring a different perspective to the traditional HR space – either from Performance/Sports Psychology, Coaching or other high‑performance specialisms or who has worked in people development within sport. This role doesn’t have any direct reports but benefits from a People Advisor and support of a People Coordinator within the wider People Team. There will be a requirement to be flexible on working hours as McLaren Racing operates in a dynamic, high demand and fast paced environment, spanning time zones and weekends for races. We work in a hybrid model meaning we expect our people in the office 4 days a week, but real impact means being on‑site, fully immersed in the team’s rhythm. If you’re commercially sharp, action oriented, and driven to build a winning environment - this is where your people impact hits the podium.

Key Stakeholders

• McLaren Endurance Racing Leadership team, Senior Managers and team members
• Business Performance Leadership team, Senior Managers and team members
• All members of the People Team
• Finance Business Partner

Key Responsibilities

• Deliver the local people plan.
• Feed into the ongoing development of the plan and strategy by working closely with the team stakeholders to identify the critical people priorities.
• Respond and adapt to changing circumstances, contributing to the development of solutions to ensure they are fit for purpose.
• Front up the delivery of the local people plan, alongside the Associate People Director, becoming the main point of contact for the leaders for all operational people matters.
• Business Partnering at a Senior level.
• Building trust based relationships with the leadership team, fostering close partnerships that get you ‘inside the tent’ and able to offer close quarter support.
• Anticipate future workforce demands before leaders even know they need something and proactively translate into solutions.
• Become a deep expert with a high level of technical understanding of the client group, building credibility and enabling knowledge/insight based proactive recommendations to be made.
• Minimise involvement in lower level, lower value tactical matters, using all available resources across the People team to deal with these appropriately, or helping managers deal directly.
• Apply people analytics through data driven conversations and initiatives to deliver against the people strategy.
• Partner with the finance team to ensure a good understanding of local budgets.
• Support the strategic, cyclical and day to day reward activities such as annual salary and bonus review process, job sizing etc.
• Proactively gauge employee engagement and work with the broader People team to provide solutions as required.
• Work collaboratively with the recruitment team and hiring managers supporting relevant recruitment campaigns, helping to screen, attending interviews, role spec reviews, ensuring offers are created etc.
• Utilise relevant data to support people and business plan implementation, spot trends and assist with decision making.
• Work with the senior leaders and Associate People Director to review the organisational design of their teams to ensure they remain optimised, relevant, efficient, agile, and productive.
• Support on the redesign of roles, teams, or functions in line with identified needs using strong org design disciplines to maximise the effectiveness of structural changes.
• Apply best practice change management discipline to the delivery and implementation of changes minimising disruption and supporting any people impacted with dignity and respect.
• Understand both the Business Performance and McLaren Endurance Racing team’s ambitions and plans.
• Use this insight to be inquisitive as to mid and long term people requirements.
• Understand and develop workforce plans that map out role and capability need over time and required resource levels, pulling on expertise from the Talent team as required.
• Work with the Talent Team to help build talent attraction strategies that consider short and long term needs, thinking creatively about how future needs can start to be addressed immediately (grads, apprentices, internal talent fast tracking).
• Lead on the execution of the formal and informal talent and succession management processes locally, making this a live and ongoing conversation, not a paper activity, that has tangible outputs by way of retention, promotion, development plans and minimising risks.
• Be aware of Employee relations within your areas, working closely with the People Ops and Advisors.
• Be an escalation point on any complex, complicated or senior Employee relations.
• Promote a service mentality and partnership approach to developing strong and effective working relationships with key internal stakeholders to ensure their appropriate engagement and involvement.
• Confidently influence key stakeholders to gain buy‑in and support to new ways of working, alternative solutions and key projects.
• Seamlessly act as the conduit between the function Leadership team and People & Culture team to ensure successful implementation of initiatives which are fit for purpose and land well.
• Strong and professional communication across multiple stakeholder groups and channels with the ability to present and deliver compelling messages.
• Work with internal comms to support the development and execution of appropriate communications campaigns to engage with audiences on the employee experience offer to ensure full engagement and understanding.
• Work collaboratively across the wider People Team in line with the operating model, adhering to our processes and SLAs.

Job requirements Skills, Knowledge and Experience

• Solid experience in senior People/HR teams within elite performance or high paced technical environments (F1, sport).
• Wide ranging knowledge and demonstrable experience delivering at this level of strategic and value creating HR.
• Contributing to people strategy development, translation into pragmatic people engineering solutions via design, implementation and conclusion.
• Strong communication skills, able to influence senior leaders with a ‘how to’ not ‘no’ mentality.
• Change management experience in an engineering environment, comfortable with being at the forefront of delivery with support from the People Director where required.
• Ability to flex from understanding delivery at a strategic level to operational and understanding the need to work “in the grey” where commercial solutions need to be found.

Mindset & Style

• Performance driven with humanity and credibility.
• Bold, innovative, and unafraid to challenge conventional HR approaches.
• Calm under pressure, energised by complexity, and motivated by excellence.
• Obsessed with unlocking human potential as a competitive advantage.

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.