Job Title

Connected Car Lead Architect

Ref #

59134

Date posted

Monday, June 8, 2026

Country

United Kingdom

Location

Bicester

Business area

R&D

Department

Electrical & Controls - Project Engineering

Position level

5 - Supervisory / Professional - (L-17)

Working time

Full Time

Contract type

Permanent

Working pattern

9am - 6pm Monday to Friday

Salary

What to Expect

The Connected Car Lead Architect is accountable for defining and governing the end to end technical strategy, target architecture, and platform direction for all connected car systems across cloud, telematics, and in-vehicle connectivity domains. The role acts as a technical authority and final architectural decision maker, ensuring that all solutions support business objectives, regulatory compliance, cyber security expectations, operational scalability, and long term product and technology roadmaps. This position provides strategic leadership across internal engineering teams, suppliers, and business stakeholders to create a coherent, future-ready connected car ecosystem.

What You'll Do

Technical Leadership & Authority

• Serve as lead architect for all connected car systems; own and approve architectural decisions across cloud and embedded domains.

• Define and maintain the architecture roadmap, principles, standards, and governance guardrails

• Lead technology evaluations, PoCs, supplier assessments, and platform selection

Architecture & Systems Design

• Define and maintain reference architectures spanning cloud backends, telematics platforms, APIs, and vehicle connectivity

• Ensure designs are scalable, secure, maintainable, and globally deployable

• Lead architecture reviews and gate processes; maintain documentation, blueprints, and decision records

Strategic Management

• Own a 3–5 year architecture strategy and development roadmap

• Monitor market trends, competitor capability, and emerging technologies to surface risks and opportunities

• Build business cases for major platform or technology transformation

• Align technology decisions with senior leadership, product, commercial, and engineering stakeholders; support make-vs-buy decisions

Governance & Compliance

• Chair architecture review boards and governance forums

• Ensure alignment with regulatory, data privacy, cyber security, and industry standards

• Manage architecture change control, technical risk, and technical debt reduction

What You'll Bring

• Significant experience in connected car, telematics, or automotive electronics architecture

• Deep knowledge of cloud-native architectures, distributed systems, APIs, data pipelines, IAM, and secure connectivity

• Strong understanding of in vehicle communications, TCUs, embedded systems, and vehicle to cloud integration

• Proven track record in architecture governance and design authority processes

• Commercial acumen: supplier evaluation, product selection, and business case development

• Familiarity with automotive cyber security, privacy, and regulatory frameworks

• Ability to communicate complex technical topics to non-technical audiences and senior stakeholders

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

Who Are We?

No restraints. No limitations. We don’t simply push boundaries. We completely rethink them. McLaren Automotive exists to create breath-taking performance road cars.

It takes a community to do what we do. A diverse group of people with many areas of expertise, united by their passion to deliver visionary products and set new benchmarks.

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. Join us on our journey.