McLaren

As the Finance Director of Product Development, you are the senior finance partner to the Product Development leadership team.  The team leads the Product Development finance organisation, with responsibilities for product-related business planning and control, cost engineering, billing of material and product-related capital expenditure. The role provides integrated financial and commercial leadership across the end-to-end vehicle portfolio, from product concept and business-case approval through vehicle concept, engineering development, industrialisation and launch phases.

You will own the financial planning, product-cost intelligence and performance framework required to safeguard value, govern programme investment and support timely decisions. Through leadership of a multidisciplinary team, it enables informed decisions that protect the distinctive performance, technology, craftsmanship and quality expected of a luxury, high-performance automotive brand while delivering sustainable returns.

• Qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent) with substantial post-qualification experience in senior finance leadership.
• Significant experience in automotive product development, advanced engineering, technology or another complex, capital-intensive manufacturing environment; luxury or high-performance automotive experience is strongly preferred.
• Strong understanding of the vehicle-development lifecycle, programme gateways, engineering change, tooling, prototypes, validation, supplier nomination, industrialisation and start-of-production readiness.
• Demonstrable leadership of multi-year product business cases, investment governance, target costing, bill-of-materials management, lifecycle profitability and return-on-investment analysis.
• Advanced financial modelling, scenario analysis, forecasting and management-reporting capability, with the ability to connect technical assumptions to cost, cash, margin and enterprise value.
• Commercial understanding of low-volume, high-complexity vehicle economics, including option-rich product mixes, constrained volumes, specialist suppliers, long lead-time tooling and global market requirements.
• Proven ability to influence executive leaders, present clear recommendations to senior governance forums and challenge optimism or unsupported assumptions with evidence and sound judgement.
• Strong knowledge of financial controls, capitalisation principles, audit requirements and risk management in a programme-led environment.
• Proven experience leading sizeable, multidisciplinary teams across Cost Engineering, Business Planning and FP&A, with responsibility for performance, capability, succession and the quality of business partnering.
• Deep understanding of automotive cost engineering, including target cost setting, should-cost analysis, value engineering, bill-of-materials cost development and delivery of cost-down roadmaps with Engineering and Purchasing.
• Extensive FP&A and business-planning experience, including annual budgets, rolling forecasts, long-range planning, resource and headcount planning, scenario modelling and executive performance reporting.
• High proficiency in ERP, planning and business-intelligence tools; experience improving programme-finance data, systems and reporting is desirable
• Commercially courageous: Willing to challenge constructively, stop unsupported commitments and maintain financial discipline under delivery pressure.
• Strategic and analytical: Sees the portfolio-wide implications of individual programme decisions and converts complexity into clear choices.
• Credible and influential: Builds trust with finance and non-finance leaders and communicates with authority at executive and Board level.
• Pragmatic and decisive: Balances pace, precision and proportionality, enabling timely decisions without compromising governance.
• Collaborative: Creates alignment across Product Development, Commercial, Manufacturing and Finance while retaining independent judgement.
• Detail-conscious: Demands reliable assumptions, traceable data and disciplined follow-through, particularly where product complexity creates financial risk.
• Resilient and adaptable: Remains effective through programme uncertainty, shifting priorities and high-stakes delivery periods.
• People-focused leader: Sets high standards, develops capability and creates an accountable, inclusive and improvement-led team culture.