Job Title
Principal Quality Engineer - Body & Chassis
Ref #
58858
Date posted
Thursday, March 5, 2026
Country
United Kingdom
Location
Woking
Business area
Quality
Department
Quality Engineering
Position level
5 - Supervisory / Professional​ - (L-17)
Working time
Full Time
Contract type
Permanent
Working pattern
8:30am - 5:30pm Monday to Friday
What to Expect
As the Principal Quality Engineer - Body Structures & Chassis (Technical Quality), you will be responsible for Body Structures and Chassis Fault Analysis and Customer Evaluation activities across the entire vehicle life cycle. This will require you to manage all quality related activities as well as working across the technical quality and wider quality functions in a matrix arrangement to deliver the required business objectives.


The core functions of the role are:
• Continuous development of the quality mindset in the business to evolve the ever-changing business requirements.
• Management and steering of quality concern countermeasures and lessons learned.
• Management of quality related topics through the advance phases including development vehicle shakedown and all mileage accumulation and early-stage problem identification.
• Management, negotiation and liaison of all budget and headcount requirements for project related change content, ensuring adequate project budget and Purchase Order (PO) coverage is in place.
• The role relies upon excellent interpersonal and communication skills with a key attribute being the ability to challenge, persuade, convince, and guide with assertion, at all levels ensuring that governance and controls are robust and applied to all aspects of quality during the programme development process enabling growth and change in a controlled and standardised way. This includes the development of new processes and lessons learnt (LeLe).
What You'll Do
As part of the Technical Quality team the ‘Principal Quality Engineer - Body Structures & Chassis’ is responsible for the management of all Body Structures & Chassis related quality concerns (QCR’s) across all new model and series programmes, acting as the ‘voice of the customer’ including but not limited to; customer usage, problem validation, mileage accumulation, test/usage planning, budget analysis, fault identification, allocation and holding the function group to account.

• Responsible to drive the lessons learned to deliver improvement into Design Failure Mode & Effect Analysis (DFMEA), Design for Manufacture (DFM) and part supply related concerns with the function group.
• Responsible to ensure a robust approach is taken to identify the root cause of issues, through to successful resolution,using the Practical Problem Solving (PPS) process.
• Responsible for attending Q-Technical Meetings for every programme in development, supporting Q-Programme team in QCR resolution, together with the QCR stakeholders.
• Responsible to manage and drive the vehicle quality attribute review, together with the Body Structures & Chassis engineering teams, Supplier Quality Development (SQD) and manufacturing launch team(s).
• Accountable for the vehicle evaluation, short and long-term mileage test plan development, together with the Principal Vehicle Evaluation Engineer. Ensuring all identified issues are input into the respective fault management system and monitored through to closure.
• Accountable for the delivery of the Production Validation Unit (PVU) and Debug process together with the Principal Vehicle Evaluation Engineer.
• Responsible for project specific activity plans and reports that deliver the desired quality level at launch.
• Manage the continuous improvement processes for Body Structures & Chassis quality related items.

What You'll Bring
  • Degree qualified in Mechanical or Automotive Engineering, or equivalent industry experience.
  • New product and series development experience in the Automotive Industry for a minimum of seven years.
  • 8D or Practical Problem Solving (PPS) - demonstratable experience of problem-solving techniques and the tools used.
  • Experience in either Body Structures or Chassis development (preferably both) and/or quality related role.
  • Experience in Design Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (DFMEA) process and understanding of potential risks associated 
  • with design of components.
  • Launch of low volume vehicles into the production environment.
  • Experience of driving cars within a development environment (desirable)
  • Low volume, high value vehicle fleet management experience.
  • Understanding of Statistical Process Control (SPC), statistics and process capabilities.
  •  People management experience would be advantageous, but not critical.
  • Experience of working in a matrix environment. 
  •  Methodical approach to work with strong analytical skills.
  • Self-starter capable of using initiative.
Personal Attributes:
  • As one of our Principal Quality Engineers you will naturally have an understanding and appreciation for low volume vehicle production and brand requirements.
  • We work in a fast-paced environment so the ability to act under pressure with calmness, clarity of thought and decisive authority is crucial.
  • From time to time, you will need to travel to off-site development facilities, within the UK and throughout Europe, therefore a flexible approach to travel and working hours is required.
  • You will have the determination to drive forward the business to ‘Best in Class’ performance standards in line with brand expectations and be a lateral thinker able to think outside of the box to make structured and objective decisions.
  • Other traits of a successful McLaren employee will include excellent communication skills both written and verbal and excellent attention to detail
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. 

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