🚀 Programme Manager (Contract)
📍 Location: Oxford (3 days on-site per week) with regular travel to Bicester and Woking
⏱️ Duration: 6 months initial contract (18-month programme duration, strong potential for multiple extensions)
💰 Rate: £60.00 per hour (Umbrella)
🌟 Role Overview
We are seeking a high-caliber, \"rockstar\" 🎸 Programme Manager to lead a high-profile, collaborative venture. In this role, you will act as the vital bridge between our cutting-edge technical expertise and technology platform and The Client’s world-class vehicle platform.
Operating within a fast-paced, startup-like, and fluid environment, you will drive the end-to-end planning, execution, and delivery of this complex vehicle integration programme. You will serve as the primary \"face of the project\" to the customer, leading a close-knit, \"all-hands-on-deck\" engineering team. This role is highly cross-functional and global, requiring you to unify advanced engineering and development activities across global hubs to ensure seamless customer integration.
The ideal candidate will possess a powerful blend of commercial acumen, technical empathy, and rigorous program management discipline. You must be an expert who can hit the ground running from day one without training, demonstrating a deep, practical understanding of PLM and PDM systems to ensure data integrity, milestone tracking, and engineering release maturity across international borders.
📋 Main Responsibilities
* 🤝 Customer & Stakeholder Face-off: Act as the primary customer-facing representative for McLaren, managing relationships, communication channels, and technical delivery alignment. Expect regular travel between Bicester and Woking to meet project demands.
* 🌍 Global Team Leadership: Lead the planning, scheduling, and execution of complex vehicle engineering projects, uniting cross-functional activities across Global engineering teams.
* 🌪️ Navigate Ambiguity: Excel in an extremely fast-paced, fluid environment—taking high-level, evolving customer requirements and structuring them into clear, achievable engineering work packages.
* 🎯 Integration Strategy: Drive customer integration strategies, ensuring that the vehicle systems fully align with user requirements, digital tech ecosystems, and regional compliance standards.
* 🛑 Gateway & Change Management: Own the program gateway matrix, tracking engineering maturity, change management, and risk mitigation from early concept through to final production sign-off.
* 💻 Lifecycle Management: Leverage PLM/PDM lifecycles to monitor engineering release status, bill of materials (BOM) maturity, and global CAD/data alignment between engineering hubs.
* ⚖️ Technical Trade-offs: Facilitate technical trade-off discussions between design, attribute teams, and manufacturing, ensuring customer expectations are met without compromising vehicle safety, cost, or quality.
* 📊 Reporting & Execution: Establish program-level KPI dashboards to report progress, bottleneck alerts, and resource constraints clearly to the global executive management team. Manage the engineering budget, resource allocation, and supplier delivery timelines.
🛠️ Qualifications, Skills and Experience Required
* 🏎️ Industry Expertise: 10–15 years of relevant experience in technical project management, vehicle integration, or engineering delivery environments, specifically within a similar automotive company.
* 🏆 Proven Track Record: Deep experience operating as a Programme Manager within the automotive, EV, or high-tech mobility sector, with direct experience handling customer-facing delivery.
* ⚙️ Technical Systems Mastery: Deep expertise in PLM and PDM systems (e.g., Teamcenter, Enovia, Windchill) and a thorough understanding of automotive product development lifecycles (APQP, V-Model, or agile frameworks).
* 🗺️ Global Coordination: Experience coordinating global engineering teams, specifically bridging engineering activities and cultural dynamics between European (UK) and Asian (China) hubs.
* ⚡ Startup Agility: Demonstrated ability to operate comfortably in highly ambiguous, fast-paced environments, showing exceptional adaptability and a proactive, self-starting approach to problem-solving. ⚠️ No training will be provided; candidates must hit the ground running.
* 🛠️ Tools & Communication: Proficient with advanced project management tools (e.g., MS Project, Jira, Confluence, Smartsheet) alongside excellent communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills.
* 🎓 Education: B.Eng/B.Sc or equivalent degree in an Engineering, Project Management, or highly technical discipline.
* 🚗 Travel & Flexibility: Willingness and ability to travel frequently between Oxford, Bicester, and Woking, with potential global travel (including China, Europe, and the US) to support cross-regional alignment.
* ❤️ Cultural Fit: Strong alignment with core values (Honesty, Care, Vision, Action) and a desire to thrive in a collaborative, high-octane team environment.