Senior Specialist, Workday Finance Product Owner

This is a hands-on product ownership role at the heart of McLaren Racing's Workday Financials landscape. The role owns, configures and continuously improves Workday Financials to support robust finance processes, high-quality data, strong governance and scalable decision-making. It acts as the link between Finance, People and Technology teams, translating business requirements into clear Workday processes, configuration, testing plans and release outcomes.

• Own the functional direction, roadmap and backlog for Workday Financials, ensuring priorities are linked to Finance outcomes, business readiness and system value.
• Provide hands-on configuration across Workday Financials, using deep functional knowledge to design, build, test and refine scalable solutions.
• Translate business requirements into practical Workday processes, configuration changes, acceptance criteria and delivery plans.
• Connect process, data and system design across Finance, People, Adaptive and wider enterprise platforms so that changes work end to end rather than in isolation.
• Drive continuous improvement of Workday Financials by simplifying processes, strengthening controls, improving data quality and increasing adoption.
• Act as a credible functional consultant for Workday Financials, balancing strategic product ownership with practical delivery and hands-on system execution.
• Partner with key stakeholders to understand process pain points, capture business requirements and shape fit-for-purpose Workday solutions, and facilitate workshops and design sessions that challenge existing ways of working and ground decisions in good process design and data governance.
• Provide clear communication between business users, technical teams, implementation partners and leadership so requirements are understood and delivered without unnecessary complexity.
• Ensure Workday Financials changes follow agreed design principles, governance standards, controls and approval routes, and maintain clear documentation of configuration decisions, process changes, testing evidence and release outcomes.
• Lead and coordinate testing activity across configuration changes, enhancements, integrations and releases, including unit testing, system testing, regression testing and User Acceptance Testing.
• Own release management planning for Workday Financials, assessing Workday release impacts, coordinating business readiness and ensuring changes are adopted safely and effectively.
• Support training, change management and user adoption so Finance teams can use Workday confidently and consistently.
• Ensure system design and integration across Workday Financials, Workday HCM, Adaptive Planning and wider upstream and downstream systems support joined-up processes, accurate data flows, clear ownership and strong governance across Finance and People data.
• Work closely with data, integration and reporting teams to improve data quality, resolve integration issues and ensure reporting outputs are trusted, and identify risks, gaps or inefficiencies across end-to-end processes to drive improvements that strengthen controls and reduce manual work.

• Strong hands-on functional experience configuring Workday Financials to a high level.
• Strong understanding of finance processes, including record-to-report, procure-to-pay, order-to-cash, expenses, supplier management, projects, assets and financial reporting.
• Proven ability to take business requirements and translate them into Workday processes, configuration, functionality and delivery plans.
• Experience leading or supporting Workday testing activity, including regression testing, UAT, release testing and defect triage.
• Experience managing Workday releases, assessing release notes, coordinating impact assessments and planning adoption of new functionality.
• Strong understanding of Workday security, business process configuration, reporting, data structures and integration principles.
• Understanding of the links between Workday Financials, Workday HCM and Adaptive Planning.
• Ability to connect process, data and system design so that solutions are scalable, governed and easy to operate.
• Experience working with Finance, Technology, Data and implementation partner teams in a complex transformation or ERP environment.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the confidence to challenge poor process design and simplify complex requirements.
• Hands-on and delivery-focused, with the confidence to configure, test and problem-solve directly.
• Strong functional thinker who can see how finance processes, data, controls and systems connect.
• Pragmatic and structured, able to turn ambiguity into clear requirements, decisions and action.
• Confident communicator who can translate complex Workday concepts into business-friendly language.
• Collaborative and able to influence across Finance, People, Technology and delivery partners.