Red Bull Powertrains has an exciting opportunity to join our technical office as we transition from building our team’s first Power Units to refining them into a race-ready package, all aimed at delivering the most competitive car on the 2026 Formula One grid. We are seeking an Application Development Engineer to join our Calibration & Controls Team and drive the future of motorsport innovation. You will be based at our cutting-edge engineering and manufacturing facility in Milton Keynes, designed to produce high-performance Power Units (PU) for the 2026 engine regulations.
In this role, you’ll be responsible for the development and calibration of embedded Power Unit control applications to exploit the inherent performance of the Power Unit & energy storage hardware to its maximum potential. This will involve blending all the requirements of the simulation, design & development teams into a complete embedded software control package.
Key Accountabilities:
- Real-time application development and calibration of the PU applications in MATLAB/Simulink targeting the Formula One standard ECU
- Work closely with the simulation teams to develop & validate deployment strategies to eventually mould into track usable control strategies
- Forge close working relationships with the calibration and track engineers to satisfy requirements and methodologies
- Analysis tool development and automation
- Auto code generation environment (McLaren Control Toolbox provided by McLaren Applied) development and maintenance together with other application development teams within the group
- On-board and off-board diagnosis/measurement/calibration model and tool development
- Co-develop plant model for control strategy validation and calibration purposes
- Specification writing and documentation maintenance
Key Competencies:
- MATLAB/Simulink in particular McLaren Applied Graphical Development Environment (GDE) and Control Toolbox (MCT)
- Embedded software development
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills
Not only is this a fantastic Application Development Engineer role, but it is also a fantastic team to work with here at Red Bull Powertrains. A good salary is just the start, there are many other benefits too such as our bonus scheme, private health care cover, life assurance scheme, workplace nursery scheme, company contributed pension scheme, on site gym & fitness classes, free daily food allowance, and a cycle to work scheme; but above all, the job satisfaction doesn’t get any better than the feeling of making a real contribution to our championship winning grand prix cars.
