As of March 2023, Charles Sanderson serves as the Chief Technology Officer of McLaren Automotive, a British manufacturer known for creating luxury, high-performance supercars. In this role, he leads McLaren's technology roadmap and product innovation strategy. Notably, this is Sanderson's second stint with the company.
Previously he spent seven years within McLaren's ranks, starting in July 2011 as a hybrid systems development engineer, where he worked on the development of the McLaren P1 hyper-car hybrid system powertrain.
From there, he continued to climb the corporate ladder at one of the most storied manufacturers in automotive history. In 2014 he was appointed to senior stability controls engineer, where he was responsible for the management of electronic stability control systems across all McLaren Automotive programs. During this time, he also led the proposal and introduction of in-house traction control development.
At McLaren, Sanderson’s star continued to rise. It didn’t take long before he was promoted to senior vehicle dynamics engineer. He later worked as head of the internal software development team and software development lead. While serving in these tech-savvy positions, he was in charge of all in-house software development teams, including proactive chassis control II, DCT, active aerodynamic systems, traction control and HVAC, among others.
In 2018 Sanderson arrived at Rivian—an American EV startup—as VP of Vehicle Integration and Development. He held this position for 15 months before moving up to the chief engineer job in August 2019, a role he held for nearly four years. At Rivian, one of his main projects was to develop the EV maker's R1 vehicle platform. Notably Sanderson's extensive background with suspension systems was one of the reasons why many people claimed Rivian’s R1-series vehicles would handle like supercars.
Earlier in his career, Sanderson worked as an ABS/ESP applications engineer and project coordinator at Bosch, a German multinational company that has a solid presence in different product categories globally. His tenure at Bosch lasted from September 2007 to August 2011.
Born and raised in Australia, Sanderson completed an automotive-oriented bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering at RMIT University. He also completed training in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Design at Monash University.