Slade graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from Heriot-Watt University and from 1989 worked as a design engineer for Reynard Racing Cars and later Ralt Racing, before joining McLaren in 1991.
Slade took up a trackside role with McLaren in 1994 as assistant race engineer to Martin Brundle.
Slade became Mika Häkkinen's race engineer in 1998 and helped the Finnish driver to two world championships and remained at McLaren until 2009, working for Kimi Räikkönen, Fernando Alonso and Heikki Kovalainen as racing engineer.
In 2010, Slade moved to Renault to work as Vitaly Petrov's race engineer and in 2011 he moved to Mercedes as Michael Schumacher's race engineer.
[1][2] Since 2022, he has been working as a competition engineer for Kevin Magnussen at the Haas F1 Team.