Director, Software Engineering

Company Description:

McDonald’s is proud to be one of the most recognized brands in the world, with restaurants in over 100 countries that serve 70 million customers daily. We continue to operate from a position of strength. Our updated growth strategy is focused on staying ahead of what our customers want and realizing further growth potential. Our relentless ambition is why McDonald’s remains one of the world’s leading corporations after almost 70 years. Joining McDonald's means thinking big and preparing for a career that can have influence around the world.

At McDonald’s, we see every day as a chance to create positive impact. We lead through our values centered on inclusivity, service, integrity, community and family. From support of Ronald McDonald House to our Youth Opportunity project and sustainability initiatives, our values keep us dedicated to using our scale for good: good for our customers, people, industry and planet. We also offer a broad range of outstanding benefits including a sabbatical program, tuition assistance and flexible work arrangements.

Department Overview

The Commercial Product & Platform (CPP) organization develops global technology products and platforms that delight our customers and empower restaurant crews to operate restaurants efficiently, reliably, and effectively at scale.

The Director, Software Engineering - POS Modernization is a key leadership role within the Restaurant Technology organization, reporting to the Senior Director, Software Engineering. This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of McDonald's Point-of-Sale technology by defining and driving the architecture, engineering strategy, and technical vision for a next-generation POS platform that will be adopted across global markets.

As the technology leader for POS Modernization, this individual will be responsible for establishing a scalable, resilient, secure, and highly available platform capable of supporting McDonald's evolving business needs and innovation roadmap. The Director will define the long-term technical strategy and architecture while ensuring successful execution of a complex modernization effort that transforms legacy capabilities into a modern, cloud-connected platform.

This highly visible role requires a strong technical background, strategic thinking, and a proven track record of delivering large-scale, mission-critical applications with exceptional quality. The successful candidate will lead and inspire cross-functional teams of internal engineers, external partners, architects, and quality engineering professionals while fostering a culture of engineering excellence, innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Working closely with Product Management, Architecture, Platform Engineering, Security, and market stakeholders, the Director will drive alignment across teams, influence key technology decisions, and ensure solutions are designed for global scale, operational excellence, performance, reliability, and maintainability.

This role offers a rare opportunity to lead one of McDonald's most strategic technology transformations, defining the future of restaurant operations and enabling next-generation customer and crew experiences through a modern global POS platform.

Duties

• Lead architecture reviews, technical design decisions, and end-to-end solution delivery, ensuring the platform is resilient, extensible, and capable of supporting global market needs.
• Build, lead, and develop high-performing engineering teams, including internal engineers, quality engineering resources, architects, and strategic delivery partners, fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Establish and enforce engineering standards, software development best practices, and architectural principles, including modularity, maintainability, scalability, observability, and operational excellence.
• Define and uphold quality standards, non-functional requirements, and program-wide acceptance criteria, ensuring solutions meet reliability, performance, security, and availability objectives.
• Own technology governance, security compliance, data integrity, and risk management practices across the platform, ensuring the protection of sensitive customer, restaurant, and business data.
• Drive the successful execution of modernization initiatives, balancing innovation, technical debt reduction, platform stability, and delivery commitments.
• Manage product and platform investments, budgets, vendor relationships, and resource planning, ensuring technology decisions deliver measurable business value and strong return on investment.
• Serve as the senior technology leader and trusted advisor for POS Modernization, influencing enterprise technology strategy and representing the platform across Restaurant Technology, Operations, Consumer, and other business functions.
• Champion platform adoption and operational excellence across global markets, ensuring technology solutions effectively enable restaurant operations, crew experiences, and future business growth.

Qualifications

Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressive software engineering experience, including hands-on technical leadership in software development, platform architecture, distributed systems, and large-scale enterprise application delivery.
• 7+ years of experience leading high-performing engineering organizations in Agile environments, including the management of engineering managers, architects, engineers, quality engineering teams, and external delivery partners.
• Proven experience defining and executing technology strategies, modernization initiatives, and architectural roadmaps for mission-critical platforms and products.
• Strong expertise in software architecture, cloud-native technologies, scalability, resiliency, security, performance optimization, and operational excellence.
• Experience partnering with Product Management, Architecture, Security, Data & Analytics, Operations, and business stakeholders within complex global matrix organizations.
• Proven ability to build, develop, mentor, and retain high-performing engineering teams while fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Experience leading complex software implementations, deployments, and product rollouts across multiple regions, markets, and stakeholder groups.
• Strong business and financial acumen, including experience managing engineering budgets, vendor partnerships, technology investments, and resource planning.
• Exceptional communication, stakeholder management, and executive presence, with the ability to influence and align technical and non-technical audiences at all levels of the organization.
• Strong analytical, strategic thinking, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to navigate ambiguity, make informed decisions, and drive successful outcomes.
• Impact-oriented leadership style with the ability to establish a compelling vision, create organizational alignment, and inspire teams to deliver measurable business results.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with cloud platforms (Azure, GCP, or AWS), microservices architectures, APIs, event-driven systems, and modern engineering practices.
• Experience managing globally distributed teams and strategic vendor relationships.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field; Master's degree preferred.

McDonald's Values

Willingness and ability to embody McDonald's values every day: Serve, Inclusion, Integrity, Community, and Family.

Compensation

Bonus Eligible: Yes

Long - Term Incentive: Yes

Benefits Eligible: Yes

Salary Range

The expected salary range for this role is $195,371 - $244,214 per year

The above represents the expected salary range for this job requisition. Ultimately, in determining your pay, we may also consider your experience, and other job-related factors.

Additional Information:

Benefits eligible: This position offers health and welfare benefits, including but not limited to comprehensive health insurance, which includes medical, prescription drug, mental health, dental and vision coverage, as well as, life insurance.

McDonald’s is an equal opportunity employer committed to the diversity of our workforce. We promote an inclusive work environment that creates feel-good moments for everyone. McDonald’s provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities as part of the application or hiring process or to perform the essential functions of their job. If you need assistance accessing or reading this job posting or otherwise feel you need an accommodation during the application or hiring process, please contact [email protected]. Reasonable accommodations will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

McDonald’s provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to sex, sex stereotyping, pregnancy (including pregnancy, childbirth, and medical conditions related to pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding), race, color, religion, ancestry or national origin, age, disability status, medical condition, marital status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, protected military or veteran status, citizenship status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.

Nothing in this job posting or description should be construed as an offer or guarantee of employment.