Sr Director, Data Engineering - Consumer Data & Analytics

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 Data & Analytics team enables data-driven decision making across the enterprise by delivering scalable data platforms, advanced analytics capabilities, AI/ML foundations, and trusted data products. We empower business and technology teams with modern data infrastructure, governance, and engineering practices to transform data into actionable insights and business value.

Position Summary

We are seeking a Senior Director, Consumer Data Engineering, to lead the vision, strategy, and execution of data engineering capabilities across the Consumer domain. This leader will be responsible for building and scaling a high-performing engineering organization that develops reliable, secure, and scalable data platforms and products powering customer analytics, artificial intelligence, personalized consumer experiences, and data-driven decision-making across global markets.

The Senior Director will oversee teams responsible for Customer Data (including Customer 360, customer profiles, identity resolution, consent, and governance), Marketing Activation (including customer data platforms CDP, campaign activation pipelines, and audience syndication), and Clickstream Analytics across digital touchpoints. This leader will establish the strategic direction for consumer data engineering, drive modernization and strategic insourcing initiatives, industrialize robust data pipelines, and establish certified semantic data layers that empower business self-service while enforcing stringent customer data privacy and regulatory compliance standards.

This role partners closely with Marketing, Digital Customer Experience, Data Science, Platform Engineering, Cybersecurity, and global market business leaders to ensure the organization can effectively leverage customer data as a strategic asset. This role combines deep technical expertise, organizational leadership, operational excellence, and executive-level stakeholder management to enable consumer data transformation at enterprise scale.

Duties

Strategic Leadership & Vision

• Define and execute the data engineering strategy, roadmap, standards, and operating model for the Consumer data domain in alignment with enterprise objectives.
• Establish long-term vision for consumer data platforms, customer data products (e.g., Customer 360, CDP, clickstream analytics), data architecture, and engineering capabilities to support evolving marketing, digital, and personalization needs.
• Serve as an executive advisor and thought leader on consumer data engineering strategy, customer identity architecture, data privacy, governance, and platform investments.

Organizational Leadership & Talent Development

• Lead and develop a large, geographically distributed team of data engineering leaders, managers, architects, and engineers while fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, inclusion, and continuous improvement.
• Drive strategic talent and insourcing initiatives, building sustainable internal engineering capability and transitioning vendor/contractor capacity into high-performing internal engineering squads.
• Ensure effective communication and collaboration across globally distributed teams and stakeholders.

Data Platform & Architecture Strategy

• Drive the design, implementation, and optimization of scalable data ecosystems that support customer analytics, machine learning, marketing activation, and self-service business intelligence.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture and Data Platform Engineering to define target-state consumer data architecture and ensure scalable solutions align with enterprise technology and cloud standards.
• Drive modernization initiatives and technology transformations that improve customer data accessibility, identity resolution, real-time event streaming, interoperability, automation, and operational excellence.

Data Product Engineering & Operations

• Oversee the development, industrialization, and lifecycle management of enterprise consumer data products (including Customer 360, marketing activation feeds, and clickstream analytics), ensuring reliability, scalability, observability, security, and performance.
• Deliver robust data pipelines and certified semantic gold data layers that empower business units and markets to self-service reporting and analytics, avoiding centralized reporting bottlenecks.
• Develop key performance indicators and operational metrics to measure platform health, pipeline freshness, service performance, quality, adoption, and business impact.

Data Governance, Security & Compliance

• Champion customer data privacy, consent management (e.g., GDPR/CCPA compliance), data quality, metadata management, and master data management across all consumer touchpoints.
• Ensure consumer data platforms and engineering processes are designed with resiliency, zero-trust security, privacy-by-design, and regulatory compliance requirements at the forefront.
• Establish clear architectural boundaries and interface contracts between core engineering pipelines and data science / algorithmic modeling teams.

Business Partnership & Value Creation

• Partner with senior business and technology leaders across MarTech, Digital Customer Experience, Loyalty, and global markets to identify opportunities to leverage customer data and accelerate business value.
• Build strong collaboration across data science, analytics, product management, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and software engineering teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field. Advanced degree preferred.
• 15+ years of progressive experience in data engineering, software engineering, data platform development, or related technology disciplines.
• 8+ years of experience leading large-scale engineering organizations, including direct leadership of managers and senior technical leaders.
• Demonstrated success developing and executing enterprise data strategies that support customer analytics, marketing activation, personalization, artificial intelligence, and business transformation initiatives.
• Deep expertise in modern data platforms, data architecture, customer data integration (e.g., CDP, Customer 360), data warehousing, data lakes, and large-scale distributed data processing technologies.
• Strong understanding of data product lifecycle management, engineering best practices, and platform operating models.
• Proven experience building and scaling highly available, secure, and resilient data platforms supporting enterprise consumer workloads.
• Extensive experience with data modeling, ETL/ELT design, data integration, and information management practices.
• Strong knowledge of data governance, customer identity resolution, master data management, metadata management, data quality frameworks, and regulatory compliance requirements (e.g., GDPR, CCPA, consumer privacy).
• Experience establishing engineering standards, architectural principles, operational excellence practices, and performance metrics across large organizations.
• Strong understanding of cloud-based data ecosystems (e.g., Google Cloud Platform, AWS) and modern platform architectures.
• Experience managing significant technology budgets, vendor relationships, and strategic technology investments.
• Track record of successfully leading large-scale transformation programs, organizational change initiatives, or talent insourcing transitions.
• Exceptional executive communication, stakeholder management, and influencing skills.
• Demonstrated ability to build partnerships across business and technology organizations.
• Strong analytical, strategic thinking, and problem-solving capabilities.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting consumer-facing analytics, customer journey analytics, MarTech integrations (e.g., Braze, mParticle), and customer segmentation/personalization engines.
• Experience leading global teams across multiple regions and time zones.
• Familiarity with Agile delivery methodologies, PI planning, and modern product operating models.
• Experience establishing data observability, monitoring, reliability, and operational excellence programs.
• Experience with strategic talent insourcing and transitioning contractor-heavy teams to sustainable internal engineering models.
• Experience working within large, complex, matrixed global organizations or high-volume digital consumer enterprises.
• Relevant industry certifications in data, cloud, architecture, or technology leadership disciplines.

Compensation

Bonus Eligible: Yes

Long - Term Incentive: Yes

Benefits Eligible: Yes

Salary Range

The expected salary range for this role is $237,102 - $296,377 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.