Sr Director, Data Engineering - Restaurant 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, Restaurant Data Engineering , to lead the vision, strategy, and execution of data engineering capabilities across the Restaurant 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 restaurant operations analytics, artificial intelligence, operational reporting, and data-driven decision-making across global restaurants and markets.

The Senior Director will oversee teams responsible for Restaurant Master Data Management (including Location Data Solutions LDS, restaurant profiles, and operational entity hierarchies), Restaurant Sales (including POS data integration, transaction pipelines, and top-line sales forecasting foundations), and Restaurant Telemetry (including drive-thru telemetry, kitchen and speed of service data, IoT equipment signals, and operational intelligence systems). This leader will establish the strategic direction for restaurant data engineering, drive modernization and strategic insourcing initiatives, industrialize robust data pipelines, and establish semantic data layers that empower business self-service while enforcing stringent data quality, operational reliability, and governance standards.

This role partners closely with Global Operations, Restaurant Solutions, Enterprise Architecture, Platform Engineering, Data Science, Supply Chain, Cybersecurity, and global market technology leaders to ensure the organization can effectively leverage restaurant data as a strategic asset. This role combines deep technical expertise, organizational leadership, operational excellence, and executive-level stakeholder management to enable operational data transformation at global restaurant scale.

Duties

Strategic Leadership & Vision

• Define and execute the data engineering strategy, roadmap, standards, and operating model for the Restaurant data domain in alignment with enterprise objectives.
• Establish long-term vision for restaurant data platforms, operational data products (e.g., Restaurant Master Data, sales data pipelines, restaurant operations & IoT telemetry), data architecture, and engineering capabilities to support evolving global operations, digital restaurant, and operational excellence needs.

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.

Data Platform & Architecture Strategy

• Drive the design, implementation, and optimization of scalable data ecosystems that support restaurant operations analytics, machine learning, sales reporting, IoT telemetry processing, and self-service business intelligence.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture and Platform Engineering to define target-state restaurant data architecture and ensure scalable solutions align with enterprise technology and cloud standards.
• Oversee the development, industrialization, and lifecycle management of enterprise restaurant data products (including Restaurant Master Data, sales pipelines, speed of service, and IoT telemetry feeds), ensuring reliability, scalability, observability, security, and performance.
• Deliver robust data pipelines and certified semantic gold data layers that empower business units and global markets to self-service operational reporting and analytics, avoiding centralized reporting bottlenecks.

Business Partnership & Value Creation

• Partner with senior business and technology leaders across Global Operations, Worldwide Restaurant Solutions, Supply Chain, and global markets to identify opportunities to leverage restaurant data and accelerate operational excellence.
• Build strong collaboration across data science, analytics, product management, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and software engineering teams.

Financial, Resource & Vendor Management

• Lead investment planning, resource allocation, budgeting, vendor management, and technology evaluation efforts to optimize organizational effectiveness and cost efficiency.
• Optimize workforce strategy across internal FTEs and strategic partners, balancing cost efficiency, engineering ownership, and delivery agility.

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 operational analytics, sales reporting, telemetry/IoT data processing, artificial intelligence, and business transformation initiatives.
• Deep expertise in modern data platforms, data architecture, master data management (MDM), high-throughput data integration, data warehousing, data lakes, and large-scale distributed data processing technologies.
• Extensive experience with data modeling, ETL/ELT design, event streaming, data integration, and information management practices.
• Strong knowledge of data governance, master data management (MDM), metadata management, data quality frameworks, and data integrity standards across distributed systems.
• Strong understanding of cloud-based data ecosystems (e.g., Google Cloud Platform, AWS, Snowflake) and modern platform architectures.
• Exceptional executive communication, stakeholder management, and influencing skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting restaurant, retail, or distributed operational analytics, point-of-sale (POS) data integration, sales forecasting platforms, or IoT/telemetry data pipelines.
• 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.

Compensation

Bonus Eligible: Yes

Long - Term Incentive: Yes

Benefits Eligible: Yes

Salary Range

The expected salary range for this role is $243,000 - $303,000 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.

Bonus eligible: This position is eligible for a bonus, calculated based on individual and company performance.

Long term Incentive eligible: This position is eligible for stock or other equity grants pursuant to McDonald’s long-term incentive plan.

McDonald’s is an equal opportunity employer. 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.