Director, Edge Operations and Site Reliability Engineering

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Date: Sep 12, 2025

Location: Chicago, IL, US, 60607

Company: McDonald's Corporation

Company Description: 

McDonald’s growth strategy, Accelerating the Arches, encompasses all aspects of our business as the leading global omni-channel restaurant brand. As the consumer landscape shifts we are using our competitive advantages to further strengthen our brand. One of our core growth strategies is to Double Down on the 3Ds (Delivery, Digital and Drive Thru). McDonald’s will accelerate technology innovation so 65M+ customers a day will experience a fast, easy experience, whether at one of our 25,000 and growing Drive thrus, through McDelivery, dine-in or takeaway.  

McDonald’s Global Technology is here to power tomorrow’s feel-good moments.   

That’s why you’ll find us at the forefront of transformative technology, exploring new and innovative ways to serve our millions of customers and spread happiness one delicious Hot Fudge Sundae-dipped fry at a time. Using AI, robotics and emerging tech, we’re digitizing the Golden Arches. Combine that with our unparalleled global scale, and we’re reshaping all areas of the business, industry and every community that is home to a McDonald’s restaurant. We face complex tech challenges every day. But that’s where our diverse and talented teams come in. They’re made up of the best and brightest from all over the globe, and they thrive in the space where feel-good meets fast-paced.   

Check out the McDonald’s  Global Technology Technical Blog to learn how technology and our global team are directly enabling the Accelerating the Arches strategy.  

Department Overview

We are seeking a Director, Site Reliability Engineering and Operations to lead all aspects of a distributed team running our Edge platform in 100+ countries. This role is critical to ensuring the performance, reliability, and availability of our edge computing infrastructure at scale.

Looking to make a big difference? Join McDonald's team for a rewarding career. We are customer-obsessed, committed to being leaders in our industry, and believe we are better when we work together. The ideal candidate will bring deep technical expertise in Edge Infrastructure, On-Prem Cloud, and/or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), along with strong leadership skills to guide a high-performing team and collaborate effectively with strategic partners. This is an outstanding opportunity to drive operational excellence and continuous improvement across one of the largest edge deployments in the world.

Accountabilities and Responsibilities:

  • Lead 24x7x365 operations of edge infrastructure, ensuring high availability, reliability, and efficient performance.
  • Build, mentor, and lead a team of SREs, engineers and operations specialists across multiple geographies.
  • Supervise incident response, root cause analysis, and resolution processes for edge-related outages or degradations.
  • Encourage the utilization of SRE procedures, encompassing SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, and incident management.
  • Collaborate with Platform Engineering and Application teams to build and deploy scalable, resilient systems.
  • Monitor platform capacity and performance and collaborate with the Platform Engineering team to forecast and plan for future edge capacity/performance needs.
  • Develop and maintain monitoring, alerting, and observability to proactively detect and resolve issues.
  • Lead initiatives to automate day to day operational tasks and reduce toil.
  • Collaborate with Edge Platform Vendor and Outsourced Service Provider to guarantee SLAs are achieved and consistently improved.
  • Ensure all edge operations align with security guidelines and meet relevant regulatory and compliance standards.
  • Engage with Platform Engineering, Application, Segment, and Market teams to coordinate edge operations with business objectives.
  • Collaborate with Market Operations and other Global Tech Operations teams to implement modifications on the edge platform based on global and market-specific change protocols.
  • Cultivate an environment of continuous improvement, teamwork, and operational efficiency among team members.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
  • 10+ years of experience in infrastructure, On-Prem/Public Cloud, or SRE roles, with at least 5 years in a leadership capacity.
  • Shown experience leading edge platforms, or hybrid cloud environments.
  • Strong knowledge of Hardware, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure as code (e.g., Terraform, Ansible).
  • Experience with monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, New Relics).
  • Experience with driving/leading automation initiative to reduce toil and improve efficiency.
  • Excellent communication, leadership, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
  • Experience in leading and forging partnerships with Vendors and Managed service partners to deliver business value.
  • Demonstrable background in guiding Operations/SRE team within a sophisticated multinational corporation.
  • Strong knowledge and experience with GCP and/or AWS cloud Infrastructure

Compensation

Bonus Eligible: Yes

Long - Term Incentive: Yes

Benefits Eligible: Yes

Salary Range

The expected salary range for this role is $168,350.00 - $218,860.00 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, a 401(k) plan, adoption assistance program, educational assistance program, flexible ways of working, and time off policies (including sick leave, parental leave, and vacation/PTO). Eligibility requirements apply to some benefits and may depend on job classification and length of employment.  

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 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 mcdhrbenefits@us.mcd.com. 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. 


Nearest Major Market: Chicago