Director, Software Engineering

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.

• 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

• 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.