Principal Architect

Company Description:

McDonald’s new 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 4Ds (Delivery, Digital and Drive Thru and Development). 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.

Leading this tech revolution is McDonald’s Global Technology organization made up of intrapreneurs who get to build really cool tech with scary smart people using the latest innovations like AI, IOT, and edge computing. We do this working along diverse, global teams who are always hungry for a challenge. It’s bonus points when you get to see your family and friends use the tech you build at their favorite McD restaurant.

As we have matured as an engineering organization and seen the demands for technology grow exponentially, we’re gearing up to deliver on the next set of opportunities for the business. We are building up an engineering team in house accountable for our strategic products. We’ll have diverse squads made up of engineers with traditional and specialized skillsets, both from internal engineers coupled with our partners, to help us flex with demand and solve technology innovation challenges done at an incredible scale.

Check out the Global Technology Technical Blog to learn how technology is directly enabling the Accelerating the Arches strategy.

We are an equal opportunity employer committed to the diversity of our crew members, staff, operators, and suppliers. We promote an inclusive work environment that creates feel-good moments for everyone. We are interested in people who enhance our company culture: Does this role interest you? We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every single requirement!

Job Description:

The McDonald's Global Architecture team is responsible for the architecture, design, integration, and management strategy of McDonald's digital and restaurant landscape. These systems power one of the most significant brands in the world, enabling and scaling to over 38,000 McDonald’s restaurants operating in over 120 diversified countries. Furthermore, these software platforms provide the foundation to achieve operational excellence and to reliably serve some of the world’s favorite food to a base of over 70 million customers every day leveraging a variety of channels to place your order.

We need a collaborative and self-directed individual who, in partnership with other Architects, will engage customers and stakeholders to clarify expectations, apply relevant standards and best-practices, and drive the delivery of infrastructure solutions and services. This will be a collaborative role, necessitating strong interpersonal and influencing skills in addition to broad IT domain knowledge, particularly in retail / restaurant, cloud native design (hyperconvergence), and Architecture Governance practices.

The role will have influence and oversight over restaurant application designs and restaurant transformation initiatives to ensure consistency of product and integration best practices.

Accountabilities & Responsibilities

• Partner with our restaurant platform, product and engineering teams to review architecture, solution designs and drive alignment on a Platform and Application North Star
• Review, corrections, and approvals of application and solution blueprints of McDonald’s customer and restaurant facing products and capabilities as well as PaaS/SaaS solutions provided by vendors.
• Assess the current state of customer and restaurant facing technology and create a "North Star" blueprint with the architecture team to guide future state developments.
• Translate the technical roadmap to senior business leadership to help them better understand how technology will impact their business objectives.
• Set architecture standards for customer and restaurant facing technologies and help to create accelerators and enablement tools where needed. (SDKs, libraries, cross product tooling and platforms)
• Oversee technology consulting vendors and ensure they are following all architectural standards and meeting all KPI’s set forth by the Architecture team.
• Develop critical architecture standards and ensure there is an effective balance of centralized and decentralized standards.
• Conduct compliance reviews and provide course correction when necessary.
• Design and develop innovation POCs and fast fail concepts for product teams to develop
• Triages technology proposals against existing infrastructure standards and best practices, and leads subsequent solution and variance activities
• Analyzes new solution requests, solicits and clarifies nonfunctional requirements, and formulates conceptual and physical architectures, to rapidly deliver solutions in a fast paced, multi-vendor, cloud-first environment
• Helping teams to develop the product on time, on budget and ensuring that it solves the problem it was designed to solve

Qualifications:

• 12+ years’ experience in design, implementation and/or consulting of distributed applications
• Proven record to lead and deliver architecture solution designs for multiple parallel initiatives and projects, across applications and platforms
• Proven ability to lead IT infrastructure / platform and (cloud) technology development projects and ensure objectives, goals and commitments are met
• Strong analytical, planning and organizational skills with the ability to manage competing demands. The solution architect must recognize the corporate strategy and all business processes but also understand technical specifications
• Demonstrated excellent oral and written communications skills and experience interacting with business and IT stakeholders at all levels including the executive level. An experienced solution architect should be able to listen, advise, empathize and explain.
• Ability to focus on details while maintaining the "big picture" view
• Experience of working in a fast-paced environment with continual demands and changing priorities
• Strong, confident, self-motivated and willing to take ownership and accountability to establish and maintain high level of customer trust and confidence
• Demonstrated experience of delivering solutions in conjunction with 3rd party suppliers and offshore resources
• Knowledge on integration with CI/CD pipelines and test automation
• Deep experience with persistence architecture, scalability, performance and tuning techniques
• Strong experience with containers (Docker, Kubernetes), configuration management systems, CI build tools, logging and monitoring tools
• Experience with retail and eCommerce technology is preferred

Technical Knowledge & Skills

• Familiar with Corporate, Industry and Professional Standards
• Experience migrating or transforming legacy solutions to cloud ready platforms
• IT Infrastructure / Platform and Cloud native development
• Virtualization, Containerization
• Container Management Systems
• Event Messaging Systems
• Observability Systems (Performance-, Telemetry)
• HA Platform Designs
• Cloud-, Hybrid-, Hyperconvergence Environments
• Development / Engineering and Software Architecture design
• Cloud architecture, machine learning
• DevOps, CI/CD management
• Performance Monitoring
• Test Automation
• Security

Additional Information:

McDonald’s is committed to providing qualified individuals with disabilities reasonable accommodations to perform the essential functions of their jobs. Additionally, if you (or another applicant of whom you are aware) require assistance accessing or reading this job posting or otherwise seek assistance in the application process, please contact mcdhrbenefits@us.mcd.com

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.