Sr. Manager, Tech Lead - Digital Gaming

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. 

Job Description

We’re looking for a Sr. Manager - Tech Lead in our Gaming Integration product area.  You’ll lead a team of Associate Tech Leads and developers focused on enabling McDonald’s digital gaming experiences across our eCommerce channels.  This consists of the integrating 3rd party and internal gaming platforms into McDonald’s digital commerce channels (Mobile app, Web, KIOSK) supporting an engaging and seamless end-to-end user experience. This role partners closely with the gaming Product Manager to define and implement the user experience for gaming integrations across all channels. This role will work with solution architecture teams to define technical solutions that are reusable, scalable and secure.  The role will be responsible for managing product reliability and technical debt, and influencing of prioritization and sequencing of product backlog.

We aspire to create the most engaging digital QSR experiences in the world. This team is integral to enabling McDonald’s marketers to deliver a more personalized and relevant and engaging experience on a global scale.  To achieve these outcomes, you’ll collaborate with multiple McDonald’s teams, including other Product teams, Engineering teams, Experience Design, Strategic Insights, Marketing, and Legal.

The ideal candidate for this role:

• Significant software development experience, with knowledge of Agile software development process
• Experience partnering with stakeholders across an at-scale, complex, global matrixed org setup
• Excellent understanding of latest development technologies
• Infrastructure and “Infrastructure-as-code” knowledge
• Experiences with code refactoring, design patterns, design-driven development, continuous deployment, highly scalable applications, and application security
• Expert in pair programming, continuous integration, test-driven development & incremental design
• Experience in Agile Development, application of Agile techniques and delivery practices
• Promotes adoption of Agile methodologies to secure outcome-driven mindset in product teams
• Strong communication skills with ability to explain complex technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders
• Is a proactive problem solver who can easily flex across front-end and back-end elements and user types (customer, marketer, legal)
• Has expertise in incorporating gamified user experiences into both commercial web and mobile applications.

What you’ll do (key responsibilities):

• Solution Design: Collaborate with stakeholders to grasp the business goals, user experience, and design prerequisites, and create logical and technical solution designs that fulfill these requirements. Ensure the code development is in line with the architectural, quality and security standards and best practices
• Development Squad Leadership:  Manage squad capacity and ensure the correct mixture of skill sets and technical expertise required to deliver business objectives. Ensure engineers understand the business context and requirements of the solutions and products. Ensure teams
• Manage Product Evolution:  Partner with Product Manager to ensure clarity of user stories and acceptance criteria. Influence product backlog prioritization and sequencing to ensure a balance of engineering best practices, cost effectiveness and reliability with features that solve the most important problems.
• Technical Subject Matter Expert:  Stay up to date with industry trends and technologies to advise product strategy and ensure the product portfolio remains competitive. Answer technical questions from the squads and stay accountable for technical solutioning. Act as the mentor to junior TLs
• Cross-Functional Stakeholder Management and Collaboration:  Develop relationships with Data, Marketing, Legal, Market (country) teams, and others to understand current and future needs. Help product teams resolve and prioritize competing needs by navigating across these stakeholders.
• Continuous Product Improvement:  Partner with Strategic Insights to measure and drive product and new feature adoption and customer sentiment, while supporting the team to define key performance indicators.  Regularly review performance to inform individual and cross-product optimization.
• Continuous Engineering Improvement:  Evolve and evangelize engineering best practices. Ensure observability of systems and integrations within your domain to improve reliability and reduction of technical debt. Ensure security-based design to reduce customer and brand risk. Ensure high levels of testing coverage and end to end testing processes to derisk deployments. Regularly review performance to inform individual and cross-product optimization.
• Maintain documentation standards for all software shipped by the squad
• Accountable for deployment of new features including QA, push to production and defect remediation

Qualifications

You’ll be a great fit for this role if you:

• Bring experience in one or more of the following: Large scale implementation of an ecommerce, offers and discounts engine. Experience in marketer authoring tools enabling teams to efficiently create and publish offers, deals, and large-scale promotions across a multi-channel ecommerce ecosystem. Bridging revenue growth management strategies and systems into a global ecommerce implementation.
• Drive outcomes and solve problems, versus focusing on solutions
• Have a proven ability to inspire and manage high-performing engineering teams, especially if you enjoy building teams’ problem-solving skills and engineering competency
• Effectively communicate your vision, strategy, and progress to drive alignment across the organization, to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Thrive in a cross-functional world where you closely partner with your product, design, and other counterparts, and you know how to keep everyone working together toward a common goal
• Are skilled at stakeholder management and influencing, in a matrixed and global organization

Other qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience in, software engineering, technical / solution architecture, technical project management, or a related field
• Minimum of 8 years of experience in Software Delivery, Engineering or Architecture
• Experience leading a team of Tech Leads / Product Engineers to deliver digital products with measurable results
• Expertise in product-oriented quantitative analysis (e.g., building business cases)
• Experience working in a global organization, preferably franchised and in the consumer/retail sector

Additional Information

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.