Principal Platform Engineer

Job Description:

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 (https://medium.com/mcdonalds-technical-blog) ?to learn how technology and our global team are directly enabling the Accelerating the Arches strategy.?

Department Overview

As a Principal Platform Engineer, you will serve as a hands-on technical leader shaping the foundation of McDonald's global Data & Analytics Platform. This role spans engineering, integration, operations, and data management, ensuring our platform is resilient, secure, and scalable across multiple clouds and regions.

You will design technical standards, build reusable frameworks, and drive platform modernization across data infrastructure, real-time integration, observability, automation, and governance. With enterprise-wide influence, you'll partner with architects, engineering leaders, and operations teams to accelerate innovation, improve reliability, and optimize cost efficiency.

Duties

• Architect and implement scalable, cloud-native data and platform infrastructure leveraging BigQuery, Dataflow, and dbt Labs for modeling, transformation, and automation.

• Define and enforce standards for automation, observability, integration, data quality, and governance to ensure reusability, compliance, and cost efficiency.

• Design and optimize real-time integration platforms including streaming (Kafka) and API management, ensuring resilience and high availability.

• Collaborate with operations teams (RunOps, SecOps, MLOps, FinOps) to improve platform reliability, security, and performance while reducing cost and manual toil.

• Establish engineering best practices for metadata-driven governance, schema evolution, lineage, and catalog integration (Collibra, DataPlex).

• Lead technical design reviews and architectural oversight for complex platform and data initiatives, ensuring consistency across teams.

• Mentor and influence engineering talent through coaching, communities of practice, and by driving adoption of modern engineering practices.

• Partner with business and product stakeholders to align platform capabilities with enterprise priorities, enabling innovation and smarter decision-making at scale.

Qualifications

Required:

• Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.

• 10+ years in platform engineering, data engineering, or integration engineering roles.

• Expertise in cloud-native data platforms, distributed systems, and streaming technologies.

• Hands-on experience with infrastructure automation (Terraform, Helm, CI/CD) and observability tooling.

• Strong SQL and fluency with modern data warehouses (Google BigQuery).

• Proven ability to define enterprise-scale technical standards and drive adoption across teams.

Preferred:

• Experience with integration platforms (Kafka, API management, event-driven architectures).

• Familiarity with FinOps practices, platform cost optimization, and security/privacy compliance (GDPR, CCPA).

• Knowledge of data quality, metadata, and governance frameworks.

• Contributions to open-source or technical thought leadership.

• Certification in GCP Data Engineering or similar enterprise cloud platform.

Compensation

Bonus Eligible: Yes

Long - Term Incentive: Yes

Benefits Eligible: Yes

Salary Range

The expected salary range for this role is $168350 - $218860 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.

Competencies

Background & Values

Building Blocks

Execution Proficiency

Strategic Proficiency

Talent Proficiency

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.

Requsition ID: 2119