Manager, Strategy & Planning; Demand and Intake Manager

Job Description:

Company

Description:

McDonald’s is proud to be one of the most recognized brands in the world, with restaurants in over 100 countries that serve 70 million customers daily. We continue to operate from a position of strength. Our updated growth strategy is focused on staying ahead of what our customers want and realizing further growth potential. Our relentless ambition is why McDonald’s remains one of the world’s leading corporations after almost 70 years.

Joining McDonald’s means thinking big and preparing for a career that can have influence around the world.

At McDonald’s, we see every day as a chance to create positive impact. We lead through our values centered on inclusivity, service, integrity, community and family. From support of Ronald McDonald House Charities to our Youth Opportunity project and sustainability initiatives, our values keep us dedicated to using our scale for good: good for our customers, people, industry and planet. We also offer a broad range of outstanding benefits including a sabbatical program, tuition assistance and flexible work arrangements.

The Manager, Strategy & Planning (Demand and Intake Manager) plays a critical role in shaping how McDonald’s identifies, evaluates, and channels new opportunities across the global data and analytics ecosystem. Sitting within the Planning & Alignment function of EDAA, this role manages the structured intake of demand across markets, global functions, and platform teams—ensuring all requests are captured, categorized, and advanced through discovery and prioritization.

Additionally, the role will assist and support the Sr. Manager, Strategy & Planning in preparing and executing key ceremonies – e.g., Product Increment (PI) Planning, Quarterly Portfolio Review, etc.

The role will be responsible for operationalizing the framework for managing demand, coordinating intake governance, and maintaining the tools, metrics, and visibility that enable EDAA to scale efficiently. The role will also be responsible for structured facilitation across varying leadership band-levels to help drive timely decision‑making.

• End-to-End Intake Management

• Manage and operate the enterprise intake and demand processes for new data, AI, and analytics initiatives across all business domains.

• Ensure incoming requests are logged, validated, and advanced through triage, sizing, and discovery in collaboration with domain leads and product owners.

• Governance & Continuous Improvement

• Maintain intake and demand standards, documentation, and SLAs; support governance forums by coordinating agendas, capturing decisions, and tracking actions.

• Identify opportunities to streamline processes and reduce cycle time from intake to prioritized demand.

• Identify opportunities to streamline demand governance and processes from Discovery through Global Deploy stages.

• Tooling & Visibility

• Own intake tracking tools, KPIs, and dashboards to support planning and leadership reporting.

• Ensure intake data is high‑quality, complete, and structured to support effective decision‑making and portfolio planning.

• Stakeholder Engagement

• Serve as the first point of contact for global stakeholders submitting demand requests, ensuring clear expectations and guidance on intake processes.

• Coach teams on intake readiness criteria and promote consistent adoption across the organization.

Required:

• 3+ years of experience in product portfolio planning, strategy operations, and program coordination within a matrixed technology or data organization.

• Experience managing intake and demand lifecycle processes in a product‑led or agile environment.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to facilitate cross‑functional alignment.

• Proficiency in work‑management tools such as Jira and Smartsheet.

• Exposure to data and analytics lifecycle management or enterprise data platforms.

• Exposure to Product Increment (PI) Planning.

• Experience working in a global organization.

• Familiarity with advanced work‑management tools such as Jira Product Discovery, Jira Software, Jira Plan, Atlassian Intelligence, or Atlassian Rovo is a plus.

• Bri…