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 3

Ds (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 thurs, 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.

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.

• Architect and implement scalable, cloud‑native data and platform infrastructure leveraging Big Query, 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 (Run Ops, Sec Ops, MLOps, Fin Ops) 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, Data Plex).
• 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.

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 Big Query).
• 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 Fin Ops practices, platform cost optimization, and security/privacy…