Consultant, Test Management

McDonald's; Greater London; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

McDonalds is seeking an experienced Consultant, Quality Assurance Engineering to oversee testing environments both physical and virtual, including on-site labs in East Finchley and offshore labs. You will drive automation, reduce defect leakage, and champion quality improvements across the UK&I restaurant estate.

You will lead the QA team, manage testing partners, and align with global testing strategy while mentoring colleagues and ensuring rapid, reliable deployments across the restaurant

Qualifications

• Proven success leading QA/Testing teams including coaching.
• Experience with test environments, lab setup, and automation.
• Ability to run pilot programs for testing environments and deployments.
• Strong communication, organisation and dependency management skills.
• PM experience (Agile or Waterfall).
• Proficiency with Jira and Confluence including Zephyr Scale for test management.

Responsibilities

• Accountable for on-site and offshore test labs and alignment with production environments.
• Drive adoption and continuous improvement of test automation frameworks and tools.
• Set and monitor automation targets, report on defect leakage and deployment speed.
• Lead defect triage sessions with cross-functional teams for rapid resolution.
• Develop dashboards tracking defect leakage, incident rates, and resolution times.
• Align UK Test function to Global testing strategy and share best practices.

Skills

QA Leadership

Test Automation

Environment Management

DevOps Collaboration

Stakeholder Management

Project Management

Tools

Jira

Confluence

Zephyr Scale

Job description

McDonalds has run its business in the UK since 1974 and currently operates over 1500 restaurants across the UK and Ireland, serving almost four million customers each day. McDonalds is one of the UKs largest private sector employers, employing over 170,000 people.

Department Overview

As Consultant, Quality Assurance Engineering you will be accountable for our testing environments both physical and virtual, including the onsite test lab in East Finchley and offshore labs in India. You will have creative autonomy to deliver seamless deployment of new technology, ensuring production restaurants mimic testing environments as closely as possible. You will drive automation, collaborate across teams to reduce defect leakage and incidents, and champion quality improvements throughout the restaurant estate. You will also manage and develop a Tech Business Analyst, ensuring alignment between technical quality and business requirements. A key part of your role is to manage the relationship and performance of our testing partners, ensuring high standards and continuous improvement.

Team & Customers

You will work as part of the Deployment & Testing team within the wider Technology team for the UK&I and Global business. Customers include franchisees, restaurant teams, global technology colleagues and supplier partners

Duties

Accountable for on-site and offshore test labs, ensuring alignment with production environments.

Responsible for lab setup, configuration, hardware procurement, and software versioning.

Drive adoption and continuous improvement of test automation frameworks and tools.

Set and monitor automation targets, reporting progress and impact on defect detection rates and deployment speed.

Champion automation best practices, mentoring team members and stakeholders.

Collaborate with DevOps, Deployment, Restaurant Operations, and the Software Management pillar to identify and address defect leakage.

Lead defect triage sessions with cross-functional teams, ensuring rapid resolution and knowledge sharing.

Develop dashboards tracking defect leakage, incident rates, and issue resolution times across restaurant deployments.

Analyse incident trends, proactively address systemic issues, and drive down overall incident rates.

Implement post-deployment reviews and retrospectives to capture lessons learned and drive improvements.

Align UK Test function to Global testing strategy, sharing best practices and resources.

Establish feedback loops with restaurant teams and franchisees to capture real-world issues and inform continuous improvement.

Facilitate workshops and training for stakeholders, building quality awareness and empowering proactive issue identification.

Define and track KPIs related to automation coverage, defect leakage, and incident reduction.

Benchmark against industry standards and internal targets, regularly reviewing progress and adjusting plans.

Seek opportunities for continual improvement, leveraging external best practices.

Stakeholder Engagement:

Lead and attend multi-functional team meetings, contributing to strategic planning and quality initiatives.

Represent Quality Assurance in forums, ensuring quality and automation are embedded in all technology initiatives.

Managed Test Service & Partner Management:

Lead the Managed test service and oversee execution and compliance of the Managed Service Testing contract.

Manage the relationship and performance of testing partner, ensuring delivery to agreed standards and driving continuous improvement.

Manage, coach, and develop the Tech Business Analyst & R2CB talent, fostering collaboration between technical and business analysis functions.

Ensure the Tech Business Analyst is integrated into quality and deployment processes, supporting requirements gathering, process improvement, and stakeholder communication.

Qualifications

• Proven success in leading and coaching teams, including both QA and Business Analyst roles.
• Previous test or QA experience, especially around environment management, configuration, and automation.
• Experience setting up pilot programs using test environments.
• Strong communication, organisational, and dependency management skills.
• Project management experience (Agile or Waterfall).
• Advanced proficiency in Jira and Confluence, including the use of testing add-ons such as Zephyr Scale for test management, reporting, and traceability.
• Comfort working in a fast-paced, changing environment.
• Experience identifying and using external best practices for deployment solutions.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and curiosity to explore new ways of working.
• Leadership behaviours and a desire to develop self and others.
• Ability to think outside the box to support frequent and smooth deployments.
• Strong presence and ability to influence at senior levels.
• Experience collaborating with Business Analysts to translate business requirements into technical solutions and quality improvements.
• Experience managing relationships and performance of external testing partner

Company Vision and Culture

Our Global vision is to build a better McDonalds and in the UK and Ireland we are working hard to be the UK & Irelands best-loved restaurant company.

McDonalds is defined by its culture. Our culture shapes and informs everything we think and everything we do. Our culture influences the way we interact with each other, and how we interact with customers, franchisees and suppliers. Our culture motivates and inspires us to attract and retain great talent, creating positive, energising, exceptional working environment for us all.

Our values drive our culture and shape our beliefs, our priorities and our actions. They influence the decisions we make, how we treat one another and how we show up as a brand to the world.

Serve:

We put our customers and our people first

Inclusion:

We open our doors to everyone

Integrity:

We do the right thing

Community:

We are good neighbours

At McDonalds we are People from all Walks of Life...

People are at the heart of everything we do, and they make the McDonalds experience. We embrace diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive culture that means people can be their best authentic self in our restaurants and offices, which helps us to better serve our customers. We have a strong heritage of diversity and representation within our communities, which we are proud of. The diversity of our people, customers, Franchisees and suppliers gives us strength.

We do not tolerate inequality, injustice or discrimination of any kind. These are hugely important issues and a brand with our reach and relevance means we have a very meaningful role to play.

We also recognise our responsibility as a large employer to continue being active in our communities, helping to develop skills and drive aspirations that will help people to be more aware of the world of work and more successful within it, whether with McDonalds or elsewhere.