Menu Strategy and Innovation Director

McDonald's; London; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A global fast-food leader is seeking a strategic leader in London to drive menu innovation across markets. This role focuses on identifying growth opportunities and increasing the efficiency of sharing successful innovations. Ideal candidates have a strong background in commercial strategy and experience in complex organizations, along with excellent stakeholder engagement skills. Startup exposure is a plus, and fluency in English is required. This is a full-time role offering significant visibility and growth potential in a dynamic environment.

Qualifications

• Experience leading menu strategy or innovation in large organizations.
• Ability to identify and scale commercial food growth opportunities.
• Fluent in business English; additional languages are a plus.

Responsibilities

• Identify mid-term, multi-market innovation opportunities.
• Provide market performance analysis to guide initiatives.
• Collaborate on co-creating relevant, scalable innovations.

Skills

Commercial strategy expertise

Stakeholder engagement

Analytical skills

Cross-functional collaboration

Data driven decision making

Influencing skills

Education

Experience in marketing or commercial strategy

Job description

At McDonald’s, food is at the heart of everything we do — it’s what brings our customers back, time and time again. While we’re known for bold menu innovation, we also recognise the opportunity to work smarter by scaling what already works. This role exists to bridge that gap — connecting local market ingenuity with global scale.

We’re looking for a strategic, commercially minded leader who can identify growth opportunities across multiple markets and help lift and shift existing innovations more broadly. You’ll work at the intersection of global and local, supporting the identification, development and execution of menu strategies that unlock growth and drive consistency.

You’ll connect the dots between market-specific wins and global initiatives, ensuring ideas scale faster, smarter, and with greater impact. This is a highly collaborative role that requires strong stakeholder engagement, influence, and the ability to build trusted relationships across functions and levels — from market teams to global leadership.

Job Description

This role is seen as a strategic springboard within McDonald’s — offering high visibility, cross-functional collaboration, and exposure to both global and regional leadership. It’s ideally suited for a marketing professional with a passion for innovation and a desire to grow their career within a dynamic, global organisation.

Success in this role can open doors to broader leadership opportunities both regionally and internationally. We’re looking for someone who is not only excited by the challenge of shaping menu strategy today, but also motivated to build a long-term, international career with McDonald’s.

Key Accountabilities

• Identify and implement mid-term, multi-market innovation opportunities based on commercial potential and consumer relevance.
• Provide bottom-up analysis of market performance to guide the integration and localisation of global initiatives.
• Consolidate and centralize insights and analytics to inform strategic menu decisions.
• Collaborate with market product development teams to co-create relevant, scalable innovations.
• Facilitate cross-market collaboration to accelerate the scaling of successful innovations.
• Build systems for more efficient sharing and scaling of market-led food innovation.
• Partner with Global to shape innovation pipelines that reflects current market realities.
• Advocate for early-stage menu ideas and encourage broader cross-market participation.
• Coordinate CORE menu management between markets and the Global team.
• Map, engage, and influence a diverse set of stakeholders across regions, functions and levels — tailoring leadership and communication styles to effectively collaborate.
• Act as a connector and integrator across a matrixed organisation, ensuring alignment and momentum across global, regional, and local teams.
  
  

Qualifications

Essential background, experience and personal qualities:

The ideal applicant will have experience leading menu strategy, innovation, or commercial food proposition development within a large, complex organisation. This could be as a marketing or commercial strategy expert, or within a broader cross-functional role shaping consumer-led food platforms. Experience should be rooted in data driven decision making and marketing insight, not culinary execution.

• Proven success in identifying and scaling commercial food growth opportunities (e.g. menu strategy, portfolio development or product innovation).
• Experience working with or with, global matrixed FMCG or QSR organizations on innovation, commercial planning or growth strategies.
• Strong influence & credibility in shaping food strategies across cross functional teams and senior stakeholders.
• Advanced stakeholder engagement and influencing skills, with the ability to adapt leadership styles to different audiences and contexts.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration and project leadership capabilities.
• Highly analytical and data savvy, with a consumer and business outcome mindset.
• Fluent in business English; additional languages a plus.
  
  

Additional Information

At McDonald’s we are People from all Walks of Life...

People are at the heart of everything we do, and they make the McDonald’s 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 McDonald’s or elsewhere.