Manager, Project Management

McDonald's Restaurants Limited; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 116,000 - 145,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Sabbatical program

Tuition assistance

Flexible work arrangements

Job summary

McDonald’s Restaurants Limited is seeking a Senior Program Manager for U.S. National Operations. This role leads end-to-end governance and initiative delivery, balancing business value with restaurant complexity across multiple workstreams.

You will build clear plans, drive executive decision-making, and coach teams toward gold-standard execution. Required are strong governance, enterprise thinking, and experience in managing complex programs with Agile, Waterfall, or hybrid methods.

Qualifications

• Strategic and enterprise thinking required to align priorities with restaurant goals.
• Experience leading multi-workstream initiatives across lifecycle.
• Design and operate governance or portfolio processes effectively.
• Assess readiness and adoption risk to guide decisions.
• Proven business acumen in evaluating value and impact of initiatives.
• Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills for senior leadership.
• Ability to influence without authority and drive closure.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end governance for high-priority restaurant initiatives.
• Ensure governance pathways are evidence-based and aligned with stakeholders.
• Develop integrated plans covering milestones, dependencies, and outcomes.
• Coordinate cross-functional teams to deliver executable solutions.
• Manage restaurant execution and simplify complexity to enable rollout.
• Provide concise recommendations and early visibility to risks and exceptions.
• Coach portfolio leads on governance expectations and project management practices.

Skills

Strategic thinking

Program management

Governance leadership

Operational judgment

Business acumen

Executive communication

Analytical discipline

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Business/Operations/Communications/PM

MBA or PMP or related certification

Tools

Smartsheet

Job description

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 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 ofoutstanding benefits including a sabbatical program, tuition assistance and flexible work arrangements.

Department Overview

The U.S. business is managing an increasingly interconnected portfolio of national initiatives, technology-enabled change, restaurant experience improvements, deployment programs, and growth priorities. Success requires more than moving work through a process. It requires disciplined choices, strong business cases, end-to-end planning, cross-functional alignment, and clear accountability from concept through deployment. The Business Integration team sits at the intersection of strategy, governance, restaurant operations, and execution within U.S. National Operations. The team manages the GSET and RXR governance processes, partners across prioritization and technology governance, maintains visibility to the national initiative portfolio and calendar, and provides program management leadership for the highest-priority work. Our mandate is to balance business value with restaurant complexity, surface risk early, and enable the disciplined planning and operational readiness required for gold standard execution across the U.S. System. This is an elevated Program Manager role. Team members may carry a primary governance or initiative-delivery assignment, but every Program Manager is expected to operate across both disciplines and flex with business priorities.

Duties

What You Will Own

• End-to-end initiative leadership. Guide complex, restaurant-impacting work from intake and concept through testing, approval, readiness, deployment, and stabilization.
• Governance integrity. Lead governance pathways through necessary requirements and ensure decisions are supported by the right evidence, stakeholder alignment, and operational inputs.
• Integrated plans and roadmaps. Build and maintain clear plans covering milestones, dependencies, resources, approvals, testing, training, communications, field engagement, deployment, and business outcomes.
• Cross-functional orchestration. Connect cross functional partners to produce aligned and executable solutions.
• Restaurant execution and complexity management. Evaluate sequencing, cumulative impact, execution risk, and calendar congestion; challenge teams to simplify solutions and enable successful execution in restaurants.
• Business value and decision quality. Pressure-test business cases, success measures, risks, assumptions, and tradeoffs so leaders can make timely, well-informed choices.
• Accountability and follow-through. Establish clear owners and deadlines, track commitments, resolve barriers, and resolve exceptions before they affect readiness or results.
• Executive communication. Create concise, decision-ready pre-reads, dashboards, recommendations, and status updates that clarify the ask, implications, risks, and next steps.
• Capability building. Coach initiative leads and cross-functional partners on governance expectations, project management practices, meeting discipline, and high-quality deliverables.
• Continuous improvement. Strengthen tools, processes, reporting, and ways of working using stakeholder feedback, lessons learned, and data.

How You Will Lead

• Operate as a strategic integrator, not simply a meeting facilitator or project tracker.
• Use enterprise judgment and an operations-first lens to connect initiative decisions to broader U.S. business priorities.
• Constructively challenge incomplete thinking, unclear ownership, unsupported timing, and unnecessary restaurant complexity.
• Influence without relying on authority; build trust while holding teams to high standards.
• Bring structure to ambiguity and move teams from discussion to decision and execution.
• Communicate directly, objectively, and with the right level of detail for working teams, Owner/Operators, and senior leaders.
• Flex between governance leadership and hands-on program management based on portfolio needs.
• Consistently demonstrate McDonald’s Values: Serve, Inclusion, Integrity, Community, and Family.

Success in This Role

• Initiatives enter governance with clear business value, required cross-functional alignment, and decision-ready materials.
• Plans make ownership, sequencing, dependencies, risks, and readiness transparent from approval through deployment.
• Leaders receive concise recommendations and early visibility to exceptions that require action.
• Restaurant impact and cumulative complexity are actively managed, not discovered late in the process.
• Initiative leads and partners become stronger through coaching, standards, and consistent ways of working.
• The portfolio advances with greater discipline, fewer avoidable execution gaps, and stronger accountability for outcomes.

Qualifications

Required Talent and Experience

• Strategic and enterprise thinking. Demonstrated ability to understand business strategy, connect interdependencies, evaluate tradeoffs, and translate priorities into executable plans.
• Program management mastery. Proven experience leading complex, multi-workstream initiatives across the full lifecycle using fit-for-purpose agile, waterfall, or hybrid methods.
• Governance and decision leadership. Experience designing, operating, or navigating stage-gate, portfolio, prioritization, or executive decision processes.
• Operational judgment. Ability to assess readiness, complexity, adoption risk, and frontline impact, then convert those insights into practical recommendations.
• Business acumen. Ability to assess business cases, expected value, restaurant impact, costs, tradeoffs, and success measures to inform prioritization and leadership decisions.
• Executive presence and communication. Exceptional written, verbal, facilitation, and storytelling skills; able to simplify complex issues and confidently lead senior-level discussions.
• Influence and accountability. Track record of aligning diverse stakeholders, resolving conflict, coaching peers, and driving commitments to closure without direct authority.
• Analytical discipline. Comfort using data, business cases, KPIs, risk analysis, and portfolio information to shape recommendations and measure outcomes.
• Adaptability and resilience. Ability to prioritize across competing demands, make progress amid ambiguity, and maintain quality in a fast-changing environment.
• Digital fluency. Advanced capability with Microsoft 365 and working knowledge of project, portfolio, workflow, and reporting platforms such as Smartsheet. Demonstrated ability to responsibly leverage AI-enabled tools to improve planning, analysis, communication, and productivity.
• Experience. Previous Project Management experience required. Bachelor’s degree in Business, Operations, Communications, Project Management, or a related field. MBA or relevant credentials such as PMP, PgMP, Agile, or change-management certification are preferred.

Positioning Note

• Assignments may vary based on portfolio demand, but the standard remains consistent: every team member must create clarity, lead across boundaries, enable gold standard restaurant execution, and drive disciplined delivery from ideation through deployment.

Compensation

Bonus Eligible: Yes

Long - Term Incentive: Yes

Benefits Eligible: Yes

Salary Range

The expected salary range for this role is$115,872.00 -$144,840.00per year
The above represents the expectedsalaryrange for this job requisition.

Additional Information:

Benefits eligible: This position offers health and welfare benefits, including but not limited to comprehensive health insurance, which includes medical, prescription drug, mental health, dental and vision coverage, as well as, life insurance.

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 [e-mail]. 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.