Manager, Engineering - Drive Thru Orchestration Service

McDonald's Corporation•Chicago, IL

153d•$152,678 - $190,847

About The Position

Manager, Engineering – Drive Thru Orchestration Service directs a team responsible for crafting, constructing, and operating the orchestration layer that drives next-generation drive thru experiences. This role is vital to providing a scalable, dependable, and AI-ready platform that ensures smooth customer ordering, reliable integrations, and rapid innovation throughout thousands of restaurant locations.

Requirements

7+ years of experience in software engineering, platform development, or orchestration systems, with progressive leadership responsibilities.
3+ years leading engineering teams delivering distributed services or APIs at scale.
Strong experience with event-driven architectures, API development, and cloud-native platforms.
Proven ability to manage complex migrations and drive architectural modernization.
Excellent communication, collaborator management, and cross-functional leadership skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience with drive thru, QSR, or retail orchestration platforms.
Familiarity with event sourcing, real-time data pipelines, and AI/LLM integration.
Bachelor’s degree or Master’s degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.

Responsibilities

Lead the full development and oversight of the Drive Thru Orchestration Service, ensuring high availability, reliability, and scalability across all ordering channels.
Build and deploy a decoupled, event-driven orchestration platform that works alongside menu, cart, payment, and fulfillment services.
Coordinate the migration from legacy, tightly coupled systems to a modern, API-first, and protocol-aligned architecture (e.g., .NET Proxy rewrite, WebSocket audio integration).
Ensure the orchestration platform supports multi-region deployment, real-time availability checks, and robust error handling.
Lead integration efforts with menu services (Model Context Gateway), cart management (Immutable Cart), payment, and external vendor systems.
Define and enforce API specifications, protocol alignment, and data contracts to ensure seamless interoperability.
Drive the adoption of event sourcing, GUID-based state management, and canonical data models to guarantee order accuracy and auditability.
Coordinate the implementation of telemetry, monitoring, and automated rollback strategies for operational excellence.
Build and mentor a high-performing engineering team, encouraging a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Manage project delivery, prioritization, and cross-functional dependencies, ensuring timely and on-budget execution.
Collaborate with product, architecture, and platform teams to align on requirements, priorities, and technical strategy.
Serve as the primary technical liaison for orchestration integration with external partners (e.g., Google, POS vendors, menu teams).
Communicate technical vision, progress, and challenges to senior leadership and collaborators.
Ensure robust testing, validation, and monitoring of orchestration flows and APIs.
Manage incident response, troubleshooting, and continual advancement for orchestration service reliability and performance.