Manager, Site Reliability Engineering

KFC•Louisville, TX

About The Position

The Manager, Site Reliability Engineering for KFC US leads the engineering team responsible for the reliability and day-to-day operation of infrastructure supporting KFC US restaurant technology. This includes cloud infrastructure, restaurant connectivity and in-store edge systems, with particular focus on in-store edge infrastructure and restaurant connectivity. The role leads delivery, operational excellence and continuous improvement in partnership with KFC US technology leadership and Global Reliability Engineering. The manager develops engineers, strengthens documentation and cross-training, and helps ensure the platform is reliable, secure, supportable and scalable. The position contributes to infrastructure roadmaps and architecture; leads in-store compute, connectivity and cloud engineering; and oversees reliability operations, security, compliance, vendors and third-party relationships. It also leads and develops the existing KFC US engineering team, sets priorities in alignment with leadership, and communicates delivery, operational risks and priorities to stakeholders.

Requirements

BS in Computer Science, Engineering or equivalent professional experience.
8+ years in infrastructure, platform or reliability engineering, including 2+ years leading or mentoring engineers.
Strong experience across cloud infrastructure, networking, systems or delivery pipelines, with depth in at least one area.
Experience designing or operating production workloads in a major public cloud using infrastructure as code and configuration automation.
Working knowledge of network infrastructure, PCI and related security requirements.
Practical experience with reliability engineering, including monitoring, incident management, runbooks and on-call operations.
Experience working with vendors or engineering contractors.
Experience supporting business-critical production systems.
Strong written and verbal communication; ability to consult with senior leaders within the brand and across Yum!.
Recognized leadership in mentoring and developing less experienced engineers.
Scripting and automation experience in a general-purpose language; working knowledge of identity and access management and single sign-on.
Platform breadth across disciplines, rather than expertise in one area at the expense of others.
Service orientation toward engineering teams and restaurant operations as platform customers.
Ability to communicate prioritization clearly so stakeholders understand what is being built, what is not, and why.

Nice To Haves

Cloud, networking or security certifications.
Depth in in-store edge infrastructure and restaurant connectivity.
Experience with restaurant, retail or other distributed in-store/edge technology.
Experience converging a brand-specific platform onto a shared enterprise platform.
Experience with observability platforms and security compliance frameworks.
Experience in a multi-brand or multi-region enterprise engineering environment.

Responsibilities

Contribute to the KFC US infrastructure technical roadmap across cloud, networking, systems and in-store infrastructure, aligned with KFC US and Global Reliability Engineering strategy.
Gather requirements from digital, product, back-of-house and restaurant operations partners and translate them into infrastructure and reliability requirements.
Participate in architecture and design reviews and ensure solutions meet standards for scalability, resilience, security and operability.
Evaluate emerging technologies and provide recommendations to engineering leadership.
Lead engineering and operational execution for the in-store compute and connectivity platform across KFC US restaurants, including device management, image and configuration management, hardware lifecycle and fleet rollout.
Lead implementation and ongoing improvement of restaurant network configurations and support practices within established PCI, SOX and enterprise standards.
Partner with enterprise platform engineering teams to adopt and implement shared in-store patterns across KFC US.
Lead implementation and operation of cloud infrastructure for KFC US workloads using infrastructure as code and automated delivery pipelines.
Support sizing, capacity planning and configuration decisions for software and equipment acquisitions.
Implement and maintain patching and maintenance plans aligned with enterprise standards.
Lead day-to-day platform reliability and operational performance, including service level objectives, monitoring and observability, incident response and post-incident reviews.
Manage a sustainable on-call model and identify opportunities to reduce after-hours support burden.
Drive automation that reduces operational toil, improves reliability and makes restaurant technology deployments safer and more repeatable.
Track recurring reliability issues and ensure corrective actions are completed.
Implement established security practices across cloud and in-store infrastructure, including identity and access, secrets, certificates and network segmentation.
Partner with Yum Cyber Security to identify vulnerabilities and coordinate remediation.
Ensure platform changes follow established audit, security and compliance requirements.
Participate in technical evaluations of third-party cloud, software, hardware and connectivity solutions.
Manage day-to-day vendor and contractor relationships supporting the platform, including delivery oversight and technical coordination.
Monitor third-party service performance and escalate issues when service commitments are not met.
Lead and develop the existing KFC US engineering team through coaching, performance management, cross-training and onboarding.
Build documentation and cross-training so critical platform knowledge is shared across the team.
Set team priorities based on direction established with KFC US and Global Reliability Engineering leadership.
Communicate delivery, operational risks and priorities to stakeholders.
Lead with the Yum! behaviors of People Grower, Influencer and Results-Focused.