Senior AI Engineer - Computer Vision/NLP

McDonald's • Chicago, IL

78d • $129,800 - $165,490

About The Position

At McDonald's, AI is reshaping how we operate and serve customers. From drive-thru management and kitchen automation powered by Computer Vision to customer care and voice ordering enabled by Natural Language Processing, AI is at the heart of how we deliver seamless, efficient, and personalized experiences across 100+ countries. We are seeking a Sr. AI Engineer/Scientist with expertise in Computer Vision and/or Natural Language Processing to join our AI Labs team. You will help turn cutting-edge research into production systems that streamline operations, improve crew efficiency, and enhance customer experience at global scale. This role sits at the intersection of advanced research, large-scale deployment, and product innovation, ensuring that our AI roadmap delivers measurable business and customer impact.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, AI, or related field
• 5-9 years of experience in engineering, with 4+ years of hands-on AI/ML development
• Strong programming skills in Python (C++ a plus)
• Deep understanding of transformer architectures, model optimization techniques, and core algorithms in either Computer Vision or NLP
• Experience with cloud AI services (AWS SageMaker, Google Vertex AI, Azure ML), preferably GCP
• Ability to communicate technical concepts clearly to technical and non-technical audiences
• Strong collaboration skills and ability to thrive in fast-paced, cross-functional environments
• Passion for innovation, with a track record of applying AI responsibly and at scale

Nice To Haves

• Master's or PhD in AI, Computer Science, or related field
• Experience with EfficientNet, ResNet, YOLO, SAM, or Diffusion models
• Experience with LLM fine-tuning, embeddings, prompt engineering, RAG, or pre-trained models (BERT, GPT, LLaMA, T5)
• Experience deploying and monitoring AI models in production, including model versioning and reproducibility
• Contributions to open-source CV/NLP frameworks (e.g., Hugging Face, PyTorch Lightning, OpenCV)

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and refine advanced AI models in either Computer Vision (CNNs, Vision Transformers, Diffusion models) or NLP (Transformers, LLMs, seq2seq, RAG, embeddings)
• Implement solutions in Python/C++, leveraging frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face, OpenCV
• Apply fine-tuning and optimization techniques (transfer learning, LoRA, quantization, distillation)
• Stay current with CV and NLP research (e.g., NeurIPS, ACL, CVPR), introducing novel techniques like multimodal fusion or generative models into enterprise applications
• Translate research into production-ready systems, ensuring scalability, reproducibility, and monitoring
• Develop AI pipelines and workflows across edge devices, kiosks, and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)
• Optimize for latency, cost efficiency, and restaurant-specific constraints (drive-thru, mobile, kiosk)
• Work closely with AI engineers, MLOps teams, and product/operations teams to deliver real-world AI solutions
• Support enterprise AI governance, compliance, and risk management to ensure responsible, safe, and ethical AI deployments

Benefits

• Health and welfare benefits
• 401(k) plan
• Adoption assistance program
• Educational assistance program
• Flexible ways of working
• Time off policies (including sick leave, parental leave, and vacation/PTO)
• Bonus eligibility based on individual and company performance
• Long term incentive eligibility for stock or other equity grants

What This Job Offers

• Career Level: Mid Level
• Industry: Food Services and Drinking Places
• Education Level: Bachelor's degree