McDonald’s: Director, Data Science - Chicago, IL

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.

Is this the next step in your career Find out if you are the right candidate by reading through the complete overview below.

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 Charities 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 of outstanding benefits including a sabbatical program, tuition assistance and flexible work arrangements.

We are an equal opportunity employer committed to the diversity of our crew members, staff, operators, and suppliers. We promote an inclusive work environment that creates feel-good moments for everyone.

Job Description

We are in search of a Data Science Director to join in our growing Enterprise Data, Analytics, & AI team. This role will be critical in helping the McDonald’s Global Business Services (GBS) organization turn the system’s data into a winning advantage!

This dynamic individual will lead a team of analysts and data scientists in researching and building statistical, ML, and AI models in pursuit of data informed solutions to the systems biggest challenges.

This is a cross-functional role that will interact with multiple teams across our Global enterprise; including IT, marketing, finance, supply chain, development, and operations.

As well as interaction with market analytics leaders and the broader McDonald’s data science community.

Our global digital and physical footprint has grown rapidly in the past year, and we have bold plans to accelerate this growth to deliver on our customer’s expectations for years to come.

With the exciting commitment to expand our GBS function, and the heightened focus on data driven transformation in our business, this Director will sit at the intersection of our broader transformation strategy.

Providing coaching to data and analytics professionals to while partnering closely with stakeholders and senior leadership to prioritize and execute on delivery that drives our business results and long-term analytics and AI strategy.

We are looking for a data science generalist who has experience leading teams and delivering on projects in times of ambiguity and organizational change.

Someone who understands the importance of cross-functional collaboration in driving success within a decentralized organization.

This role is critical to helping our data science team deliver on the projects we’ve prioritized across the business, remain accountable for the business impact of the models in production, and support the design and implementation of our broader GBS strategy.

In this role you will :

• Provide leadership and help manage the capacity of at least 15 FTE data scientists and 3 data science team leads, as well as a flexible bench of contracted resources
• Be a key storyteller for the value of data science across the org, including developing the muscle across our internal partners to use data, insights and the production models that we have developed
• Develop and run sophisticated methods of analyzing our data, including creating proper hypotheses and measurement strategies
• Lead the development of a long-term framework for transitioning R&D model development into production in partnership with IT
• Lead our advanced modeling and AI projects
• Lead the teams and process that manage the intake and advanced analytics project prioritization process across all internal / external resources
• Manage the scope of high value external consultant and partner relationships, including 3rd party analytics solutions and the marketing science teams at our agencies working on our US business
• Work with our internal finance teams (i.e. Business Insights) to improve global incrementally measurement methodologies and tools
• Collaborate with global market data and analytics leads to share methodologies and expertise

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Economics, Math, Computer Science or similar
• Master’s or PhD degree preferred
• Related work experience and results oriented performance
• Detailed understanding of the data and analytics landscape
• Previous corporate or consulting experience in running sophisticated analytical projects in large cross-functional organizations such as retail, restaurant or food service, CPG, financial services, etc.
• Previous experience in at least one of the business area of specialty (finance analytics, edge inference, personalization and customer segmentation, logistics).
• Hands-on experience with at least one area of analytical expertise like regression (multivariate, logistic, etc.), customer modeling (segmentation, CLV, propensity modeling), forecasting (demand, sales), base-lining, econometric modeling and marketing analytics, natural language processing, etc.
• Knowledge and expertise working with relational databases and large datasets. Experience with both AWS and GCP environments a plus
• Experience designing and building tools for non-technical users
• Ability to independently own and drive multiple work streams, often balancing opposing and changing priorities
• Strong academic qualifications, including advanced understanding / coursework in Math, Statistics, Business, Technology, or related field
• Proficient in SQL; some level of skills with R, Python or other statistical programming languages and technical environments
• Proficient in Tableau, PowerBI or other data visualization tools
• Proficient in Microsoft Office including PowerPoint and Excel

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