Network Operations Manager Jobs in Elmhurst, IL (NOW HIRING)

Company Description:
McDonald's growth strategy, Accelerating the Arches, encompasses all aspects of our business as the leading global omni-channel restaurant brand. As the consumer landscape shifts we are using our competitive advantages to further strengthen our brand. One of our core growth strategies is to Double Down on the 3Ds (Delivery, Digital and Drive Thru). McDonald's will accelerate technology innovation so 65M+ customers a day will experience a fast, easy experience, whether at one of our 25,000 and growing Drive thrus, through McDelivery, dine-in or takeaway.
McDonald's Global Technology is here to power tomorrow's feel-good moments.
That's why you'll find us at the forefront of transformative technology, exploring new and innovative ways to serve our millions of customers and spread happiness one delicious Hot Fudge Sundae-dipped fry at a time. Using AI, robotics and emerging tech, we're digitizing the Golden Arches. Combine that with our unparalleled global scale, and we're reshaping all areas of the business, industry and every community that is home to a McDonald's restaurant. We face complex tech challenges every day. But that's where our diverse and talented teams come in. They're made up of the best and brightest from all over the globe, and they thrive in the space where feel-good meets fast-paced.
Check out the McDonald's Global Technology Technical Blog to learn how technology and our global team are directly enabling the Accelerating the Arches strategy.
Department Overview
The Sr. Manager, Network Operations leads the globally distributed teams responsible for the availability, performance, and resilience of McDonald's Restaurant Network, in support of the Global Restaurant Network Transformation (GRNT).
This role provides global operational authority, service governance, and operations leadership, while enabling regional and market teams to reliably run and support the global network standard. The Sr. Manager leads a globally distributed team of network operations engineers and remains effectively engaged in incident command, service health, automation strategy, and complex problem management.
The role partners closely with Global Network Engineering, Product, Deployment, Security, and Regional / Market IT teams to ensure global consistency, security, scalability, and operational excellence-while allowing for controlled local flexibility where required.
Duties
Global People Leadership & Operations Organization
Lead and develop a globally distributed team of Network Operations Engineers and senior technical resources across geographies, including workload planning and prioritization, performance management, coaching, and career development.
Establish global operations standards, operating models, and ways of working.
Build a culture of accountability, AI-driven innovation, automation-first thinking, and continuous improvement.
Product, Roadmap & Portfolio Ownership
Lead and drive product backlogs and functional requirements with business and technology stakeholders, aligned to network operations.
Define and influence product roadmaps with recommendations on how operational functionality, workflows, and user journeys should be defined, leveraging the technology stack's capabilities.
Operate as part of a scrum team, managing backlogs and delivery in Jira and partnering with scrum teams and business analysts to map capabilities to processes.
Serve as a key point of contact for functionality and timelines.
Own portfolio finances and budget, ensuring backlogs and prioritization align with the committed budget.
Market Network Operations Onboarding
Own global market onboarding into network operations for GRNT adoption - transitioning deployed markets from project delivery into steady-state run and support.
Lead operational readiness assessments - monitoring, observability, alerting, runbooks, on-call coverage, and SLA/SLO baselining - prior to production handover.
Partner with Global Network Engineering and Deployment to ensure a clean handoff into operations, with knowledge transfer and support models in place.
Ensure onboarded markets meet global operability standards while allowing controlled local flexibility where required.
Feed operational lessons learned back into onboarding playbooks, runbooks, and standards.
Global Service, Incident & Change Management
Own global network service health, availability, and SLA/SLO performance, ensuring uptime meets or exceeds targets.
Own the global NOC and a follow-the-sun, on-call support model, driven by observability and AIOps for proactive detection and response.
Provide leadership for incident response and escalation, including:

• Incident command for major and multi-market events
• Change management governance and maintenance windows
• Root-cause analysis and operational KPI reporting
• Govern operational exceptions, ensuring deviations are deliberate, documented, and minimized.

Problem Management & Systemic Remediation
Partner with Global Network Engineering to lead problem management across markets.
Own engineering responses to recurring or high-impact issues.
Drive corrective actions that improve global stability, resilience, and efficiency.
Vendor, Carrier & Service Provider Management
Own global vendor, carrier, and managed service provider relationships, including contract and SLA negotiation, carrier and circuit management, escalations, and service reviews.
Drive performance and cost efficiency across multi-vendor ecosystems, partnering with Procurement, Finance, and Legal to align vendor strategy with global standards and budget.
Network Automation & Continuous Improvement
Define and lead the global network operations automation strategy, focused on:

• Automated monitoring and self-healing
• Deployment and change automation
• Reduction of manual effort and error at scale

Partner with product, engineering, and platform teams to prioritize automation that delivers measurable global impact.
Hands-On Global Technical Leadership
Maintain active technical engagement in large-scale, globally distributed environments, including service health reviews and sophisticated troubleshooting.
Provide senior technical leadership across:

• WAN, LAN, and SD-WAN
• Network security and SASE architectures
• Cloud-adjacent and edge networking

Qualifications
• 8+ years of experience in Network Operations or Engineering supporting global or multi-market environments
• 5+ years leading operations teams across regions or time zones
• Strong hands-on experience with Juniper networking and Palo Alto security platforms or equivalent technologies
• Strong understanding of network monitoring, ITIL-based incident/change management, and SLA-driven operations
• Experience leading product backlogs, roadmaps, and Agile/scrum delivery, including portfolio budget ownership
• Demonstrated experience managing vendors, carriers, and managed service providers
• Proven success delivering network automation for scale, reliability, and consistency
• Strong ability to influence and lead across regions, cultures, vendors, and operating models
• Demonstrated oral/written communication skills to multiple levels of leadership, with the ability to convey complex ideas in easy-to-understand, friendly language
Preferred / Nice to Have
• Relevant certifications such as ITIL, CCNP/CCIE, JNCIP or PMP
• Experience operating within global standards / local execution models
• Background in restaurant, retail, or branch-based global networks
• Exposure to observability and AIOps for network operations
Salary Range
The expected salary range for this role is $152,678.00 - $190,847.00 per year
The above represents the expected salary range for this job requisition. Ultimately, in determining your pay, we may also consider your experience, and other job-related factors.
Compensation
Bonus Eligible: YES
Long-Term Incentive: YES
Benefits Eligible: YES
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 mcdhrbenefits@us.mcd.com. 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.