Consultant, Operations

About Us

McDonald's has run its business in the UK since 1974 and currently operates over 1500 restaurants across the UK and Ireland, serving almost four million customers each day. McDonald's is one of the UK's largest private sector employers, employing over 170,000 people.

Department Overview

The Consultant, Restaurant Design plays a critical role in shaping the operational design of restaurants across the UK & Ireland, supporting both New Store Openings (NSO) and Reinvestment (IRLX) programs, while maintaining alignment with current and emerging Global initiatives. This role owns the operational design framework and principles that enable kitchen design partners (including H+K and Franke) and wider project stakeholders to produce consistent, right-first-time layout recommendations. The focus is on back-of-house (BOH), kitchen positioning and operational flow, ensuring layouts deliver capacity, crew efficiency, customer flow, and a strong operational experience at the lowest practical cost for forecasted volumes. This is both a technical and cross-functional leadership influencing role. Outcomes are delivered through alignment and direction of others — including architects, project managers, design partners, installers, and internal stakeholders, rather than through direct design production. Strong people leadership is essential, including day-to-day leadership of the Officer, Restaurant Design, who supports design reviews, standards materials and governance outputs.

Duties

• Own and continuously evolve the operational design framework and principles for operational positioning and customer/crew flow across all restaurants.
• Provide expert review, challenge and strategic direction to kitchen design partner and architect outputs, improving right-first-time quality and reducing design rework and site delivery risk.
• Lead design governance and maintain a clear, stakeholder-aligned change management process for standards, deviations and continuous improvement.
• Define and maintain bronze / silver / gold design standards to support implementation of new Global and local initiatives at different investment levels.
• Ensure operational designs are future-proofed for capacity and service model evolution, while remaining cost-optimised against forecasted volumes.
• Work in close partnership with Consultant, Equipment and GIRSM to ensure designs are deliverable, operationally compliant, and supported by the correct operational ‘minimum equipment requirements’ (i.e., the equipment needed to operate the design as intended).
• Collaborate with Consultant, Equipment on high-level equipment demand planning and forecasting driven by NSO/IRLX volume and design assumptions.
• Ensure project delivery partners (design partners, installers, project managers and architects) understand the operational ‘why’ behind standards and can engage franchisees consistently and confidently.
• Lead, coach and develop Officer, Restaurant Design—setting clear priorities, quality expectations and development plans to scale the function as volumes increase.

Qualifications

A strong candidate will combine deep operational expertise, design understanding, and influencing leadership, with the ability to translate restaurant performance needs into scalable, cost-effective design standards.

Company Vision and Culture

Our Global vision is to build a better McDonald's and in the UK and Ireland we are working hard to be the UK & Ireland's best-loved restaurant company. McDonald's is defined by its culture. Our culture shapes and informs everything we think and everything we do. Our culture influences the way we interact with each other, and how we interact with customers, franchisees and suppliers. Our culture motivates and inspires us to attract and retain great talent, creating a positive, energising, exceptional working environment for us all. Our values drive our culture and shape our beliefs, our priorities and our actions. They influence the decisions we make, how we treat one another and how we show up as a brand to the world.

• Serve: We put our customers and our people first.
• Inclusion: We open our doors to everyone.
• Integrity: We do the right thing.
• Community: We are good neighbours.
• Family: We get better together.

At McDonald's we are People from all Walks of Life. People are at the heart of everything we do, and they make the McDonald's experience. We embrace diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive culture that means people can be their best authentic self in our restaurants and offices, which helps us to better serve our customers. We have a strong heritage of diversity and representation within our communities, which we are proud of. The diversity of our people, customers, Franchisees and suppliers gives us strength. We do not tolerate inequality, injustice or discrimination of any kind. These are hugely important issues and a brand with our reach and relevance means we have a very meaningful role to play. We also recognise our responsibility as a large employer to continue being active in our communities, helping to develop skills and drive aspirations that will help people to be more aware of the world of work and more successful within it, whether with McDonald's or elsewhere.