Director, Transformation - Brand & Content

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. Our growth strategy focuses on staying ahead of customer needs and driving further potential. Joining McDonald's means preparing for a career with global influence, centered on inclusivity, service, integrity, community, and family. We lead through values that drive positive impact, from supporting Ronald McDonald House to sustainability initiatives and youth opportunity programs.

About the role

McDonald’s is reimagining its global marketing model to be better, faster, and more connected. As part of this transformation, we are establishing a new Future of Marketing team to define how marketing capabilities, tools, technology, processes, and ways of working will evolve. This role will shape the future-state model for brand, creative, and content, ensuring McDonald’s leverages global scale, improves consistency, strengthens creative excellence, and increases marketing effectiveness to fuel brand love and drive restaurant visits.

The Director, Transformation - Brand & Content will define the vision, strategy, and design for managing brand and creative capabilities across the full creative process—from briefing and big idea development to content production, adaptation, deployment, and optimization. This leader will integrate data and AI to enable speed and scale while maintaining world-class creative excellence. The role reports to the Senior Director, Transformation — Brand & Content Tower Lead, within the Future of Marketing team.

Responsibilities

• Identify gaps and inconsistencies in current creative and content ways of working, designing scalable solutions that improve speed, consistency, creative excellence, and effectiveness through automation and agentic tools.
• Use an iterative, collaborative design approach, engaging creative, agency, media, data, and technology partners throughout the process.
• Design end-to-end capabilities and workflows across the full Brand & Content capability set, including briefing, creative development, production, content adaptation, and deployment.
• Partner with Global Brand and market teams to define future-state processes for managing brand partnerships, creator and experiential engagements, and third-party operator relationships within the broader content ecosystem.
• Develop decision frameworks that clarify roles, responsibilities, and rights across global, market, agency, creative, and production partners.
• Collaborate with Global and Local Marketing teams and cross-functional partners (Legal, Procurement, Finance, etc.) to embed commercial and compliance requirements, ensuring governance and process design are integrated across the broader marketing capability landscape.
• Work with Change Management and Communications to develop clear process narratives and change enablement materials for market and agency stakeholders.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience (client-side and/or agency) leading full-funnel creative and content development, with deep understanding of global/market team and agency workflows and how to evolve them for greater speed and scale without compromising creative excellence.
• Strong passion for creative work that connects culture, brand relevance, and business growth, with extensive campaign experience, including co-creating “icon-to-icon” partnerships leveraging experiential and creator-led strategies.
• Entrepreneurial builder mindset, comfortable creating new solutions, testing and learning, and refining approaches over time.
• Ability to lead through ambiguity and define strategic vision where no precedent exists.
• Proven track record reimagining and designing creative and content capabilities, tools, and processes within large, multi-market organizations, spanning idea development, production, adaptation, and activation.
• Experience designing governance frameworks and RACI models that clarify roles, decision rights, and ways of working across complex, multi-stakeholder creative environments.
• Executive-level storytelling that inspires and aligns the organization behind the strategic vision.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health insurance, including medical, prescription drug, mental health, dental, and vision coverage.
• Life insurance.
• Sabbatical program.
• Tuition assistance.
• Flexible work arrangements.

Pay

The expected salary range for this role is $178,121.00 - $222,651.00 per year. Individual pay is determined based on experience and other job-related factors.

Bonus eligible: Yes

Long-term incentive eligible: Yes (stock or other equity grants pursuant to McDonald’s long-term incentive plan).