The KFC Global Sr. Manager of Engineering drives the development, innovation, and execution of the brand’s equipment strategy and serves as the lead of the Engineering Center of Excellence (COE). This role partners to define standards and safety processes, drive supply specifications improvement, and ensure quality, ultimately supporting business growth.
Equipment Strategy Development (50%)
- Improve restaurant unit economics to drive business growth through cooking equipment efficiency, SKU reduction, and new equipment introduction.
- Develop and maintain an equipment engineering strategy aligned to KFC’s growth strategy, partnering with regional COE leads.
- Drive regional COE leads, through partnership with Training teams, to create and deploy global equipment training.
- Develop and introduce new equipment that improves efficiency, safety, and food quality.
- Enable innovative engineering solutions through partnerships with restaurant cooking equipment vendors, sister brands, and Yum! Innovation team.
- Cultivate innovative cooking equipment technologies to be tested and scaled across the brand globally.
- Serve on KFC Global Brand Standards Council, ensuring we maintain and continue improving our Core products and standards.
Enable KFC’s Growth Priorities through equipment engineering leadership (25%)
- Next-Generation Restaurants: Manage equipment development and partner as SME on back-of-house design.
- Drive-Thru: Partner with Digital teams on drive-thru optimization.
- Dayparts: Manage new equipment innovation, providing end-to-end support from development to production.
- Connected Restaurants: Support enhanced connectivity to middle- and back-of-house equipment and technologies.
Regional Strategy Deployment (25%)
- Drive development and maintenance of global brand standards and equipment engineering standards through regional COE leads, in partnership with Operations Standards team.
- Develop methods of measuring global progress against equipment strategy and other KPIs.
- Partner with regional and business unit COE leads to gather and integrate market and franchisee feedback into global engineering strategy.
Education/Certifications
Required: Bachelor’s degree
Preferred: Related engineering degree, MBA
Required Experience:
- 5+ years of experience in related engineering field.
- A strong safety-first mindset.
- Proven technical and analytical skills with the ability to think critically.
- Ability to flex between “big picture” and “hands-on/detailed” work.
- Proven track record leading and developing others.
- Successfully created end to end solutions.
- Experience collaborating across various functions, brands, and regions.
- Successfully managed large-scale projects and budgets.
- Experience building and maintaining vendor relationships.
- Experience developing and managing holistic strategies for sustained growth.
- Proven ability to lead through ambiguous and emerging scenarios.
- Excellent written and verbal communication.
- Ability to influence without direct authority.
- Proficient in Microsoft Office suite of tools.
Preferred Experience:
- Prior experience in restaurant cooking equipment.
- Prior experience in global, matrix organizations.
