Director, Growth Strategy & Insights, The McDonald’s Division

Job Description Summary:

The Director, Growth Strategy & Insights, The McDonald’s Division leads the development and support the execution of growth strategies for The McDonald’s Division (TMD) International Team, acting as a trusted strategic advisor to Business Development Directors (BDDs) working with other support functions and key McDonald’s stakeholders. This role leads the synthesis and application of consumer, customer, and market insights to inform where to play, how to win, and how to effectively sell priority growth opportunities across global and regional markets. The role will primarily support key regional markets while contributing to global strategic initiatives, partnering closely with Marketing, Analytics, Finance, and OU teams to translate insights and performance inputs into clear strategic recommendations and sales-ready narratives that drive measurable commercial impact. This role is central to scaling Strategic Business Planning, Collaborative Business Planning, and strategy-led sales enablement across international markets, ensuring alignment from strategy through execution.

What You’ll Do for Us:

Growth Strategy & Business Partnership

• Act as a trusted advisor to BDDs and cross‑functional leadership, supporting growth strategy development, prioritization, and risk assessment.

• Inform and influence Market, OU and customer business plans by translating insights into clear strategic choices and trade‑offs aligned with TMD growth objectives.

• Play a leading role in Long Range Planning (LRP), Annual Business Planning (ABP), and key strategic milestones with insight‑backed strategy recommendations.

• Partner with Finance and Analytics teams to ensure strategies are grounded in performance realities while remaining focus on strategic implications rather than analytics production.

• Lead Beverage Strategy with priority markets, collaborating with McDonald’s and support functions on multi-year strategies grounded in market, channel, and customer insights.

Opportunity Framing & Strategy‑Led Selling

• Identify and frame consumer‑ and customer‑led growth opportunities across beverages, channels, occasions, and packages, clarifying size of prize, strategic role, and commercial relevance.

• Translate growth strategies into clear, compelling, sales‑ready narratives that articulate the “why”, “why now”, and customer value.

• Partner with Sales and Customer Leadership to ensure strategic initiatives are supported by fact‑based selling stories and aligned success measures.

• Support senior‑level customer engagements and joint business planning by providing strategic context and opportunity framing.

Insights Synthesis & Application

• Lead the identification, synthesis, and application of consumer, customer, category, and cultural insights relevant to McDonald’s and the beverage portfolio.

• Lead custom research for McDonald’s on priority strategic questions in top markets, ensuring outputs translate directly into strategic and commercial implications.

• Work closely with OU and Global Human Insights teams to leverage system insights for McDonald’s-specific strategy needs.

• Translate qualitative and quantitative inputs into actionable insights that inform strategy, execution priorities, and selling implications.

• Serve as the voice of the consumer and guest in strategic discussions, ensuring alignment with evolving needs and behaviors.

Strategic Alignment, Innovation & Impact

• Enable alignment across TMD, OUs, Global Human Insights, Marketing, Sales, Analytics, and Finance through shared frameworks, narratives, and best practices.

• Support global and regional innovation agendas by identifying consumer‑led opportunity spaces and clarifying their role within the broader portfolio and growth strategy.

• Partner with stakeholders to define success metrics and KPIs for strategic initiatives and track adoption and impact to inform continuous improvement.

What We are Looking For:

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent work experience required.

• MB/MBA or advanced business degree preferred but not required.

• Minimum 7+ years of experience in growth strategy, commercial strategy, strategic insights, marketing strategy, or related roles.

• Experience working with complex customers and/or foodservice preferred but not required.

• Fluency in data manipulation to extract strategic direction and narrative, forecasting, and project future consumer and customer behavior

• Strong business orientation with the ability to connect consumer understanding to commercial outcomes.

• Experience operating in matrixed, international environments with multiple stakeholders.

• Proven ability to influence without authority and operate as a strategic advisor.

• English written and verbal fluency required.

• Fluency in another language is a plus but not required.

Core Functional Skills:

• Insights Synthesis & Strategic Framing – Integrate diverse inputs into clear strategic and commercial narratives.

• Growth Strategy Development – Support where‑to‑play / how‑to‑win choices, portfolio strategy, and opportunity prioritization.

• Strategy-Led Sales Enablement – Translate growth strategies into sales-ready stories

• Business & Financial Acumen – Connect performance drivers to strategic and customer-relevant outcomes.

• Stakeholder Influence & Advisory Skills – Partner effectively with BDDs and senior stakeholders to shape decisions.

• Executive Storytelling & Communication – Deliver concise, compelling strategic narratives that drive alignment, commitment, and action.

• Cross‑Functional Collaboration – Work seamlessly across Insights, Marketing, Analytics, Finance, and OU teams without duplicating capabilities.

What can help you to be successful in the role?

Growth Behavior:

• Growth Mindset: Demonstrates Curiosity. Welcomes failure as a learning opportunity.

• Smart Risk: Makes bold decisions/recommendations.

• Commercially Focused: Understands the upstream and downstream implications of his/her work.

• Performance Driven & Accountable: Has high performance standards. Outperforms her/his peers.

• Fast/Agile: Removes barriers to move faster. Experiments and adapts. Thrives under pressure and fast pace.

• Empowered: Brings solutions instead of problems. Challenges the status quo. Has the courage to take an unpopular stance.

Leadership Behavior

• Act Like an Owner: Deliver results, creating value for our brands, our System, our customers and key stakeholders.

• Collaborate with the System, Customers and Key Stakeholders

• Develops Self and Others: Develop self and support others' development to achieve their full potential.

• Drive Innovation: Generate new or unique solutions and embrace new ideas that help sustain our business.

What We Can Do For You 

• Career growth and development: Leveraging our boundaryless network, we provide access to educational platforms and provide coaching, mentoring and feedback, as a part of our Leadership & Development process.

• Diverse and inclusive culture: You’ll be embraced for who you are and empowered to use your voice to help others find theirs. We want to make our culture inevitable.

• International Experience: Become part of international projects and work along multicultural teams, through our global network.

Skills:

Analytics Software, Communication, Competitor Analysis, Customer Insights, Data Mining, Financial Analysis, Financial Modeling, Influencing, Key Performance Indicators (KPI), Long Term Planning, Microsoft Office, Professional Presentation, Relationship Building, Risk Mitigation Strategies, Stakeholder Management, Storytelling, Strategic Thinking, Syndicated Research, Tactical Planning, Waterfall Model

Location(s):

Singapore

City/Cities:

Singapore

Travel Required:

00% - 25%

Relocation Provided:

No

Job Posting End Date:

April 29, 2026

Our Purpose and Growth Culture:

We are taking deliberate action to nurture an inclusive culture that is grounded in our company purpose, to refresh the world and make a difference. We act with a growth mindset, take an expansive approach to what’s possible and believe in continuous learning to improve our business and ourselves. We focus on four key behaviors – curious, empowered, inclusive and agile – and value how we work as much as what we achieve. We believe that our culture is one of the reasons our company continues to thrive after 130+ years. Visit