McDonald's seeks food safety director as quality becomes a top priority

McDonald’s is looking for a Director of Food Safety and Quality Systems, a senior job that sits inside North America Supply Chain and works with internal teams, suppliers, distributors, operators and global partners. The posting shows food safety is being handled as a management function, not just a restaurant checklist, with one role expected to coordinate the standards that reach crew levels, shift managers and franchise operators.

That matters at a company that says it serves about 68 million people a day and operates about 44,000 locations worldwide. McDonald’s says its food safety systems are science-based and validated by external third parties, and that a Food Safety Advisory Council made up of internal experts, suppliers and external academics supports its risk management work. The company also says those systems are designed to stay aligned from farm to customer, with food safety protocols embedded in food sourcing, menu development, packaging, distribution and the running of restaurants.

For people in stores, that kind of corporate hire usually shows up in the details that can slow down or steady a shift: how procedures are written, how product issues are documented, how suppliers are checked and how managers respond when something breaks in the middle of a rush. McDonald’s says suppliers get virtual and in-person training on food safety policies and procedures, and that supplier quality systems require periodic third-party audits. It also says suppliers must meet science- and risk-based standards including GLOBALG.A.P., SQMS, GMP and DQMP. For crews, that means fewer improvised fixes and more nonnegotiable steps when a product is received, stored, prepared or pulled from service.

The hire comes as McDonald’s has been reshaping its supply-chain leadership. In March 2025, the company said Marion Gross would retire effective April 1, 2025, and that Warren Anderson would become Chief Global Supply Chain Officer with responsibility for supply chain resiliency, food safety and quality. That transition followed a sharp reminder of the stakes in October 2024, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to onions served at McDonald’s sickened 104 people in 14 states. The Food and Drug Administration said Taylor Farms, the supplier of slivered onions for affected locations, initiated a voluntary recall.

McDonald’s has said food safety is everybody’s business, from suppliers to crew members to corporate staff, and the open director role shows that message is still being translated into senior-level oversight. In a system this large, quality is not just a back-of-house rule set. It is part of how the company manages consistency, accountability and the next incident before it reaches the line.