Job Description

The Group Product Manager (GPM), Restaurant Execution & Enablement is accountable for the vision, strategy, and measurable outcomes of KFC US restaurant execution technology—ensuring that restaurant systems enable fast, accurate, reliable operations that support guest digital growth at national franchise scale.

This leader manages and coaches a team of product managers responsible for core restaurant technologies (e.g., POS/KDS, BOH workflows, menu management, planning/forecasting, and channel/marketplace enablement as applicable). The GPM ensures product teams operate as empowered problem solvers—driving solutions that are valuable, usable, feasible, and viable, and delivered through continuous discovery and delivery.

Restaurant execution technology is a tightly coupled system that directly impacts:
• Restaurant throughput and speed of service
• Order accuracy and readiness reliability
• Menu accuracy and time to live for digital menu updates (e.g., aggressive TTL targets)
• Team member experience and operational adoption
• System resilience during peak and incident conditions

This portfolio must perform in the real world: high volume, high variability, and high cost of failure.

• Define and communicate a clear portfolio vision and multi year strategy for restaurant execution and enablement, aligned to brand goals and operational realities.
• Establish outcome based objectives (OKRs) across the portfolio and ensure priorities reflect the highest restaurant and business value.
• Translate strategy into a sequenced portfolio roadmap that balances:
• Offense (capabilities that unlock growth and adoption) and
• Defense (reliability, tech debt reduction, defect reduction, operational drag removal).
• Directly manage, coach, and develop product managers across the restaurant tech portfolio.
• Ensure teams are truly empowered: clear problems to solve, strong design/engineering partnership, and accountability for outcomes (not output).
• Set quality standards for product discovery, decision making, prioritization, and execution across the product managers you lead.
• Establish operating norms that keep product teams close to the work: time in restaurants, observation of team member workflows, and validation with operators and field partners.
• Drive discovery practices that reduce risk early (value/usability/feasibility/viability) before scaling solutions.
• Ensure solutions account for peak conditions, staffing variability, training constraints, and operational change management.
• Require success metrics and measurement plans before build begins; ensure instrumentation is treated as a product requirement, not an afterthought.
• Forecast impact efficiently using benchmarks and past results; measure post launch outcomes and incorporate learnings into future prioritization.
• Create transparency through regular health reviews of portfolio OKRs and key operational metrics (throughput, accuracy, stability, menu latency).
• Partner deeply with Engineering and Architecture to ensure the restaurant execution stack is scalable, secure, reliable, and maintainable.
• Collaborate across Restaurant Operations, Training, Support/Helpdesk, Finance, Legal, and field/franchise leadership to ensure solutions are operationally viable and adoptable. Manage vendor and partner dependencies where applicable; ensure clear accountability for integration, rollout readiness, and operational support.
• Ensure teams make and meet high integrity delivery commitments, with predictable release readiness and clear “must pass” criteria for store rollouts.
• Drive ruthless simplification and sequencing to maximize value while controlling complexity and release risk.
• Elevate incident learning into product decisions, improving resilience and reducing recurring operational failure modes. (Principle; aligns to “foundation first” emphasis in restaurant tech context.)

• 8-10+ years of experience in product management, product leadership, or closely related technology roles, including ownership of complex operational or omnichannel systems.
• 5+ years leading and developing product managers (formal people management strongly preferred; “player/coach” leadership acceptable with clear examples).
• Proven success delivering outcomes in high availability, high scale operational environments (e.g., retail, QSR, logistics, marketplaces, payments, or distributed field operations).
• Demonstrated ability to define and drive product strategy across multiple teams, with disciplined prioritization and explicit trade offs.
• Strong analytical capability: forecasting impact, defining success metrics upfront, and holding teams accountable to measurement and learning.
• Strong cross functional leadership and executive communication; capable of earning trust and driving alignment across Ops, Engineering, and field stakeholders.
• Technical fluency to understand engineering trade offs and integration complexity across POS/KDS/BOH and connected digital channels.
• Preferred Qualifications
• Experience with restaurant technology portfolios (POS, KDS, BOH workflows, menu management, rollouts) in franchise or multi unit environments.
• Demonstrated experience improving menu accuracy and latency across channels and stakeholders.
• Familiarity with modern product discovery and delivery operating models (e.g., empowered teams / continuous discovery).