Lead Data Engineer

Our Purpose Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200 countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential. Title and Summary Lead Data Engineer Mastercard is seeking a Lead Data Engineer to drive the design, development, and optimization of scalable data solutions that power analytics, experimentation, and decision-making across the organization. In this role, you will serve as both a technical expert and a team leader—overseeing data pipeline architecture, ensuring data quality and reliability, and guiding engineers in best practices. You will collaborate closely with cross-functional partners to enable high-impact data products while shaping the long-term vision for data engineering capabilities. Role: * Lead the design, development, and maintenance of scalable, reliable data pipelines and data processing frameworks supporting a variety of business and product use cases. * Ensure data quality, integrity, and readiness by establishing and maintaining standards, validation processes, and monitoring frameworks. * Mentor and guide a team of data engineers, fostering strong technical craftsmanship, collaboration, and continuous learning. * Collaborate with cross-functional teams (Data Science, Product, Analytics, Infrastructure, and Engineering) to deliver end-to-end data solutions. * Drive technical roadmap and architectural decisions, ensuring scalability, performance, and long-term sustainability of data systems. * Identify and implement improvements to ETL/ELT processes, focusing on automation, efficiency, and operational excellence. * Evaluate and integrate emerging technologies to enhance data engineering capabilities and support evolving business needs. * Oversee complex data projects, ensuring timely, high-quality delivery while balancing multiple priorities. * Act as a subject matter expert on data modeling, pipeline optimization, large-scale data processing, and best practices. * Ensure compliance with internal policies and external data regulations, promoting secure and responsible data usage across the team. All About You: * Extensive experience as a Data Engineer or in a similar role, with deep expertise in data engineering principles, data modeling, and pipeline development. * Strong hands-on skills in SQL and experience with major RDBMS or cloud data warehouses. * Strong hands on skills with AWS Data Engineering tech stack (EMR, Glue, Kinesis, Lambda etc.) * Good hands on skill with orchestration tools like Apache Airflow  * Hands on experience with AWS AI and ML services like Sage maker, Bedrock * Experience working with Databricks, delta and ICEBERG open table formats  * Proficiency with at least one programming or scripting language such as Python, Scala, or PowerShell. * Experience working with big data and distributed systems (e.g., Spark, Hadoop, cloud-native big data services). * Strong understanding of data quality frameworks, validation methods, and monitoring tools. * Familiarity with Agile methodologies and modern DevOps practices for data engineering. * Proven ability to lead technical teams, manage multiple projects, and work effectively across geographies and functions. * Ability to translate complex business problems into scalable technical solutions. * Excellent communication skills, with the ability to articulate data concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences. * Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience). Corporate Security Responsibility All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, an ... (truncated, view full listing at source)