Senior Principal, Data Engineering

Senior Principal, Data Engineering

Senior Principal, Data Engineering

Mastercard Services Technology is seeking a Senior Principal Data Engineer to drive our mission of unlocking the full potential of our data assets through innovation, automation, and engineering excellence. This highly technical, hands‑on individual contributor role focuses on building and evolving modern data platforms that enable secure, scalable, and governed access to data across cloud and on‑premises environments. The senior technical leader will design, build, and optimize enterprise‑scale data platforms on AWS and Azure, define architectural standards, champion best practices, and lead the implementation of cloud‑native data solutions across Mastercard’s data ecosystem.

The role requires strong technical leadership but does not include direct people management.

• Design and architect end‑to‑end cloud‑native data platform solutions, including modern lakehouse architectures leveraging AWS (S3) and Azure (Data Lake) with Databricks and related ecosystem tools.
• Lead by doing through hands‑on development of Dev Ops capabilities, including CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure‑as‑Code, and automated environment provisioning across multi‑cloud platforms.
• Define and enforce cloud security architecture standards, including IAM design, encryption strategies, network security, and regulatory compliance (GDPR, HIPAA).
• Establish enterprise‑grade data governance frameworks covering data cataloging, lineage, classification, and access control using tools such as AWS Lake Formation and Azure Purview.
• Architect and deliver scalable data engineering solutions, including ETL/ELT pipelines, data lakes, and data warehouse systems supporting analytics and reporting use cases.
• Implement and evolve Medallion Lakehouse architectures (Bronze, Silver, Gold) leveraging AWS services (Glue, Lake Formation) and analytics engines such as Databricks, EMR, and Athena.
• Translate complex business requirements into scalable, secure, and maintainable technical solutions in partnership with product, engineering, and analytics stakeholders.
• Provide hands‑on technical leadership by mentoring engineers and Dev Ops practitioners, promoting engineering excellence, ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Drive operational excellence through proactive monitoring, troubleshooting, and optimization of data platforms for performance, scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency.
• Define and document architectural standards, design patterns, and operational best practices to enable consistency and scalability across teams.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and industry trends in cloud, data, and Dev Ops to ensure the platform remains modern, efficient, and future‑ready.
• Actively participate in architecture reviews, technical design discussions, Agile ceremonies, and iterative planning and estimation sessions while influencing cross‑team technical direction.

• Deep expertise designing, building, and operating enterprise‑scale cloud and data platforms.
• Hands‑on experience with AWS services including S3, EC2, Lambda, Glue, Redshift, EMR, Athena, and Lake Formation.
• Hands‑on experience with Azure services including Data Factory, Synapse, Fabric, Azure Data Lake, and related technologies.
• Strong software engineering background with experience building production‑grade cloud‑native solutions.
• Expertise implementing Infrastructure‑as‑Code and CI/CD pipelines using Terraform, Cloud Formation, Bicep/ARM, Azure Dev Ops, Git Lab CI/CD, or similar tools.
• Strong understanding of cloud security architecture, IAM, encryption, governance, and compliance frameworks.
• Extensive experience with Spark, PySpark, distributed data processing, and large‑scale data engineering systems.
• Proficiency in Python and scripting languages such as Bash or Power Shell.
• Demonstrated success delivering production‑scale Medallion Lakehouse architectures.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies including Docker, Kubernetes, ECS, and AKS.
• Strong knowledge of observability, monitoring, and logging platforms such as Cloud Watch, Azure Monitor, ELK, or Grafana.
• Experience implementing cloud cost…