Lead Data Platform 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 Platform Engineer

Overview

The Mastercard Economics Institute (MEI) is an economics lab powering scale at Mastercard by owning economic thought leadership in support of Mastercard’s efforts to build a more inclusive and sustainable digital economy

MEI was launched in 2020 to analyze economic trends through the lens of the consumer to deliver tailored and actionable insights on economic issues for customers, partners, and policymakers

The Institute is composed of a team of economists and data scientists that utilize & synthesize the anonymized and aggregated data from the Mastercard network together with public data to bring powerful insights to life, in the form of 1:1 presentation, global thought leadership, media participation, and commercial work through the company’s product suites

About the Role

Mastercard Economics Institute (MEI) is seeking an experienced Lead Data Platform Engineer to lead our multiyear data strategy and own day to day data operations for a modern, research grade analytics environment. Reporting to MEI’s VP for Applications & Innovation, you will ensure MEI’s data is well managed, well structured, well governed, documented, and reliably accessible to economists and analysts.

This is a unique opportunity for someone energized by managing large scale datasets across relational and distributed systems, automating data pipelines, and adopting new applications and platforms—while applying AI to improve data management and unlock differentiated insight. This role ensures the integrity and accessibility of the data that underpins strategically important priorities to deliver insights, support leadership, and engage customers with precision and speed. Responsibilities will include:

o Develop MEI’s multiyear data strategy aligned to business objectives in Economics, Product, and Customer Engagement.

o Liaise with Mastercard Technology (BizOps, Data Platform, DB Admins, Security, Networking) to align on access to centralized datasets and data access technology, standards, timelines, and support models.

o Standardize data and platforms orchestration and usage. Maintain compliance with data security, privacy, and regulatory requirements.

o Own day to day operations for MEI data environments (Hadoop/Ozone/Cloudera; SQL; R/Python; Tableau) and Databricks (lakehouse architecture, Spark jobs, Splunk Catalog, Delta, etc.). Design, build, and run ETL/ELT pipelines for automated data refresh across internal and external datasets.

o Define and implement data quality standards (accuracy, completeness, timeliness, consistency, uniqueness) with automated checks, alerts, and remediation workflows.

o Create templates, starter kits, and documentation to reduce onboarding friction and enable independence.

All About You:

o Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Science, Engineering, or related (Master’s preferred), or equivalent experience.

o Years of professional experience in data engineering/platform operations

o Hands on with Hadoop/Ozone/Cloudera, Spark, SQL (OLAP/warehouse), Python/R, and BI/Tableau.

o Expertise in ETL/ELT orchestration, CI/CD for data, and environment management (dev → test → prod).

o Proven track record migrating to Databricks or building lakehouse architecture is required.

o Strong background using Cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP) and enterprise security/compliance frameworks.

o Orchestration tools (Airflow/Databricks Jobs), dbt, and (optionally) streaming (Kafka).

o Experience with GenAI/LLMs for data & analytics (e.g., RAG, vector search, NL→SQL), and basic LangOps/MLOps (MLflow/Model Registry).

o Strong data governance & quality: catalog/lineage, data contracts, naming conventions, automated DQ checks, SLAs/SLOs.

o Strong communication and stakeholder management skills

#AI1

Mastercard is a merit-based, inclusive, equal opportunity employer that considers applicants without regard to gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disabled or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We hire the most qualified candidate for the role. In the US or Canada, if you require accommodations or assistance to complete the online application process or during the recruitment process, please contact reasonable_accommodation@mastercard.com and identify the type of accommodation or assistance you are requesting. Do not include any medical or health information in this email. The Reasonable Accommodations team