Principal Data Engineer

Mastercard is hiring a Principal Data Engineer in Pune.

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 Principal Data Engineer

Responsibilities

We are seeking a highly experienced Principal Data Engineer to lead the architecture, engineering, and modernization of Mastercard's Rewards Data Platform, supporting 400+ customers globally and processing millions of transactions daily.

This role serves as a senior technical leader responsible for defining data engineering strategy, architecture standards, workflow orchestration frameworks, and scalable data processing solutions that support critical business operations. The ideal candidate will possess deep expertise in distributed data processing, data integration, data modeling, and data platform architecture, while influencing engineering best practices across teams and programs.

The successful candidate will operate as a recognized subject matter expert, providing hands-on technical leadership, mentorship, and guidance in complex, large-scale, and evolving environments.

Data Platform Architecture & Modernization Define and drive the strategic architecture for enterprise-scale data platforms and data ecosystems. Lead modernization initiatives from legacy platforms to scalable, cloud-native data architectures. Establish standards and best practices for data modeling, data integration, data storage, governance, security, and operational excellence. Design scalable and resilient solutions supporting transactional, analytical, and operational workloads. Identify technical debt and develop modernization roadmaps aligned with business objectives. Influence architecture decisions across engineering teams, partner platforms, and enterprise initiatives.

Data Engineering & Distributed Data Processing Architect and guide high-volume batch and real-time data processing solutions. Design and optimize distributed data processing frameworks for large-scale workloads. Lead implementation of ETL/ELT pipelines, workflow orchestration, data ingestion, transformation, reconciliation, and integration capabilities. Establish standards for data quality, lineage, monitoring, validation, auditing, and error handling. Drive performance optimization, scalability, reliability, and operational efficiency across data platforms.

Preferred qualifications

Experience supporting large-scale financial services, payments, loyalty, or rewards platforms. Experience with enterprise Data Lake, Lakehouse, and distributed processing platforms. Experience leading cloud migration and data platform modernization initiatives. Familiarity with analytics platforms and AI/ML data enablement. Experience working in highly regulated environments with strong security and compliance requirements.

Level Expectation (Expert/Strategic Leadership): Acts as a recognized subject matter expert, applies expertise in ambiguous and complex environments, shapes organizational best practices, drives strategic technical direction, and regularly mentors and develops other engineers.

Corporate Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;

• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;

• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and

• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.

About Mastercard

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