Director, Data Engineering & Architecture – Core Services

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

Director, Data Engineering & Architecture – Core Services

Who is Mastercard?
Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all.

About Core Services
Mastercard’s Core Services organization is responsible for the development, management, and evolution of our foundational payment products and platforms—including Consumer Credit, Debit, Prepaid, Commercial, and Integrated Processing Solutions. Core Services powers the infrastructure behind billions of secure transactions annually, enabling seamless commerce across the globe.
This organization is central to Mastercard’s strategy of touching more transactions and expanding our addressable market through data, services, and platform innovation. It includes mission-critical systems such as Enterprise Gateway Solutions (EGS), Account Level Management, MPGS, and Security Services, and is tightly integrated with regulatory, compliance, and fraud prevention capabilities.

Overview
We are seeking a visionary and hands-on Director of Data Engineering & Architecture to lead the design and delivery of scalable data solutions within Mastercard’s Core Services. This role combines deep technical expertise in big data technologies with strategic leadership and people management. You will architect systems that power Mastercard’s core transaction platforms and services, while mentoring a high-performing engineering team.

Role Responsibilities

• Architect and deliver end-to-end data platforms using technologies such as Hadoop, Spark, Scala, and Python.
• Lead and mentor a team of data engineers and architects, fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Lead the adoption of object store architectures like Ozone to overcome HDFS limitations in scalability and small file handling.
• Define and evolve Mastercard’s reference architecture for big data processing, ensuring alignment with enterprise engineering principles.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, infrastructure, and business teams to translate requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Ensure engineering excellence through code reviews, architectural guidance, and adherence to best practices in software development and data governance.
• Drive performance and reliability improvements across data pipelines and platforms, proactively identifying and resolving bottlenecks.
• Champion modern engineering practices including CI/CD, DevOps, and cloud-native development.

All About You
Technical Qualifications

• Proven experience designing and delivering large-scale distributed data architectures in production environments.
• Deep expertise in Apache Ozone, including its metadata layer, replication protocols (RAFT), and S3-compatible object APIs4.
• Strong understanding of big data technologies (Hadoop, Spark, Scala, Python) and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Experience with advanced design patterns (e.g., service-to-worker, API gateway, dependency injection) to implement efficient, scalable code.
• Skilled in infrastructure-as-code and orchestration tools (Terraform, Ansible, Jenkins).
• Ability to simplify complex systems and reduce operational overhead through automation and standardization.

Professional Skills

• Strong leadership skills with experience managing and developing engineering teams.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience with agile methodologies and modern software development lifecycle practices.
• Passion for mentoring, coaching, and building inclusive teams.

Education

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.

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.

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.