Sr. Data Engineer

We are seeking an experienced Sr. Data Engineer / Technical Lead to provide Engineering delivery and architectural leadership for McDonald's Marketer Customer Data Platform (mCDP). This role is responsible for defining and evolving the technical architecture of backend systems that ingest, process, and distribute high volumes of customer data in both real-time and batch environments, thus supporting critical customer engagement initiatives and key revenue drivers.

As a Technical Lead, you will act as a primary source of technical authority for the team, partnering closely with the Product Owner, enterprise and solution architects, and peer product teams. You will ensure that business requirements are translated into scalable, secure, and resilient technical solutions, while guiding engineers in implementation and best practices.

The candidate will have responsibilities across the following functions:

Primary Responsibilities:

• Technical and Architectural Leadership.
• Product and Cross-Team Collaboration.
• Engineering Excellence and Delivery.

Team Leadership and Mentorship:

• Own and evolve the end-to-end technical architecture for mCDP's backend services and integrations.
• Partner with enterprise and solution architects to align team-level designs with broader platform and enterprise architecture standards.
• Define architectural patterns, integration standards, and non-functional requirements (scalability, performance, resiliency, security).
• Review and approve technical designs and implementation approaches for complex features and services.
• Work closely with the Product Owner to translate product vision and roadmap into technical strategy and execution plans.
• Collaborate with other product and platform teams to ensure seamless integration and data consistency.
• Provide technical input into backlog prioritisation, sequencing, and dependency management.
• Communicate architectural decisions, trade-offs, and risks clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Guide the development of cloud-native Java applications supporting high-volume, low-latency data processing workloads.
• Ensure consistent adoption of best practices in coding, testing, security, and DevOps across the team.
• Promote event-driven and streaming architectures (e. g., Kafka) aligned with platform standards.
• Ensure observability, reliability, and operational readiness are built into solutions from design through production.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to senior, mid-level, and junior engineers.
• Foster a culture of high quality, continuous improvement, and shared ownership.
• Lead technical discussions, design reviews, and knowledge-sharing sessions within the team.
• Act as an escalation point for complex technical and production issues.

Requirements:

• 10+ years in data and/or software engineering with 3+ years as a technical lead.
• 8+ years of extensive experience with Java (modern versions) and enterprise-scale backend application development.
• Proven experience leading technical design and architecture for distributed, high-volume data systems.
• Hands-on experience with Git for source control, collaboration, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Proficiency with build and dependency management tools such as Maven and/or Gradle.
• Deep expertise in cloud-native architectures on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Deep, hands-on experience with event-driven architectures and streaming platforms (e. g., Kafka, Confluent, Pub/Sub).
• Experience with containerised applications and orchestration platforms (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Expert knowledge of, and experience with, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, and modern DevOps practices.
• Experience leading and working in Agile/Scrum environments and collaborating with globally distributed teams.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence both technical and business stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in large-scale, multinational or enterprise organisations.
• Experience integrating customer data platforms and backend services with marketing technology solutions (e. g., mParticle, Segment, Adobe Campaign, Braze).
• Familiarity with microservices architectures, API gateways, and cloud-native data platforms.
• Demonstrated ability to lead through ambiguity and manage cross-team technical dependencies.
• Strong understanding of application and platform security, including secure coding standards and security tooling.
• Experience with observability and monitoring platforms and frameworks (Prometheus, Grafana, New Relic, Kibana, OpenTelemetry).

Key Competencies:

• Strong architectural and systems-thinking mindset.
• Ability to balance technical excellence with pragmatic delivery.
• Collaborative leadership style with strong partnership orientation.
• Ownership and accountability for long-term system health and evolution.
• Passion for modern engineering practices and continuous learning.
• Skills Required: Data Engineering, Software Engineering, Data Engineering, Python, Java, Gradle, Maven, Terraform, New Relic, OpenTelemetry, DevOps, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Docker, Cloud Run, ECS, GCP, AWS, Confluent, Kafka, mParticle, Braze, streaming data.

Skills

AWS, Azure, Confluent, GCP, Java, Kafka, Pub/Sub