Principal Data Architect

Our Purpose

We work to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments and businesses realize their greatest potential. Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. We cultivate a culture of inclusion for all employees that respects their individual strengths, views, and experiences. We believe that our differences enable us to be a better team – one that makes better decisions, drives innovation and delivers better business results.

Title and Summary

Principal Data Architect

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. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses realize their greatest potential.
Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all.
Our Payment Gateway Services division offers industry leading, global payment processing services and advanced fraud management solutions - for merchants, industry, partners and acquiring banks. We provide simplified payment processing through omni bank channels and flexible merchant integration. Our global and localized solutions support a wide range of payments methods: electronic wallets, online bank transfers and domestic bank cards. We do all this at speed while providing maximum data security through full PCI DSS compliance and sophisticated fraud prevention technology.
We are looking for talented architects with experience in modernizing and maintaining cloud data platforms for globally distributed, highly available systems, where performance and security are critical.
The Principal Architect will be responsible for creating technical solutions and leading initiatives for our business with a focus on transforming our current, on-premises data systems to a flexible and secure cloud platform. You will provide technical leadership and expertise to define the data strategy for our product and develop new capabilities. The scope for the Architect will be broad, and may include infrastructure, software architecture, and security domain engineering as well as designing high-level end-to-end solutions. You will partner with other architects, developers, and analysts within Payment Gateway Services, as well as other teams across Mastercard to define our technical strategy for data and support its execution.
Role
The Principal Data Architect provides technical leadership for the gateway across one or more functional domains. This role operates as part of the global Mastercard Gateway Solution Architecture and Engineering team to define and execute the strategic technical roadmap for our platforms, with a strong focus on our strategy for data. This involves defining the strategy and execution plan, engaging with stakeholder groups in Mastercard like Information Security, Data Privacy, and the wider Architecture & Technology team to align with legal, industry, and internal Mastercard standards and regulations. In addition, this role includes providing guidance to internal development teams through every step of the Software Development Lifecycle, from requirements analysis and technical design to working with teams to develop and deliver new capabilities.
Responsibilities:
• Design secure, reliable, and scalable solutions for globally distributed payment systems incorporating functional and non-functional requirements from Product, Corporate Security, and Technology teams. Present these solutions for review to other architects and stakeholder groups within Payment Gateways and the wider Mastercard Architecture & Technology review board.
• Define the technical strategy for Payment Gateway Service's data and contribute to the planning of execution for that strategy at all levels; from high-level goals, to 12-18 month roadmap, to quarterly planning with technology teams, to individual sprint planning
• Lead the strategy for data modernization and transformation solutions for Mastercard Gateways in compliance with payment standards and regulations (PCI-DSS, GDPR, regional On-Soil requirements, etc.)
• Work closely with technical leads, data stewards, DBAs, and database developers to provide solutions for like-for-like data migration at scale
• Lead complex data migration projects involving tailored Extract Transform Loads activities (e.g., ETL/ELT) to support heterogeneous database technologies (Oracle/Postgres, Amazon RDS, NoSQL, etc.)
• Stay current with developments in big data and cloud data trends and best practices, and provide technical leadership in these areas to drive constant improvement in the technical quality of the data platforms
• Engage with stakeholder groups including Data Privacy, Information Security, Cryptographic Architecture, and Business Operations to gather functional and non-functional requirements, ensuring compliance with regulations, industry standards, and Mastercard policies
• Translate business requirements into technical specifications, including data streams, integrations, transformations, databases, and data warehouses
• Define the data architecture framework, standards, and principles, including modelling, metadata, security, reference data such as product codes and client categories, and master data such as clients, vendors, materials, and employees
• Define reference architecture, which is a pattern others can follow to create and improve data systems
• Define data flows, i.e., which parts of the platform generate data, which require data to function, how data flows are managed, and how data changes in transition
All About You
The ideal candidate has an enthusiasm for finding elegant solutions to complex problems and identifying process improvements to increase efficiency. They have a proven track record of technology transformation for large legacy platforms and executing the data journey from on-premises to the cloud. They have experience navigating industry standards (e.g., PCI-DSS), data privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR), and enterprise security and technology policies to deliver successful solutions.
The ideal candidate has experience with:
• Applying data platform engineering concepts and methodologies; architecture design patterns; and industry best practices
• Cloud data platforms - Snowflake and Databricks
• Cloud infrastructure - Azure and/or AWS
• Cloud data governance including optimizing transformation, operational cost, and user profile management
• Architecting highly available and scalable data migration solutions using Cloud, Data Lake technologies, Data Transformation accelerators (e.g., NiFi, DataStage, Informatica, etc.)
• Applying knowledge of data platform architecture across Big Data, Data Warehouse, Data Integration, Enterprise Information Management, Master Data Management and/or Data Consolidation
• Cloud security models, encryption strategies, network layers for on-prem + cloud hybrid model and other related concepts
• Executing a technology modernization journey from on-premises to the cloud with no disruption to users
• Working as part of a global, international team
• Payments industry and payment processing

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.