Principal Data Engineer
Date: May 26, 2026
Location: Chicago, IL, US, 60607
Company: McDonald's Corporation
Company Description:
McDonald’s is proud to be one of the most recognized brands in the world, with restaurants in over 100 countries that serve 70 million customers daily. We continue to operate from a position of strength. Our updated growth strategy is focused on staying ahead of what our customers want and realizing further growth potential. Our relentless ambition is why McDonald’s remains one of the world’s leading corporations after almost 70 years. Joining McDonald's means thinking big and preparing for a career that can have influence around the world.
At McDonald’s, we see every day as a chance to create positive impact. We lead through our values centered on inclusivity, service, integrity, community and family. From support of Ronald McDonald House to our Youth Opportunity project and sustainability initiatives, our values keep us dedicated to using our scale for good: good for our customers, people, industry and planet. We also offer a broad range of outstanding benefits including a sabbatical program, tuition assistance and flexible work arrangements.
Department Overview
We are building a new Audience Network platform to power McDonald’s emerging Commerce Media strategy, enabling the creation, activation, and measurement of customer audiences across internal and external ecosystems. The Principal Data Engineer will serve as the senior technical authority for this platform, defining the architecture, standards, and long-term evolution of systems that support audience cohort creation, feature engineering, and activation. This is a platform-first role focused on building scalable, privacy-safe systems that produce trusted audience data and activation signals for downstream use by Data Science, Analytics, AdTech, and external partners.
What You’ll Deliver (First 6–12 Months):
- Define and align on the target-state architecture for the Audience Network platform
- Establish core pipelines for audience computation, enrichment, and activation
- Enable integration with key activation platforms
- Implement foundational privacy, consent, and data governance controls
- Drive adoption of engineering standards across teams
Duties
Technical Strategy & Architecture
- Define and own the end-to-end architecture for the Audience Network platform
- Establish architecture standards, reference designs, and guardrails
- Design for identity resolution and interoperability across platforms
- Serve as the technical authority for complex design decisions
Audience, Data & ML Platform Enablement
- Architect scalable workflows for audience segmentation and feature engineering
- Define reusable patterns for cohort creation and activation
- Enable near real-time and batch processing for activation SLAs
- Establish standards for data contracts, lineage, and observability
Privacy, Security & Governance
- Embed privacy-by-design principles across platform components
- Enable consent-aware audience modeling and activation
- Define data traceability and auditability standards
- Support privacy-safe data collaboration
Cross-Functional Influence & Technical Leadership
- Translate business goals into platform capabilities
- Influence technical decisions and investments
- Mentor engineers and raise engineering standards
Qualifications
Required:
- 10+ years of experience building large-scale data systems
- Expertise in cloud-native platforms (GCP preferred)
- Experience with batch and event-driven data systems
- Workflow orchestration experience (Airflow)
- Experience supporting ML workflows
- Strong understanding of data governance and privacy
Preferred:
- Experience with audience or marketing platforms
- Familiarity with identity resolution and activation systems
- Experience with DSPs or CDPs
- Experience with data clean rooms
Compensation
Bonus Eligible: Yes
Long - Term Incentive: Yes
Benefits Eligible: Yes
Salary Range
The expected salary range for this role is $195,371 - $244,214 per year
The above represents the expected salary range for this job requisition. Ultimately, in determining your pay, we may also consider your experience, and other job-related factors.
Additional Information:
Benefits eligible: This position offers health and welfare benefits, including but not limited to comprehensive health insurance, which includes medical, prescription drug, mental health, dental and vision coverage, as well as, life insurance.
Bonus eligible: This position is eligible for a bonus, calculated based on individual and company performance.
Long term Incentive eligible: This position is eligible for stock or other equity grants pursuant to McDonald’s long-term incentive plan.
McDonald’s is an equal opportunity employer committed to the diversity of our workforce. We promote an inclusive work environment that creates feel-good moments for everyone. McDonald’s provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities as part of the application or hiring process or to perform the essential functions of their job. If you need assistance accessing or reading this job posting or otherwise feel you need an accommodation during the application or hiring process, please contact mcdhrbenefits@us.mcd.com. Reasonable accommodations will be determined on a case-by-case basis.
McDonald’s provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to sex, sex stereotyping, pregnancy (including pregnancy, childbirth, and medical conditions related to pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding), race, color, religion, ancestry or national origin, age, disability status, medical condition, marital status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, protected military or veteran status, citizenship status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.
Nothing in this job posting or description should be construed as an offer or guarantee of employment.
Nearest Major Market: Chicago