Data Engineer III

McDonald's Corporation; Chicago, Northern (IL, KY); Hybrid; USD 138,000 - 173,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Stock options

Bonus program

Long-term incentives

Job summary

McDonald’s Corporation is seeking a Data Engineer III to design, build, and maintain customer data pipelines that power engagement across digital and restaurant channels. You will work with Kafka, Spark, and Dataflow to enable real-time and batch processing, with a strong focus on data quality and reliable data platforms.

You will partner with Product, MarTech, and Analytics teams to translate complex business requirements into scalable solutions, owning initiatives from requirements through

Qualifications

• 5-8+ years of professional Data Engineering experience.
• 3+ years of experience with cloud-native data platforms (GCP/AWS/Azure).
• Expert-level SQL with complex joins, window functions, and large-scale analysis.
• Strong experience designing and developing ETL/ELT pipelines.
• Proficiency in Python, SQL, and JavaScript or Node.js.
• Experience with DevOps, CI/CD, and Git-based workflows.
• Experience with streaming/data processing (Kafka, Spark/PySpark, Flink, Dataflow).
• Experience supporting Customer Data Platforms (e.g., mParticle, Segment, Adobe RTCDP, Braze).
• GCP experience (BigQuery, Pub/Sub, Dataflow).

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, and maintain customer data pipelines across the McDonald’s data ecosystem.
• Build audience segmentation, traits, profile enrichment, and activation data flows.
• Implement real-time and batch data processing for low-latency activation.
• Ensure data quality with automated validation and reconciliation.
• Collaborate with Product, MarTech, Analytics, and Engineering teams.

Skills

Data integration

SQL proficiency

ETL/ELT design

Python/SQL/JavaScript

DevOps & CI/CD

Streaming data processing

Tools

Kafka

Spark

Flink

Dataflow

BigQuery

Job description

Job Description:

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 ofoutstanding benefits including a sabbatical program, tuition assistance and flexible work arrangements.

Department Overview

We are seeking a highly skilled Data Engineer III to join the mCDP mParticle engineering team. This role is responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining customer data pipelines, audience-building capabilities, activation feeds, and platform integrations that power customer engagement experiences across digital and restaurant channels.The ideal candidate is a hands‑on engineer with strong data engineering and analytics experience who can independently own initiatives from requirements through production deployment.

This engineer will partner closely with Product, MarTech, Analytics, and Engineering teams to translate complex business requirements into scalable technical solutions while ensuring reliability, quality, and maintainability across the customer data ecosystem.This role requires strong technical execution, problem‑solving, and the ability to navigate ambiguity while delivering high‑quality solutions with minimal oversight.

Duties

Customer Data Engineering & Integration
Design, develop, test, and support customer data pipelines that ingest, transform, enrich, and distribute customer data across the mParticle ecosystem.
Support onboarding of new data sources, attributes, customer events, and downstream activation integrations.
Audience Engineering & Activation
Build and maintain data pipelines that power audience segmentation, customer traits, profile enrichment, and activation use cases.Implement audience qualification and refresh logic supporting both batch and real‑time use cases.
Configure and support activation feeds to downstream marketing and personalization platforms, ensuring data accuracy and timeliness.
Partner with Product and MarTech teams to implement audience strategies including onboarding, re‑engagement, loyalty, churn mitigation, and personalization use cases.
Real‑Time Data Processing
Build scalable solutions using technologies such as Kafka, Spark Structured Streaming, Flink, Dataflow, or equivalent distributed processing platforms.
Support event‑driven integration patterns that enable low‑latency customer activation and personalization scenarios.
Assist with implementation and maintenance of eventing platforms such as Kafka, Confluent, or managed messaging services.
Data Quality & Operational Excellence
Implement automated validation, reconciliation, and quality checks across customer data pipelines.
Maintain documentation for data flows, mappings, business logic, and operational procedures.
Engineering Delivery
Independently manage and deliver complex engineering work items with minimal supervision.
Collaborate with team members during sprint planning, solution design, testing, and deployment activities.
Perform code reviews and contribute to engineering best practices across the team.

Qualifications

• 5-8+ years of professional Data Engineering experience.
• 3+ years working with cloud-native data platforms on GCP, AWS, or Azure.
• Expert‑level SQL, including complex joins, window functions, optimization, and large‑scale data analysis.
• Strong experience designing and developing ETL/ELT pipelines.
• Strong kwnoledg of programing languages such as Python, SQL, JavaScript or Node.js
• Experience with DevOps & Reliability - CI/CD pipelines, Git‑base development workflows.
• Experience with streaming and data processing (Kafka, Spark/PySpark, Flink, Dataflow / Apache Beam)

Must have:

• Experience supporting Customer Data Platforms such as mParticle, Segment, Adobe RTCDP, Braze, Tealium, or similar platforms.
• Experience implementing customer attributes, audience segmentation, identity resolution, traits, and activation feeds.
• Experience with GCP preferred (BigQuery, Pub/Sub, Dataflow, Cloud Run, Cloud Storage)

Compensation

Bonus Eligible:Yes

Long - Term Incentive:Yes

Benefits Eligible: Yes

Salary Range

The expected salary range for this role is$138,207.00 -$172,758.00per year
The above represents the expectedsalaryrange for this job requisition. Ultimately, in determining yourpay, 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 [e-mail]. Reasonable accommodations will be determined on a case‑based 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.