Senior Data Engineer - Real-Time Data Pipelines & Activation

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

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