Principal Data Engineer - QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey

Job ID: 114506Type of role: Full-timeInterest: Serve Clients / Tech & AISkill group: N/AFunctions: TechnologyRegion: North AmericaLocations: Boston (United States) | Chicago (United States) | New York (United States) | San Francisco (United States) | Seattle (United States) | Washington DC (United States)Compensation Range: $216,700 - $220,000Posted (LinkedIn): 2025-11-14Created: 2026-11-11Apply: you'll work withDriving lasting impact and building long-term capabilities with our clients is not easy work. You are the kind of person who thrives in a high performance/high reward culture - doing hard things, picking yourself up when you stumble, and having the resilience to try another way forward. In return for your drive, determination, and curiosity, we'll provide the resources, mentorship, and opportunities you need to become a stronger leader faster than you ever thought possible. Your colleagues—at all levels—will invest deeply in your development, just as much as they invest in delivering exceptional results for clients. Every day, you'll receive apprenticeship, coaching, and exposure that will accelerate your growth in ways you won’t find anywhere else. When you join us, you will have: Continuous learning: Our learning and apprenticeship culture, backed by structured programs, is all about helping you grow while creating an environment where feedback is clear, actionable, and focused on your development. The real magic happens when you take the input from others to heart and embrace the fast-paced learning experience, owning your journey.A voice that matters: From day one, we value your ideas and contributions. You’ll make a tangible impact by offering innovative ideas and practical solutions, all while upholding our unwavering commitment to ethics and integrity. We not only encourage diverse perspectives, but they are critical in driving us toward the best possible outcomes.Global community: With colleagues across 65+ countries and over 100 different nationalities, our firm’s diversity fuels creativity and helps us come up with the best solutions for our clients. Plus, you’ll have the opportunity to learn from exceptional colleagues with diverse backgrounds and experiences.World-class benefits: On top of a competitive salary (based on your location, experience, and skills), we provide a comprehensive benefits package to enable holistic well-being for you and your family.What you'll doYou will lead technical teams, architect data platforms, and build scalable pipelines while mentoring colleagues and collaborating with clients at all levels. You’ll tackle impactful challenges, contribute to R&D, and grow as a leader by working with diverse experts on cutting-edge AI projects across industries. You will lead multiple technical teams and own the technology stack for enterprise data and AI platforms. You’ll design and build robust, scalable, and reproducible data pipelines for machine learning while ensuring information security standards are upheld. Additionally, you’ll mentor junior colleagues, contribute to R&D projects, and drive innovation within the QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey Data Engineering community. Your work will address real-world challenges across industries. Partnering with QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey and QuantumBlack Labs teams, you’ll help create innovative machine learning systems that accelerate AI adoption and solve business problems at speed and scale, enabling clients to achieve meaningful and lasting impact. You will be based in one of our North America offices as part of our global Data Engineering community. You’ll work in cross-functional Agile teams alongside Data Scientists, Machine Learning Engineers, and industry experts to deliver advanced analytics solutions. Collaborating with clients from data owners to C-level executives, you’ll help architect impactful solutions that solve complex business problems and drive value. You will be in an exceptional environment to grow as a technologist and leader. You’ll develop expertise at the intersection of technology and business by tackling diverse challenges. Surrounded by inspiring, multidisciplinary teams, you’ll gain a holistic understanding of AI while collaborating with some of the best design, technical, and business talent in the world.Your backgroundDegree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or equivalent experience10+ years relevant professional experienceAbility to scope projects, define workstreams, and translate roadmaps into sprint goals, milestones, and deliverables within agile and iterative team environmentsProven experience architecting and building enterprise data and AI platforms as well as scalable data pipelines for advanced analytics use cases operating in productionPassion for and track record of effectively leading and mentoring more junior colleaguesExpertise in implementing software engineering best practices to drive enterprise-wide improvement, including DevOps, DataOps, and MLOpsStrong software engineering and data engineering expertise, including distributed computing frameworks (e.g., Spark, Dask), cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), analytics libraries (e.g., pandas, NumPy, matplotlib), and modern data platforms and orchestration tools such as Databricks, Airflow, SQL, PySpark, Kedro, and RAPIDSAbility to write clean, maintainable, scalable, and robust code in object-oriented languages such as Python, Scala, or Java, and experience supporting the development of junior engineers through collaborative code reviewsExtensive commercial client-facing or senior stakeholder management experienceExceptional time management to meet your responsibilities in a complex and largely autonomous work environmentWillingness to travelStrong communication skills with the ability to adjust your style to suit different perspectives and seniority levels