Director of Data Engineering - QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey

Driving 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, well 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, youll 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.

You will lead multiple technical and cross-functional teams, architecting and owning the full-stack technology platform - from front-end client-facing applications through back-end services to the underlying data and AI infrastructure.

You'll design and build robust, scalable, and reproducible platforms and pipelines for machine learning and production software, while ensuring information security standards are upheld across the stack. You'll manage large internal engineering teams, set technical direction, mentor senior and junior colleagues alike, and drive innovation within the QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey Engineering community.

Partnering with QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey and QuantumBlack Labs teams and serving as the primary technical relationship owner for client engagements, you'll help create innovative, full-stack machine learning and software systems that accelerate AI adoption and solve business problems at speed and scale - enabling clients to achieve meaningful and lasting impact.

Your work will address real-world challenges across industries. You'll lead cross-functional Agile teams spanning Data Engineers, Full-Stack/Software Engineers, Data Scientists, and Machine Learning Engineers to deliver advanced analytics and software solutions. You will own the client relationship at a senior-stakeholder level - from data owners through C-level executives - architecting solutions that solve complex business problems and drive measurable value.

Your work offers an exceptional environment to grow as a technology leader - developing expertise at the intersection of technology, people leadership, and business, across a broad engineering scope that spans the full stack of client-facing software delivery, not just data engineering.

• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or equivalent experience.
• 12+ years of relevant professional experience, including experience managing large engineering teams (multiple pods/squads, 20+ engineers) as a people leader - not only as a technical lead
• Proven experience architecting and building full-stack platforms - front-end (e.g., React, Angular, TypeScript), back-end services and APIs, and data/AI infrastructure - for enterprise-scale, production use cases
• Ability to scope multi-workstream programs, define technical roadmaps, and align engineering delivery to client business outcomes
• Track record of directly managing and developing engineering managers and senior engineers, including performance management, hiring, and career development at scale
• Expertise in distributed computing frameworks (e.g., Spark, Dask), cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and modern full-stack frameworks
• Extensive senior client-facing experience - able to independently own and grow C-level and senior-executive client relationships, not just execute against a scope defined by others
• Ability to write clean, maintainable, scalable, and robust code across the stack (front-end and back-end), and to set engineering standards and review practices for large teams
• Exceptional time management and program leadership skills in a complex, largely autonomous, multi-team environment
• Willingness to travel
• Strong communication skills, both verbal and written, with the ability to represent engineering strategy to both technical and executive audiences