Data Engineer | FIS Global Negotiation Guide
Negotiation DNA: NYSE: FIS Total Issuing Pure-Play FinTech Banking & Capital Markets Data Infrastructure Pipeline Engineering
| Region | Base Salary | Stock (RSU/4yr) | Bonus | Total Comp |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jacksonville FL | $130,000-$175,000 | $60,000-$130,000 | $14,000-$28,000 | $204,000-$333,000 |
| New York | $155,000-$205,000 | $80,000-$170,000 | $20,000-$36,000 | $255,000-$411,000 |
| London | £88,000-£125,000 / $110,000-$156,000 | £42,000-£90,000 / $53,000-$113,000 | £12,000-£22,000 / $15,000-$28,000 | £142,000-£237,000 / $178,000-$297,000 |
Negotiation DNA
Data Engineers at FIS are building the data infrastructure that powers one of the largest financial technology platforms in the world. FIS generates massive volumes of transaction data across banking, card issuing, capital markets, and payment processing — data that must be ingested, transformed, stored, and served with sub-second latency for real-time decisioning while also being available for batch analytics, regulatory reporting, and machine learning model training. The $24B Worldpay stake sale in January 2026 reshaped FIS's data landscape, requiring the separation of shared data assets, the migration of cross-business data pipelines, and the construction of new data infrastructure purpose-built for the Pure-Play FinTech operating model.
The Total Issuing platform depends heavily on data engineering excellence. Real-time card authorization, fraud scoring, interchange optimization, and portfolio analytics all require data pipelines that operate at financial services scale with financial services reliability. Data Engineers who can build streaming pipelines (Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming) for real-time transaction processing while also maintaining batch ETL workflows for regulatory reporting and business intelligence are building the nervous system of FIS's most important product.
FIS's $13.5B acquisition history created one of the most complex data estates in financial technology — dozens of data warehouses, hundreds of ETL pipelines, inconsistent schemas, and data quality issues inherited from acquired companies that used different data modeling conventions. With $500M in incremental cash flow post-divestiture, FIS is investing in data infrastructure modernization — lakehouse architectures, real-time streaming platforms, and unified data catalogs. Data Engineers leading this modernization are among the most impactful hires in the organization.
Level Mapping:
| FIS | Meta | Stripe | JPMorgan | Fiserv | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data Engineer | Data Engineer L4 | Data Engineer (E4) | Data Infrastructure Engineer | Data Engineer VP | Data Engineer |
| Senior Data Engineer | Data Engineer L5 | Data Engineer (E5) | Senior Data Infra Engineer | Data Engineer ED | Senior Data Engineer |
| Staff Data Engineer | Data Engineer L6 | Data Engineer (E6) | Staff Data Infra Engineer | Data Architect MD | Principal Data Engineer |
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Lever 1 — Post-Divestiture Data Separation: "The $24B Worldpay stake sale in January 2026 requires FIS to separate shared data assets, migrate cross-business pipelines, and build new data infrastructure for the Pure-Play FinTech operating model. As a Data Engineer, I'm doing the heavy lifting of this data separation — a project with hard regulatory deadlines and zero tolerance for data loss. I'd like my compensation to reflect this mission-critical work: $200,000-$205,000 base in New York with an RSU grant of $150,000-$170,000 over four years."
Lever 2 — Total Issuing Real-Time Data Platform: "Total Issuing requires real-time data pipelines for card authorization, fraud scoring, and transaction monitoring — pipelines that must operate at financial services scale with five-nines reliability. As the Data Engineer building this real-time data platform, I'm constructing the infrastructure that determines whether Total Issuing can compete with Marqeta and Stripe Issuing on latency and intelligence. I'm asking for top-of-band RSUs — $130,000-$170,000 over four years — because this is platform-defining data engineering."
Lever 3 — $500M Data Modernization Investment: "FIS has $500M in incremental cash flow to invest post-divestiture, and a significant portion is earmarked for data infrastructure modernization — lakehouse architecture, streaming platforms, unified data catalogs. I'd like my compensation to reflect the scale of this investment and the Pure-Play FinTech ambition behind it. Specifically, I'm requesting a $20,000-$25,000 signing bonus and a guaranteed first-year RSU refresh review based on data platform delivery milestones."
Lever 4 — Acquisition Data Estate Rationalization: "FIS's $13.5B in acquisitions created dozens of siloed data warehouses with inconsistent schemas, duplicated datasets, and legacy ETL pipelines built on deprecated technologies. The Data Engineer who can rationalize this into a unified data platform for Total Issuing is eliminating millions in redundant infrastructure costs while enabling analytics capabilities that were previously impossible. I'd like a 10-15% premium over your standard data engineer offer to reflect this consolidation expertise in service of the Pure-Play FinTech transformation."
Negotiate Up Strategy: Open at $205,000 base (New York) or $175,000 base (Jacksonville) with a $170,000 RSU grant over four years and a $25,000 signing bonus. Frame data engineering as platform infrastructure, not support — the Total Issuing platform cannot function without the real-time data pipelines that Data Engineers build. Anchor to the Pure-Play FinTech data modernization mandate and the complexity of post-Worldpay data separation. Target 18-22% total comp increase over initial offer. Accept-at floor: $155,000 base (NYC) / $130,000 base (JAX) with at least $80,000 in RSUs. If comp is constrained, negotiate for a data tooling budget ($15,000/year for Databricks, Snowflake, or equivalent) and guaranteed access to production-scale compute for pipeline development.
Evidence & Sources:
- FIS 2026 Data Strategy — Data infrastructure modernization and Total Issuing data platform architecture
- FIS 10-K 2025 — Technology spending and $500M incremental cash flow allocation (SEC EDGAR)
- Levels.fyi — Data Engineer compensation at FIS, Stripe, Google, and Snowflake (2025-2026)
- Wall Street Journal — "FIS Separates Data Assets After $24B Worldpay Stake Sale" (February 2026)
- Glassdoor — FIS Data Engineer salary reports across Jacksonville, New York, and London
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