Mastercard is a global leader in payments technology, dedicated to powering economies and enabling prosperity in over 200 countries. Our mission is to create an inclusive, digital economy where transactions are secure, simple, smart, and accessible for everyone. We leverage cutting-edge technology, robust networks, and strategic partnerships to empower individuals, businesses, and governments.

This Lead Software Engineer role is pivotal in developing the next generation of Mastercard's Decision Management Platform. This real-time system is crucial for scoring and approving billions of payment transactions globally. We are seeking engineers experienced in AI/ML systems, low-latency inference, LLM applications, and AI-assisted development.

As a Lead Engineer, you will take ownership of technical areas from conception to production. This includes designing and implementing scalable services and APIs, mentoring fellow engineers, and transforming complex challenges into reliable solutions. Your contributions will directly impact the evolution of our core payment transaction processing capabilities.

You will drive the end-to-end ownership of significant backend and full-stack features, encompassing problem definition, design, implementation, rigorous testing, seamless deployment, and ongoing production support.

Key responsibilities include designing and constructing scalable services, APIs, workflow tools, and user-facing frontend experiences. You will also establish technical direction, make strategic architectural decisions, and guide engineering teams toward maintainable and robust solutions.

Your role involves elevating engineering quality and reducing complexity through thorough design and code reviews, alongside hands-on coaching. You will leverage AI coding tools to enhance development speed, quality, and team efficiency. Collaboration with product managers, engineering peers, and senior stakeholders is essential to translate ambiguous objectives into tangible software and measurable results.

We are looking for engineers who lead by example, demonstrating a proven track record of delivering impactful backend, full-stack, or product-facing capabilities within complex production environments. You possess a holistic perspective, connecting user experience, AI functionalities, models, APIs, backend services, data pipelines, operations, and business outcomes.

Influence is built through action; you will guide technical direction using sound judgment, clear communication, and credible hands-on expertise. A strong commitment to quality is paramount, integrating testing, observability, security, clean interfaces, and maintainability into every aspect of your work. Adaptability is key, enabling you to thrive amidst ambiguity, shifting priorities, and fast-paced, dynamic teams.

Strong software engineering experience is required, encompassing backend services, APIs, full-stack applications, or intricate production systems. Experience in end-to-end technical ownership, including design, implementation, testing, deployment, and production support, is essential. A solid foundation in software design, architecture, API design, data modeling, testing methodologies, code review processes, secure coding practices, performance tuning, and troubleshooting is expected. Experience mentoring engineers and influencing technical direction through collaborative reviews and clear communication is also vital. A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience, is required.