Mastercard is a global technology leader in payments, dedicated to building an inclusive digital economy that benefits everyone. We connect and power transactions securely, simply, and accessibly across over 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to leverage technology and partnerships to help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses reach their full potential.

We are looking for a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer to join our Services organization. This role is designed to embed senior engineering expertise directly into our critical projects, accelerating delivery and innovation. You will function as an internal partner, writing production code, resolving roadblocks, and integrating AI capabilities to enhance our development processes.

As a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer, you will directly contribute to accelerating Mastercard Services by embedding into product and engineering teams. Your role involves writing production-quality code, shipping features, and providing surge engineering capacity during critical delivery phases.

You will be responsible for diagnosing and resolving technical bottlenecks across architecture, performance, integration, and delivery. This includes standing up new capabilities with deep expertise and transferring them to product teams. A key aspect of this role is engineering AI into our development processes, designing and deploying AI solutions like assistants and agents, and applying modern AI engineering practices.

Furthermore, you will coach teams on AI-first ways of working through hands-on delivery, emphasizing prompt engineering and agent design. The goal is to leave teams more self-sufficient through documentation and knowledge transfer, ensuring programs do not remain dependent. You will also identify and share patterns, friction points, and reusable solutions to inform wider enablement initiatives and partner with enterprise teams to ensure alignment with Mastercard standards.

We are seeking a seasoned, hands-on engineer with extensive experience at a Principal or Senior Principal level, demonstrating a strong track record of delivering complex, production-grade systems. Essential qualifications include advanced experience with containerization and orchestration architectures such as Docker, Kubernetes, and Service Meshes within hyper-scale cloud environments.

Deep and current expertise in building with AI and Agentic solutions, including LLMs, agent frameworks, RAG, and orchestration patterns, is crucial. You should possess exceptional technical breadth, enabling quick productivity across diverse languages, frameworks, and codebases, alongside deep fluency in modern development practices like CI/CD, automation, cloud-native architecture, and testing.

A practical understanding of AI across the software development lifecycle, with the ability to coach engineering teams in its effective adoption, is required. Experience with responsible AI, governance, and production monitoring for AI systems is also necessary. The ideal candidate is adept at quickly building trust and delivering outcomes under pressure, possessing a pragmatic, delivery-focused mindset. Strong communication and influencing skills are vital for credibility with both engineers and leaders, alongside comfort with ambiguity and self-directed problem-solving. Hands-on experience with AI development platforms is preferred.