Our Purpose
Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.
Title and Summary
Director, Software Engineering
Overview
Join Mastercard’s Services organization, driving innovation within the AI & Decision Engineering Platform — the foundation of Mastercard’s fraud prevention and identity validation solutions.
Our patented, Java-based platform processes billions of transactions per month in milliseconds, leveraging a multi-tier, message-oriented architecture built for extreme performance, scalability, and reliability.
In this role, you’ll shape Mastercard’s next-generation fraud and identity platform, leading the transformation toward a modern, cloud-native, AI-augmented architecture. You’ll drive modernization, technical innovation, and engineering excellence—empowering teams to deliver secure, scalable, and high-performance solutions that protect billions of global transactions every month. This is a hybrid position based in O'Fallon, MO, requiring three days on-site per week.
Key Impact Areas:
• Develop industry-leading fraud prevention solutions.
• Accelerate business outcomes through technology innovation.
• Lead cloud and next-generation platform modernization to power Mastercard’s future.
Role:
As the Director of Software Engineering for the AI & Decision Engineering Platform, you will:
• Shape and execute the product and technology vision in partnership with Product and Platform leadership.
• Define and deliver next-generation, cloud-native platform capabilities that support multiple business products with scalability, flexibility, and resilience.
• Lead cloud modernization initiatives, driving containerization, microservices, and modernization of legacy components.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership, guiding architecture from conceptual design through implementation.
• Develop and maintain the technology roadmap, ensuring alignment with Mastercard’s modernization and AI strategy.
• Manage technical debt and evolve the platform for long-term performance, cost efficiency, and maintainability.
• Lead multiple Agile teams, ensuring delivery excellence, operational readiness, and engineering accountability.
• Champion operational excellence through measurable SLIs/SLOs/SLAs, observability, and playbooks.
• Recruit, develop, and retain top engineering talent, fostering innovation and technical excellence.
• Build strong partnerships across Product, Architecture, Cloud Engineering, and Operations to ensure end-to-end solution alignment.
• Promote a culture of engineering rigor, modernization, and continuous improvement.
All About You:
• High-energy, proactive, and detail-oriented with a strong ownership mindset.
• Proven ability to operate from strategic vision to hands-on technical depth.
• Skilled communicator who can influence across global, matrixed teams.
• Deep experience designing and modernizing complex, high-volume, Java-based distributed systems.
• Expertise in solution architecture, Agile delivery, and DevOps/CI-CD practices.
• Demonstrated success in driving cloud transformation and modernization programs.
• Quick learner passionate about applying emerging technologies to business-critical challenges.
Technical Expertise:
• Expertise in high availability, scalability, resiliency, performance optimization, and application security.
• Strong foundation in Java-based architectures, distributed systems, and • cloud-native design patterns.
• Proficiency with Oracle and other relational databases.
• Experience with PCF, Kubernetes, and containerized workloads.
• Familiarity with IBM ODM/ILOG, MQ/Kafka, and AI-assisted or agentic development tools.
• Proven success in leading cloud migration or next-gen modernization initiatives for large-scale platforms.
#LI-TE1
Mastercard is a merit-based, inclusive, equal opportunity employer that considers applicants without regard to gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disabled or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We hire the most qualified candidate for the role. In the US or Canada, if you require accommodations or assistance to complete the online application process or during the recruitment process, please contact reasonable_accommodation@mastercard.com and identify the type of accommodation or assistance you are requesting. Do not include any medical or health information in this email. The Reasonable Accommodations team will respond to your email promptly.
Corporate Security Responsibility
All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:
Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;
Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;
Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and
Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.
In line with Mastercard’s total compensation philosophy and assuming that the job will be performed in the US, the successful candidate will be offered a competitive base salary and may be eligible for an annual bonus or commissions depending on the role. The base salary offered may vary depending on multiple factors, including but not limited to location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Mastercard benefits for full time (and certain part time) employees generally include: insurance (including medical, prescription drug, dental, vision, disability, life insurance); flexible spending account and health savings account; paid leaves (including 16 weeks of new parent leave and up to 20 days of bereavement leave); 80 hours of Paid Sick and Safe Time, 25 days of vacation time and 5 personal days, pro-rated based on date of hire; 10 annual paid U.S. observed holidays; 401k with a best-in-class company match; deferred compensation for eligible roles; fitness reimbursement or on-site fitness facilities; eligibility for tuition reimbursement; and many more. Mastercard benefits for interns generally include: 56 hours of Paid Sick and Safe Time; jury duty leave; and on-site fitness facilities in some locations.
Pay Ranges
O'Fallon, Missouri: $165,000 - $264,000 USD