Lead Software Engineer

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
Lead Software Engineer
Overview
Mastercard is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to design, build, and operate the API platform that exposes foundation model capabilities across the organization. This role is responsible for delivering secure, scalable, and reliable software systems that enable teams to consume AI capabilities in a consistent and governed way.
As a Lead Engineer, you will combine hands-on development with technical leadership, ensuring high-quality delivery of API services and backend platforms that support production AI use cases.
Role
In this role, you will be responsible for end-to-end delivery of API and platform services that enable foundation model access.
Key responsibilities include:
Design and build API services and backend systems that expose foundation model capabilities (e.g. inference, embeddings, orchestration)
Lead the development of secure, scalable, and high-performance APIs, including versioning, request handling, and service reliability
Implement authentication, authorization, and policy controls to ensure secure and compliant model access
Ensure systems meet performance, scalability, and availability requirements, including implementing retries, caching, and fault tolerance
Collaborate with AI engineers to integrate models into production systems while abstracting complexity for downstream consumers
Work with DevOps and platform teams to implement CI/CD pipelines, deployment patterns, and operational readiness
Apply best practices for observability, including monitoring, logging, and alerting
Lead design and code reviews within the team to ensure high standards in code quality and system design
Troubleshoot and resolve production issues, ensuring minimal disruption and continuous improvement
Mentor junior and senior engineers, providing technical guidance and delivery oversight
All About You
Strong experience building and deploying production backend systems and APIs
Proven ability to lead delivery of software components or services end-to-end
Solid expertise in API design (REST and/or gRPC) and service-based architectures
Experience working with cloud-native technologies (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
Familiarity with security best practices, including authN/authZ, secure API design, and data protection
Experience with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices for building and deploying services
Strong programming skills in languages such as Java, Go, C#, Python, or similar
Experience implementing monitoring, logging, and performance optimisation
Familiarity with AI/ML system integration (e.g. model inference APIs, embeddings, or similar patterns) is preferred
Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work collaboratively in cross-functional teams
Experience mentoring engineers and contributing to team-level technical leadership
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.