Lead Software Engineer

Lead Software Engineer

The Accelerators group under the Business & Market Insights - Platform Engineering program at Mastercard is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to drive high-impact technical initiatives that accelerate delivery, improve platform scalability, and enable innovation across the organization. The Accelerators group is leading from the front in making meaningful contributions that allow the B&MI organization to go "faster." This team is intentionally agile and flexible, not defined by a single technology stack, domain, or rigid process. Instead, it is composed of self-starters and self-unblockers who focus on delivering outcomes while continuously improving how those outcomes shape the next phase of platform evolution.

If you're seeking an opportunity to impact a business unit across platform engineering, DevOps, software engineering, and process transformation—while also mentoring and growing others—this position is for you. This is a hybrid role based in Arlington, VA, requiring three days per week onsite.

Role:

• Make foundational changes to the CI/CD pipelines and practices at Mastercard to improve reliability, address common use cases, and deliver market facing solutions faster
• Develop reusable engineering patterns, frameworks, and tools that improve developer experience and accelerate delivery across teams.
• Drive modernization and optimization of SDLC/PDLC practices through intentional AI adoption and AI-first engineering initiatives.
• Identify and implement process improvements that increase engineering velocity, quality, and operational efficiency.
• Mentor and guide engineers across Mastercard's engineering community, promoting best practices and technical excellence.
• Collaborate across platform, product, and engineering teams to align technical solutions with business objectives.
• Contribute to architectural decisions that enable scalability, resilience, and long-term platform evolution.
• Support DevOps and platform engineering initiatives to improve system reliability, automation, and deployment efficiency.

All About You:

• Extensive experience as a Software Engineer, Full-Stack Engineer, or Platform Engineer in fast-paced, collaborative environments.
• Strong full-stack development experience across modern stacks (e.g.,.NET, Java, React, JavaScript, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, or similar technologies)
• Proven experience designing and building scalable backend services, APIs, and distributed systems.
• Strong experience in cloud environments (AWS and/or Azure), with hands-on experience building and deploying cloud-native applications.
• Deep DevOps and platform engineering experience, including CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, GitHub Actions) and deployment automation.
• Experience with API management, gateway technologies, secrets management, and infrastructure tooling.
• Strong understanding of Product Development Life Cycle (PDLC) and ability to improve engineering workflows end-to-end.
• Experience working with large-scale data systems, including ETL pipelines and high-volume data processing environments.
• Demonstrated ability to identify and implement engineering efficiency improvements across teams or platforms.
• Strong interest in AI-enabled engineering, including workflow automation, developer productivity, and SDLC augmentation.
• Experience working in Agile environments with cross-functional teams and iterative delivery models.
• Proven ability to lead technical initiatives, manage complex engineering efforts, or drive platform-level improvements.
• Experience mentoring or coaching engineers and contributing to technical team growth.
• Strong analytical thinking, problem-solving skills, and ability to operate effectively in ambiguous or evolving environments.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. Equivalent practical experience will be considered.

To find US Salary Ranges, visit People Place. Under the Compensation tab, select "Salary Structures." Within the text of "Salary Structures," click on the link "salary structures 2025," through which you will be able to access the salary ranges for each Mastercard job family. For more information regarding US benefits, visit People Place and review the Benefits tab and the Time Off & Leave tab.