Lead Technical Program Manager

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 Technical Program Manager

The AI & Decision Product Enablement Program (AI & DPE) is a transformative internal product suite that powers intelligent, data-driven decision-making across market-facing financial products. It delivers industry leading intelligence by applying complex business logic throughout the payment lifecycle and broader financial ecosystem, enabling real-time, scalable decisions that directly impact revenue, cost efficiency, and risk management.

The platform leverages supercomputing, advanced business rules, AI/ML technologies, agentic AI frameworks, streaming big data platforms, high-speed in-memory caching, APIs, and user interfaces to enrich financial data and drive measurable business outcomes.
As we expand our capabilities, we are investing in AI Agents to automate decisioning, accelerate operational workflows, and enhance financial insights, ranging from real-time transaction intelligence to forecasting, anomaly detection, and executive reporting.

We are seeking a self-driven highly motivated Lead Technical Program Manager with strong financial domain expertise and hands-on experience delivering AI-driven and agent-based solutions. This role is pivotal in driving execution across complex programs, ensuring alignment between product, engineering, and finance stakeholders, and delivering high-impact capabilities that improve financial performance and decision velocity. This role ensures successful execution against prioritized commitments and fosters alignment across cross-functional teams.

Key Responsibilities
• Lead end-to-end delivery of large-scale, cross-functional programs spanning AI platforms, financial systems, and agent-based solutions.
• Drive roadmap planning, dependency management, risk mitigation, and execution rigor across multiple workstreams.
• Partner with engineering and product teams to design, develop, and operationalize AI Agents (e.g., decision agents, reporting agents, workflow automation agents).
• Ensure agents are scalable, governed, and aligned to enterprise standards for accuracy, explainability, and risk controls.
• Lead initiatives involving financial data, cost tracking, forecasting, and P&L impact analysis.
• Ensure tight integration between financial data sources to enable realtime insights and measurable business outcomes.
• Develop and implement strategies to ensure system resiliency, financial accuracy, and operational stability.
• Embed financial governance, auditability, and risk controls into AI-driven decision systems and automation workflows.
• Translate complex technical and financial concepts into clear, executive ready insights for leadership forums.
• Support Agile Release Trains and drive Program Increment (PI) planning and execution.
• Define KPIs and OKRs that measure both technical performance and financial/business impact.
• Stay at the forefront of AI/ML and agentic frameworks, identifying opportunities to drive automation and intelligent decisioning across the enterprise.
• Continuously evaluate financial and operational performance to optimize program outcomes.
• Mentor TPMs and cross-functional team members, fostering strong program discipline and outcome-driven execution.

About You
• Strong experience working with financial systems, cost modeling, forecasting, budgeting, or transaction-based platforms.
• Ability to connect technical delivery to financial outcomes (revenue impact, cost efficiency, margin improvement, risk reduction).
• Proven experience delivering solutions leveraging AI/ML technologies and/or AI Agents (LLMs, automation agents).
• Familiarity with concepts such as prompt design, agent orchestration, model governance, and AI risk management.
• Proven success leading complex programs involving distributed systems, data platforms, and AI technologies.
• Strong ability to manage dependencies, critical path, and cross-team execution at scale.
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to influence senior leadership and drive alignment.
• Ability to synthesize complex topics into clear, concise, and actionable insights.
• Experience working with technologies such as big data platforms, APIs, streaming systems, caching layers, and decisioning engines.
• Ability to engage deeply with engineering teams and challenge assumptions.
• Strong understanding of Agile, SAFe, and SDLC practices with experience driving delivery in fast-paced environments.
Proficiency with Aha, Jira, Confluence, Tableau/Power BI, DOMO, or similar tools.

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 View email address on click.appcast.io 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: $122,000 - $207,000 USD