Principal AI Platform Engineer

Role Description

The AI Center of Excellence is seeking a Principal AI Infrastructure Engineer to build and scale next-generation infrastructure supporting Mastercard’s growing AI workloads. This role focuses on enabling high-performance, scalable platforms across compute, storage, networking, and accelerators. The ideal candidate is technically deep, highly motivated, and brings an innovative, builder mindset to power advanced AI capabilities across the organization.

• Lead AI infrastructure roadmap for Mastercard’s on-premise private cloud, spanning strategy, design, procurement, delivery, installation, and lifecycle management, in alignment with enterprise AI priorities and governance frameworks.
• Act as a product owner for AI infrastructure, translating business and data science needs into scalable, future-proof platform capabilities that support both predictive ML and generative/agentic AI workloads at enterprise scale.
• Lead RFI and RFP processes for AI infrastructure components, including CPU, GPU, storage, and networking, defining technical and commercial evaluation criteria, reviewing vendor responses, and driving fact-based selection decisions in partnership with sourcing and finance teams.
• Architect and scale infrastructure capable of training large scale predictive and generative models on petabytes of data, while supporting low latency inference (real time and batch) with thousands of transactions per second (TPS) across global workloads.
• Define and champion modern AI infrastructure standards, including high performance storage, high speed networking, and advanced data center requirements such as liquid cooling and power dense rack design.
• Partner closely with data science, MLOps, and platform teams to ensure infrastructure choices align with model development, training, deployment, observability, and responsible AI requirements across the AI lifecycle.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with enterprise architecture, security, risk, governance, compliance, and legal teams to ensure solutions meet Mastercard’s regulatory, resiliency, and ethical AI standards.
• Influence senior leadership and executive stakeholders, clearly articulating trade-offs, ROI, and risk, and confidently advocating for the right technical and architectural decisions through structured narratives and executive level presentations.
• Stay ahead of industry trends in AI infrastructure, Generative AI, and Agentic AI, continuously assessing emerging technologies and vendors to inform long term strategy and investment decisions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electronics, or a related engineering field is required.
• Significant professional history of experience in large scale infrastructure, platform engineering, or systems architecture roles within a complex enterprise environment.
• Proven experience owning infrastructure roadmaps and driving delivery in on-premise or private cloud environments at scale.
• Good working knowledge of AI/ML concepts, data science workflows, MLOps practices, and model lifecycle management.
• Familiarity with Generative AI and Agentic AI architectures, including their unique infrastructure, networking, and latency requirements.
• Deep understanding of compute (CPU/GPU), high performance storage, and networking technologies used in modern AI platforms.
• Hands-on or architectural exposure to high density, high power AI infrastructure, including cooling, power, and data center design considerations.
• Strong product thinking—able to balance user needs, technical feasibility, cost, and long term platform evolution.
• Demonstrated experience running RFIs/RFPs, evaluating vendor proposals, and partnering with sourcing and finance teams to make informed investment decisions.
• Comfortable navigating and influencing within a large, matrixed organization, working effectively with security, governance, architecture, and compliance stakeholders.
• Executive ready communicator with the ability to present complex technical topics clearly, persuasively, and credibly to senior leaders.
• Strategic, opinionated, and data driven, with the confidence to challenge assumptions and defend well-reasoned design decisions.
• Curious, forward looking, and passionate about building the AI foundations that enable enterprise scale innovation.

Benefits

• Competitive base salary and may be eligible for an annual bonus or commissions depending on the role.
• 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.
• Many more benefits for full time (and certain part time) employees.
• Intern benefits include 56 hours of Paid Sick and Safe Time; jury duty leave; and on-site fitness facilities in some locations.

Company Description

Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses realize their greatest potential.

Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all.