Principal 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

Principal Software Engineer

Principal Software Engineer
Position Overview
The Principal Software Engineer is a senior individual contributor within Architecture & Technology (A&T), responsible for driving enterprise engineering strategy, architecture standards, and technology excellence across Mastercard. This role provides deep technical leadership across distributed systems, cloud-native platforms, resiliency, observability, and software engineering practices while influencing technology direction across multiple teams and domains.
The Principal Engineer partners with senior engineering leaders, architects, and platform organizations to define architectural standards, establish reusable patterns, and guide critical technology decisions. Through technical expertise, thought leadership, and cross-functional influence, this role helps teams build secure, scalable, reliable, and operationally excellent solutions that align with Mastercard's long-term engineering strategy.
Role
• Provide technical leadership and architectural guidance across multiple engineering organizations, driving consistent adoption of engineering standards, best practices, and enterprise technology patterns.
• Partner with platform CTOs, architects, and engineering leaders to evaluate technology investments, transformation initiatives, and architecture decisions.
• Lead architecture reviews and technical design discussions, identifying opportunities to improve scalability, resiliency, security, performance, and operational excellence.
• Define and evolve enterprise architecture patterns, reference implementations, decision frameworks, and reusable engineering capabilities.
• Serve as a recognized subject matter expert in cloud-native technologies, distributed systems, platform engineering, observability, and reliability engineering.
• Design and develop AI-enabled engineering tools, architecture assistants, and knowledge platforms that improve engineering productivity and decision-making.
• Drive adoption of AI-powered capabilities that make architecture standards, design guidance, and engineering best practices more accessible across the organization.
• Influence the evolution of Engineering Principles, SDLC, Secure Software Lifecycle Standards (SQLS), and architecture governance practices.
• Guide engineering teams in selecting technologies, architectures, and platform capabilities that align with Mastercard's strategic objectives.
• Promote build-once-run-many, platform reuse, and operational excellence through shared capabilities and engineering best practices.
• Collaborate with Security, Infrastructure Engineering, Product Engineering, and Business Operations teams to strengthen engineering effectiveness and operational readiness.
• Create technical thought leadership, architecture guidance, standards documentation, and executive-level communications that influence organizational engineering direction.
• Mentor senior engineers and architects while fostering a culture of engineering excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement.
All About You
• Extensive experience designing and delivering highly scalable, resilient, and secure enterprise software solutions.
• Deep expertise in software architecture, cloud platforms, microservices, distributed systems, and platform engineering.
• Proven ability to influence technical strategy and architectural direction across multiple teams and business domains.
• Strong experience establishing engineering standards, governance models, architecture frameworks, and operational excellence practices.
• Expertise in reliability engineering, observability, performance optimization, and production operations.
• Experience developing reusable platforms, shared services, and enterprise technology capabilities.
• Strong understanding of modern software delivery practices, CI/CD, infrastructure automation, and DevSecOps methodologies.
• Experience evaluating emerging technologies and translating technical innovation into business value.
• Demonstrated success driving cross-functional technical decisions through influence and collaboration.
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to engage technical teams, executives, and business stakeholders.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and strategic thinking capabilities.
• Passion for innovation, continuous learning, and advancing engineering excellence at enterprise scale.
Key Skill Sets
• Software Architecture
• Distributed Systems
• Cloud Platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP)
• Microservices
• Platform Engineering
• Reliability Engineering (SRE)
• Observability & Monitoring
• AI/LLM Engineering Solutions
• DevSecOps & CI/CD
• Performance & Scalability
• Technical Strategy
• Architecture Governance
• Enterprise Integration
• Engineering Standards & Best Practices

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 [email protected] 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: $170,000 - $281,000 USD