Lead Software Development 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

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.

Overview

The Mastercard Payment Networks team is looking for a Lead Software Development Engineer to drive our customer experience strategy forward by consistently innovating and problem-solving. The ideal candidate is passionate about the customer experience journey, highly motivated, intellectually curious, analytical, and possesses an entrepreneurial mindset.

As a Lead Software Engineer, you will be responsible for driving architecture, owning end-to-end SDLC, and leading technical delivery of complex, distributed systems. This role requires deep technical expertise, strong ownership, and the ability to influence teams and engineering direction while ensuring high-quality, scalable, and secure solutions aligned with business objectives.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and drive solution architecture for scalable, high-performance, and resilient distributed systems, including microservices and event-driven platforms.
• Lead end-to-end software development lifecycle (SDLC) from requirements, design, development, testing, deployment to production support.
• Provide hands-on leadership in design and development of backend services using Java, Spring Boot, and related technologies.
• Drive technical decision-making, aligning teams on architecture, design patterns, and engineering standards.
• Ensure solutions adhere to security standards, compliance requirements, and industry best practices (e.g., OWASP, PCI).
• Lead design reviews, code reviews, and technical governance to maintain high quality and consistency across systems.
• Collaborate with product, infrastructure, and cross-functional teams to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Drive adoption of modern engineering practices including CI/CD, automated testing, containerisation, and cloud-native development.
• Own release planning, deployment strategies, performance benchmarking, and rollback/contingency planning.
• Proactively identify technical risks, dependencies, and optimisation opportunities, and drive mitigation strategies.
• Support and resolve production incidents and complex technical issues as a subject matter expert.
• Lead vendor and technology evaluations, including Proof of Concepts (PoCs), and guide adoption of tools, frameworks, and platforms.
• Champion continuous improvement by enhancing development processes, engineering practices, and productivity.
• Mentor and coach engineers across the team, fostering technical growth and best engineering practices.
• Drive knowledge sharing initiatives (tech talks, brownbags, documentation) and build strong engineering culture.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering with strong expertise in Java backend development.
• Proven ability to lead through influence, drive alignment, unblock teams, and take ownership of delivery outcomes.
• Strong experience in system design and architecture for distributed and event-driven systems.
• Deep understanding of design patterns, dependency injection, and modern application frameworks (e.g., Spring Boot).
• Hands-on experience building and maintaining production-grade, scalable systems.
• Expertise in Java, Spring, and backend service development.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Jenkins), Docker, Kubernetes, and container orchestration.
• Strong exposure to cloud platforms (AWS) and cloud-native architecture and migration strategies.
• Experience with databases: RDBMS (e.g., Oracle) and NoSQL (e.g., Cassandra).
• Experience with messaging and integration technologies (e.g., Kafka, MQ) and business rule systems (e.g., IBM ODM).
• Solid understanding of secure coding practices and vulnerability management (OWASP, CWE, SEI CERT).
• Experience with Agile methodologies (Scrum/SAFe) and modern development practices.
• Strong problem-solving, communication, and stakeholder management skills.

• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and scale team capability.

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.