{"id":3362792,"url":"https://alion.io/job/mastercard-lead-software-engineer-architect-2","title":"Lead Software Engineer (Architect)","company":{"id":252,"name":"Mastercard","domain":"mastercard.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/mastercard","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":87,"open_postings":171,"ghost_share":0.018,"stale_share":0.444,"repost_share":0.058,"time_to_fill_p50_days":27,"computed_at":"2026-10-29T05:49:05Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["O'Fallon, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":140000,"max":231000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":231000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":15,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"Java","optional":false},{"name":"Rest API","optional":false},{"name":"Spring Boot","optional":false},{"name":"Apache Kafka","optional":true},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-27T21:56:59Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-27","last_verified_at":"2026-10-29T15:58:17Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":1,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":1},"description":"Our Purpose\nMastercard 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.\nTitle and Summary\nLead Software Engineer (Architect)Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we are building a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support digital payment choices that make transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Through secure networks, trusted partnerships and innovation, we help individuals, financial institutions, governments and businesses realize their greatest potential.Overview\nThe Mastercard Authentication Program delivers authentication solutions that enable secure digital commerce globally.\nSmart Interface is Mastercard’s EMV 3-D Secure 3DS Server platform and a critical component of the EMVCo 3DS ecosystem, enabling secure, scalable and standards-compliant communication across merchants, gateways, acquirers, Directory Servers and issuer Access Control Servers.\nWe are seeking a highly experienced Lead Software Engineer (Architect) to provide technical leadership and help define and drive the long-term architecture and technology strategy of the Smart Interface platform. The successful candidate will combine deep software engineering and architectural expertise, EMV 3DS domain knowledge, and hands-on technical leadership to drive the design, development, and evolution of Mastercard’s next-generation authentication platform.\nRole\nSoftware Engineering & Technical Leadership\nLead the design, development and evolution of Smart Interface.\nTranslate business, product and technical requirements into scalable, maintainable and secure solutions.\nProvide hands-on leadership across design, development, testing, deployment, production readiness and support.\nOwn and evolve platform architecture and contribute to technical roadmaps aligned with business and product strategy.\nGuide engineers through complex technical decisions and lead code and design reviews.\nDesign highly available, low-latency transaction systems and cloud-native distributed applications using microservices, APIs and event-driven architectures.\nDefine integration and API standards and lead modernization initiatives that improve scalability, performance and maintainability.\nApply software design, architecture, Domain-Driven Design and data-structure principles to distributed systems.\nDevelop reusable components, frameworks and engineering patterns.\nApply secure coding, encryption, authentication, TLS/mTLS, certificate management and secrets management practices.\nDesign for resilience using fault isolation, retry strategies, disaster recovery and multi-region deployment.\nPromote unit, functional and integration testing, performance engineering, observability and production diagnostics.\nTroubleshoot complex issues, perform root-cause analysis and address technical debt and engineering risks.\nEMV 3DS Domain Leadership\nServe as a technical lead for Mastercard’s 3DS Server platform.\nLead development of EMV 3DS capabilities supporting current and future EMVCo standards.\nDrive adoption of emerging authentication technologies and ensure interoperability across merchants, gateways, acquirers, Directory Servers and ACS providers.\nPartner with product, engineering, architecture and standards teams to evolve authentication capabilities.\nLeadership & Influence\nMentor engineers and technical leads in software design, development and engineering practices.\nCommunicate technical decisions, trade-offs and recommendations to engineering, product and business stakeholders.\nInfluence technical direction without direct authority and foster collaboration and continuous improvement.\nAll About You\nRequired Qualifications\nBachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related discipline.\n15+ years of software engineering experience, including significant technical leadership responsibilities.\nProven experience designing and delivering large-scale distributed enterprise applications and platforms.\nStrong cloud engineering experience across Azure, AWS, GCP or equivalent platforms, including containerization.\nHands-on development experience with Java and Spring Boot.\nDeep expertise in microservices, REST APIs, OpenAPI specifications, API-first design, event-driven architectures and distributed systems.\nExperience building high-volume, low-latency transactional applications.\nAdvanced experience with software design and development, code review, testing, troubleshooting and production support.\nStrong understanding of data structures, relational and NoSQL databases, performance engineering, observability and secure coding practices.\nEMV 3DS & Payments Expertise\nDeep knowledge of the EMV 3-D Secure ecosystem and authentication flows.\nExperience with 3DS Servers, Directory Servers, Access Control Servers, authentication services, tokenization platforms, payment gateways or card-payment processing systems.\nStrong understanding of digital identity, authentication protocols, fraud prevention, payment participants and transaction lifecycles.\nUnderstanding of regulations affecting digital authentication and payments.\nLeadership Competencies\nStrong technical problem-solving, strategic thinking, communication and stakeholder-management skills.\nAbility to translate complex technical concepts into business outcomes.\nProven experience mentoring engineers and working across globally distributed teams.\nPreferred Qualifications\nExperience developing or supporting a commercial EMV 3DS Server platform and EMVCo certification/compliance.\nKnowledge of Mastercard Authentication products and services.\nExperience supporting high-volume payment platforms.\nKnowledge of PSD2 SCA and related authentication regulations.\nExperience with tokenization, digital credentials or identity verification.\nFamiliarity with biometrics, FIDO2, passkeys, Kafka, SRE, DevSecOps and CI/CD.\nSuccess Measures\nProvide hands-on technical and architectural leadership for Smart Interface.\nDeliver scalable, resilient, secure and maintainable solutions while improving quality, performance and operability.\nDrive architectural consistency, simplify integrations and accelerate delivery through reusable components and standards.\nMentor engineers and help evolve Mastercard authentication technologies.\nCorporate Security Responsibility\nAll activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information and networks carry inherent risk. Every person working for or on behalf of Mastercard must:\nFollow Mastercard security policies and practices.\nProtect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information assets.\nReport suspected security incidents or violations.\nComplete required security and compliance training.\n• Support Mastercard’s commitment to secure, resilient and trusted payment solutions.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  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.\nCorporate Security Responsibility\nAll 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:\nAbide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;\n\nEnsure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;\n\nReport any suspected information security violation or breach, and\n\nComplete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.\n\nIn 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.\n\nTHIS POSTING RELECTS ONE OR MORE CURRENT VACANCIES ON OUR TEAM, AND MASTERCARD INTENDS TO FILL THIS POSITION BY 01/12/2027. If the fill date has passed, Mastercard intends to fill this position as soon as possible.\n\nPay Ranges\nO'Fallon, Missouri: $140,000 - $231,000 USD","description_format":"text","description_chars":10069,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":15,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["401k plan","Life insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Cards & Card Issuing","Payment Processing & Gateways"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-27T21:56:59Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 110 · green card filings: 139","filings_12m":110,"filings_prev_12m":161,"green_card_filings_12m":139,"median_offered_wage_usd":137520,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":36}],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":1,"expected_fill_days":27,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-29T05:49:05Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":231000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/mastercard-lead-software-engineer-architect-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/mastercard-lead-software-engineer-architect-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-29T17:53:09Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":26651,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-30T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":252},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=252"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fmastercard-lead-software-engineer-architect-2"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fmastercard-lead-software-engineer-architect-2"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fmastercard-lead-software-engineer-architect-2"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/mastercard-lead-software-engineer-architect-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fmastercard-lead-software-engineer-architect-2"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3362792}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"mastercard.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3362792},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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