Vice President, Software Engineering

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.

Role Overview

As the Vice President, Software Engineering within the AI & Data Platform Engineering organization, you will provide enterprise-scale technology leadership for the next generation of Mastercard’s Decision Management Platform (DMP). You will shape long-term architecture strategy, lead modernization of a mission-critical platform, and guide engineering excellence across large, complex initiatives.

You will collaborate closely with technology executives, product leaders, and engineering teams to deliver real-time AI inferencing and decisioning capabilities that enhance product effectiveness, improve business agility, strengthen resiliency, and reduce cost of ownership. Your leadership will play a pivotal role in defining the future direction of AI & Data Platform Engineering.

Key Responsibilities

Enterprise Architecture & Technical Leadership

• Lead architectural strategy and design for large-scale, enterprise-wide initiatives spanning multiple services and programs.
• Define and evolve service interactions, dependency models, and architecture policies to ensure scalability, security, resiliency, and regulatory compliance.
• Partner with business and product leaders to architect services that enable new products and decisioning capabilities.
• Guide modernization of existing systems and influence long-range technology planning.

Customer Experience & Platform Strategy

• Own and improve the end-to-end customer and developer experience across a portfolio of services and applications.
• Simplify and optimize architecture strategies to balance performance, cost efficiency, and business value.
• Use sound judgment to make trade-offs among competing priorities, risks, and technical constraints.

Thought Leadership & Influence

• Drive organization-wide initiatives that elevate engineering craftsmanship, operational excellence, and architectural standards.
• Represent the organization through speaking engagements, technical publications, and contributions to the broader technology community.
• Participate in highest-level architecture reviews and provide guidance on complex, enterprise-wide technical challenges.

Collaboration & Knowledge Sharing

• Consult across teams and organizational boundaries to identify synergies, reduce duplication, and eliminate operational silos.
• Mentor engineers and architects at all levels, fostering a strong technical leadership pipeline.
• Promote knowledge sharing within guilds, programs, and communities of practice.

Talent & Culture

• Lead technical interviews, help raise the engineering performance bar, and contribute to strategic hiring decisions.
• Provide objective, impact-based promotion recommendations.
• Champion behaviors that reinforce organizational values and build a high-performance engineering culture.

Qualifications

• Proven software engineering leadership experience, including leading large-scale, distributed systems or high-volume transaction platforms.
• Significant experience overseeing architecture for real-time decisioning, data platforms, or enterprise-scale AI/ML-driven systems.
• Proven track record modernizing legacy systems and guiding long-range technology strategies across complex organizations.
• Demonstrated ability to lead multiple engineering teams and drive alignment across product, architecture, and operations.
• Deep experience with cloud, data platforms, real-time processing, and enterprise-grade resiliency, security, and compliance requirements.
• Strong understanding of service interactions, dependency management, and high-throughput system design.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with experience influencing executives, engineers, and cross-functional stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with high-volume, low-latency platforms processing mission-critical transactions.
• Background working in environments involving business rules engines, analytic model integration, or real-time decisioning workflows.
• Familiarity with streaming technologies and complex event processing.
• Demonstrated expertise in architectural governance, engineering best practices, and organization-wide technical initiatives.
• Prior leadership experience within AI, data, or decisioning platform domains.

Key skills/competency

• Software Engineering Leadership
• Enterprise Architecture
• Real-time Decisioning
• AI/ML Systems
• Data Platforms
• Distributed Systems
• Cloud Technologies
• Scalability & Resiliency
• Modernization Strategy
• Stakeholder Management