Manager, 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.

Title and Summary

Manager, Software Engineering

Our Purpose

We connect and power an inclusive digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere. We enable safe, simple, smart, and accessible transactions through secure data, strong networks, partnerships, and innovation.
Our culture is driven by our Decency Quotient (DQ), fostering inclusion, respect, and diversity. We believe that diverse perspectives strengthen decision-making, drive innovation, and deliver better business outcomes.

About the Role

Mastercard’s Authentication Program creates meaningful experiences for consumers while enabling merchants and issuers to engage in ways that were not possible in the pre-digital world.

The Digital Payment Credentials team builds foundational payment solutions at scale. This role offers an opportunity to work in a high-impact environment focused on delivering secure, resilient, and high-performance digital payment experiences.

We are looking for leaders who:

• Have experience building and scaling global products
• Are passionate about driving a world beyond cash
• Thrive in agile environments with high standards of engineering excellence
• Demonstrate an enterprise mindset by aligning team outcomes with broader organizational goals

Role

As a Manager, Software Engineering, you will provide strong technical and people leadership, drive high-quality execution, and build high-performing engineering teams. You will shape engineering strategy, influence architectural direction, and ensure your teams deliver scalable, secure, and high-performing systems aligned to enterprise priorities.

As a Software Engineering Manager, you will be responsible for:

Engineering & Technical Leadership:

• Act as a hands-on technical leader contributing to architecture, design reviews, and complex system problem solving
• Lead development of large-scale, distributed, high-performance systems
• Drive engineering excellence across:
o Code quality, standards, and code review practices
o Testing and automation (unit, functional, integration)
o CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices
o Security and operational readiness
• Establish and enforce engineering best practices, including efficient use of data structures and algorithms for scalable and optimized solutions
• Ensure systems are designed with performance, scalability, and reliability as core principles

Performance Engineering Ownership:

• Own and drive performance engineering practices across teams, including:
o Performance testing, benchmarking, and tuning
o Monitoring system latency, throughput, and resource utilization
o Identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks
• Ensure engineering teams proactively build systems that meet scalability, availability, and efficiency requirements under varying workloads
• Promote use of efficient algorithms, data access patterns, and caching strategies

Troubleshooting & Incident Management:

• Establish and lead incident management and troubleshooting practices, including:
o Root cause analysis (RCA) and post-incident reviews
o Debugging complex distributed systems and production issues
o Driving rapid issue resolution and minimizing customer impact
• Ensure systems are designed for observability, monitoring, and operational support
• Implement proactive measures to improve system reliability and prevent recurring issues

Architecture & Strategic Leadership:

• Drive architectural design, including:
o Service interactions and dependencies
o System scalability and resilience
o Cloud-native and distributed architecture strategies
• Translate business and market needs into engineering strategy and execution plans
• Demonstrate strategic leadership by:
o Aligning engineering direction with enterprise priorities
o Evaluating emerging technologies and defining adoption strategies
o Making trade-offs across performance, cost, risk, and speed

Team & People Leadership:

• Lead, mentor, and grow one or more agile engineering teams
• Foster a culture of:
o Ownership and accountability
o Continuous learning and improvement
o Psychological safety and collaboration
• Support career development through:
o Coaching, feedback, and mentorship
o Performance management and goal setting
• Drive hiring, onboarding, and team scaling initiatives

Delivery & Execution:

• Partner with Product Managers, TPMs, and Architects for roadmap planning and execution
• Drive Agile delivery (Scrum/Kanban) with focus on predictability, quality, and speed
• Manage:
o Project planning
o Dependencies and risks
o Delivery timelines
• Actively participate in:
o Sprint planning, demos, and retrospectives
o Code reviews and pair programming
• Track and improve delivery metrics including velocity, quality, performance, and customer impact

All About You

• Proven experience managing agile software delivery teams as an effective technical leader
• Strong understanding of software architecture and design thinking to break down complex concepts to the delivery team:
o Domain-Driven Design (DDD)
o Design patterns
o Distributed systems design
o Security concepts (authentication, authorization, confidentiality)
• Proven track record delivering enterprise-grade, scalable, and high-performance systems
• Ability to operate with an enterprise mindset, aligning team output with company-wide objectives
• Strong hands-on experience in:
o Java, Spring / Java EE
o RESTful APIs
o Frontend frameworks (Angular / React)
o Databases (Oracle / PostgreSQL)
• Experience building microservices architecture, event-driven systems, and cloud-native applications
• Strong understanding of data structures and algorithms, with the ability to:
o Design efficient, scalable solutions
o Optimize performance through appropriate data modeling and algorithm selection
o Evaluate trade-offs in complexity, memory usage, and execution efficiency
• Experience building cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP, PCF), Kubernetes and Docker, and CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure as Code
• Strong experience providing quality governance and effective code reviews, following industry best practices
• Experience with performance testing and optimization, building automated testing frameworks, and troubleshooting complex production systems.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to clearly articulate technical strategy and architecture design decisions to stakeholders across globally distributed teams
• Strong understanding of SDLC methodologies (Agile, Scrum, DevOps)

What Success Looks Like:

• High-performing, engaged engineering teams aligned with enterprise objectives
• Consistent delivery of secure, scalable, high-performance systems
• Strong engineering discipline across design, testing, performance, and operations
• Proactive resolution of production issues with improved system reliability over time
• Continuous improvement in productivity, innovation, and engineering excellence

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 reasonable_accommodation@mastercard.com 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: $140,000 - $231,000 USD