Manager, Software Engineering - Data & AI Platforms

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 - Data & AI Platforms
Manager, Software Engineering - Data & AI Platforms (L6)
Who is Mastercard?
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.
About Business & Market Insights (B&MI)
Business & Market Insights (B&MI) is Mastercard's data, analytics, and intelligence organization, responsible for transforming vast, global data assets into actionable insights and decision-support products. B&MI builds platforms and products that embed AI, advanced analytics, and scalable data pipelines directly into customer workflows-enabling smarter decisions, faster execution, and measurable business outcomes.
Overview
Mastercard is seeking a Manager, Software Engineering (L6) to lead the design, development, and delivery of data and AI platforms that power analytics, machine learning, and emerging intelligent systems across B&MI.
This role combines people leadership, technical ownership, and cross-functional delivery accountability. You will lead one or more engineering teams responsible for building scalable data pipelines, platform services, and AI-enabled capabilities. In addition to driving execution, you will shape architecture, enforce engineering standards, and ensure solutions meet Mastercard's requirements for security, reliability, and governance.
This role is ideal for a hands-on engineering leader who can scale teams, shape platform direction, and deliver complex, cross-cutting initiatives in data and AI systems.
Role & Responsibilities
Team Leadership & Organizational Impact
• Lead, coach, and develop a team (or multiple teams) of software and data engineers, driving high performance and continuous growth.• Set clear goals, manage performance, and create development plans aligned to both individual and organizational objectives.• Build a strong engineering culture focused on ownership, quality, accountability, and continuous improvement.• Partner with leadership on hiring, team composition, and long-term organizational planning.
Delivery Ownership & Execution
• Own the end-to-end delivery of complex initiatives spanning multiple systems, services, or teams.• Partner with Product and stakeholders to define roadmaps, prioritize work, and make tradeoff decisions aligned to business value• Identify dependencies, manage risks, and proactively resolve cross-team blockers to ensure successful outcomes.• Establish execution frameworks (planning, estimation, tracking) that enable predictable and high-quality delivery.
Data & AI Platform Engineering
• Lead the development of scalable data platforms, pipelines, and AI-enabled systems supporting analytics and machine learning workloads.• Ensure systems are designed for high-throughput data ingestion, transformation, and serving, with strong guarantees around performance, reliability, and data quality.• Drive integration of AI capabilities (e.g., model inference, LLM-based services, feature pipelines) into production systems in collaboration with AI Engineering teams.• Promote platform reuse, standardization, and shared capabilities across teams to enable scale and reduce duplication.
Architecture & Technical Leadership
• Define and evolve system architecture across data and AI platforms, ensuring alignment with enterprise standards for scalability, security, and maintainability. • Translate complex business and data requirements into robust technical solutions and system designs.• Evaluate new technologies and lead adoption decisions based on business value, technical fit, and long-term sustainability. • Balance near-term delivery pressures with long-term platform strategy and technical debt management.
Operational Excellence & Governance
• Ensure systems meet Mastercard standards for reliability, security, compliance, and observability. • Establish best practices for data governance, lineage, monitoring, and quality across pipelines and platforms.• Own production health, including incident management, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement. • Drive adoption of CI/CD, automated testing, and secure development practices across teams.
Cross-Functional Leadership
• Collaborate with AI Engineers, Data Scientists, Product Managers, and Platform teams to deliver integrated, end-to-end solutions.• Influence stakeholders across engineering and business functions to drive alignment on architecture, priorities, and delivery.• Provide clear and effective communication of technical strategy, risks, and progress to leadership and partners.
All About You
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Engineering, or equivalent.• Proven experience leading software engineering teams delivering data platforms, pipelines, or AI-enabled systems.• Strong background in distributed systems and backend engineering (e.g., Java, Python, or similar).• Deep experience with data engineering concepts, including ETL/ELT pipelines, data modeling, and large-scale data processing.• Demonstrated ability to drive architecture decisions and influence system design across teams.• Experience owning delivery of complex, cross-team initiatives end-to-end.• Strong understanding of operational practices: monitoring, reliability, incident response, and system performance. • Proven experience in people management, including performance management, mentoring, and team development.
Nice to Have
• Experience integrating machine learning or LLM-based capabilities into production platforms.• Familiarity with agentic systems, workflow orchestration, or AI-driven platform patterns.• Experience operating in regulated environments with strong governance and compliance requirements.
Leveling & Scope
This role aligns with Manager, Software Engineering (L6) and is responsible for:• Leading engineering teams and building organizational capability• Owning delivery of complex, cross-team initiatives• Driving architectural decisions and influencing technical direction• Ensuring operational excellence and alignment to enterprise standards
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.