Principal Product Manager - Technical

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
Principal Product Manager - Technical
About 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 help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses realize their greatest potential.
Role Summary
We are looking for a Principal Product Manager - Technical to lead product strategy and execution for global, real-time switching and authorization platforms. In this role, you will own the vision, roadmap, and delivery of mission-critical transaction processing capabilities that operate at massive scale with strict requirements for availability, latency, resiliency, and correctness. You will work closely with engineering, architecture, operations, and business leaders to deliver platforms that support billions of transactions and enable reliable, secure payment experiences worldwide. This is a senior individual contributor role with broad influence across teams, regions, and portfolios.
What You'll Do
Product Strategy & Vision
* Define and own the long-term product vision and strategy for switching and authorization platforms.
* Translate complex customer, business, and ecosystem needs into clear product roadmaps and priorities.
* Identify and drive new platform capabilities that improve transaction reliability, scalability, and performance.
* Make data-driven prioritization decisions balancing customer value, risk, regulatory needs, and time-to-market.
Technical Product Leadership
* Serve as the product authority for real-time authorization and switching systems.
* Partner closely with engineering and architecture teams to influence design decisions while maintaining product accountability.
* Define clear product requirements, including functional behavior and non-functional expectations such as availability, latency, throughput, and resiliency.
* Ensure operational readiness, monitoring, and observability are integral to product delivery.
Roadmap & Execution Ownership
* Own and manage multi-year product roadmaps, including near-term delivery and long-term modernization initiatives.
* Define epics, features, and user stories with clear outcomes and success metrics.
* Evaluate trade-offs between new capabilities, technical sustainability, ecosystem impact, and operational risk.
* Use in-market performance data and platform metrics to continuously refine priorities.
Stakeholder & Customer Engagement
* Represent the voice of customers, partners, and internal stakeholders in product decisions.
* Collaborate across product, engineering, operations, risk, and business teams to drive alignment and execution.
* Communicate complex technical and product concepts clearly to executive and non-technical audiences.
Leadership & Impact
* Act as a mentor and role model for other product managers.
* Influence across the organization without direct authority.
* Raise the bar for product excellence, technical rigor, and customer focus.
All about you
Required Qualifications
* Significant experience in Technical Product Management for large-scale, distributed, high-availability systems.
* Strong understanding of real-time platforms, APIs, integration patterns, and modern software delivery practices.
* Proven ability to lead complex initiatives and influence senior stakeholders across a matrixed organization.
* Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Preferred / Nice-to-Have Qualifications
While not required, experience or familiarity with payment cryptographic and security services** is a strong plus, including:
* EMV and authorization cryptographic flows such as ARQC, ARPC, and related issuer validation mechanisms
* Account Authentication Value (AAV) and e-commerce authentication constructs
* PIN-based services, including PIN validation and PIN translation
* Tokenization and digital enablement services**, such as **MDES (Mastercard Digital Enablement Service)
* Magnetic Stripe services and legacy transaction processing concepts
* Working knowledge of how cryptographic services integrate with authorization and switching platforms in a real-time payment environment. This knowledge helps accelerate impact but is not a prerequisite for success in the role
.Why Join Us
* Work on platforms that power global commerce at massive scale
* Influence products with **network-wide, real-world impact
* Collaborate with world-class engineers, architects, and product leaders
* Grow your career while shaping the future of digital payments.
Equal Opportunity Employer
Mastercard is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce.
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 [email protected] 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: $156,000 - $265,000 USD