Principal Software Engineer

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 Software Engineer
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.
Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all.
Overview
We are seeking a hands-on Principal Forward Deployed Engineer to accelerate delivery across Mastercard Services. Modeled on the forward deployed engineering role that leading technology companies embed alongside their most important customers, this position turns that model inward. You will deploy into Services programs as an internal partner who writes production code, unblocks delivery, and puts AI to work in how we build. Reporting to the SVP of Developer Enablement within the Services Enablement & Transformation (SET) organization, you will move to wherever the need is greatest, adding senior engineering capacity during critical spikes, accelerating roadmaps, and helping teams adopt modern, AI-first practices.
Role
The Principal Forward Deployed Engineer is a senior individual contributor who deploys into Services teams to deliver working software and durable capability. Engagements are deliberately fluid. Some last few weeks to help a team ship a critical feature or clear a bottleneck, while others run longer to stand up a capability a program is missing. In every engagement you write production code, pair with the team's engineers, put AI to work in how they build, and leave the team faster and more capable than you found it.
Deliver Where It's Needed Most• Embed directly into Services product and engineering teams, writing production-quality code and shipping features alongside them.• Provide surge engineering capacity during critical delivery spikes, helping programs accelerate roadmaps and hit high-stakes milestones without permanently expanding headcount.• Diagnose and clear technical bottlenecks across architecture, performance, integration, tooling, and delivery process.• Fill short-term gaps with deep expertise, standing up new capabilities, and transferring them cleanly to the product team.• Move fluidly across Services as priorities shift, scoping each engagement with program leaders and Developer Enablement so effort lands where it matters most.
Engineer AI Into How Services Builds• Design and deploy production-grade AI solutions such as assistants, agents, and multi-agent workflows that solve real problems inside Services programs.• Apply modern AI engineering practices, including LLMs, RAG, and agent frameworks, along with the evaluation, observability, and governance needed to run them safely in production.• Mature AI adoption across the software development lifecycle, including AI-assisted coding, testing, code review, and release.• Evaluate emerging AI capabilities and turn them into reusable patterns and reference implementations that Services teams can adopt.
Upskill Teams and Scale What Works• Coach teams on AI-first ways of working through hands-on delivery, including pairing, prompt engineering, and agent design.• Leave every team more self-sufficient than you found it, emphasizing documentation and knowledge transfer, so programs do not stay dependent on you.• Carry patterns, friction points, and reusable solutions back from the field to inform Services-wide enablement, tooling, and golden paths.• Partner with enterprise architecture, platform, and developer enablement teams so what you deliver aligns with Mastercard standards and scales beyond a single program.
Your impact shows up in the teams you leave behind. The programs you support ship faster, more of Services builds with AI because you showed them how, and the engineers you coach can keep building after you move on. You also leave behind reusable AI patterns and reference implementations that other teams can pick up and run with.
All About You
The ideal candidate is a seasoned, hands-on engineer who thrives on variety, moves fast, and measures success by outcomes delivered and teams left stronger. Specifically, you bring:• Extensive hands-on software engineering experience with a track record of personal shipping complex, production-grade systems.• Advanced experience overseeing containerization and orchestration architectures (Docker, Kubernetes, Service Meshes) across hyper-scale cloud environments.• Deep, current experience building with AI and Agentic solutions, including LLMs, agent frameworks, RAG, and orchestration patterns, and a track record of deploying AI solutions that deliver measurable outcomes.• Exceptional technical breadth, becoming productive quickly across unfamiliar languages, frameworks, domains, and codebases.• Deep fluency in modern development practices, including CI/CD, automation, cloud-native architecture, testing, and developer tooling.• Practical, current command of AI across the software development lifecycle, and the ability to coach engineering teams in adopting it effectively.• A working grasp of responsible AI, governance, and production monitoring for AI systems.• A proven ability to parachute into unfamiliar teams, build trust fast, and deliver measurable outcomes under time pressure.• A pragmatic, delivery-focused mindset that prioritizes shipping, working software and teaching by doing.• Strong communication and influencing skills that earn credibility with engineers and program leaders alike.• Comfort with ambiguity, frequent context-switching, and self-directed scoping where you can add the most value.• Hands-on experience with GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Copilot Studio, Azure AI, or equivalent AI development platform preferred.• Demonstrated passion for simplification, innovation, and enabling speed and quality across the organization.
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: $170,000 - $281,000 USD