Principal Forward-Deployed Software Engineer (AI)

Mastercard; Dublin; On-site; EUR 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Mastercard is seeking a hands-on Principal Forward Deployed Engineer to accelerate delivery for Services programs. You will deploy into internal teams, writing production code, solving complex problems, and applying AI-first practices to build durable capabilities.

Reporting to the SVP of Developer Enablement, you will travel to where needs are greatest, bringing senior engineering capacity during spikes and enabling teams to ship faster.

Qualifications

• Extensive hands-on software engineering at Principal level with shipping complex systems.
• Advanced experience with containerization/orchestration in cloud environments.
• Deep AI experience including LLMs, agent frameworks, RAG, and AI solutions deployment.

Responsibilities

• Embed into Services teams to write production code and ship features.
• Provide surge engineering capacity during critical delivery spikes.
• Diagnose bottlenecks across architecture, performance, and tooling.
• Coach teams and transfer capabilities to product teams.
• Move across priorities and align efforts with Mastercard standards.

Skills

Hands-on software engineering

Docker

Kubernetes

LLMs

Agent frameworks

CI/CD

Cloud-native

Communication

Tools

GitHub Copilot

Claude Code

Copilot Studio

Azure AI

Job description

Mastercard is seeking a hands-on Principal Forward Deployed Engineer to accelerate delivery for Services programs. You will deploy into internal teams, writing production code, solving complex problems, and applying AI-first practices to build durable capabilities.

Reporting to the SVP of Developer Enablement, you will travel to where needs are greatest, bringing senior engineering capacity during spikes and enabling teams to ship faster.