Director, AI-Driven Portfolio Optimization

Mastercard; Portugal; On-site; EUR 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Mastercard seeks a Director of Product Management to lead the Global Portfolio Optimization team, shaping how insights become scalable products across Target, Create, Execute and Measure. You will partner with BMI, engineering, and external providers to drive AI-enabled solutions that improve issuer portfolio performance and top-of-wallet initiatives.

This role requires strong product leadership, technical fluency, and a data-driven mindset to translate complex business challenges into

Qualifications

• Significant product management experience with a proven track record of defining, building, launching, and scaling technology-enabled products, platforms, or capabilities.
• Strong product management fundamentals, including customer discovery, requirements definition, roadmap development, prioritization, product delivery, and performance measurement.
• Technical fluency and comfort working closely with engineering, data science, analytics, AI, and platform teams.
• Highly quantitative and analytically minded, with demonstrated ability to leverage data, experimentation, and insights to drive decision-making and business outcomes.
• Strong understanding of AI technologies, generative AI, machine learning applications, and automation opportunities.

Responsibilities

• Lead the continued productization of the Global Portfolio Optimization operational framework (Target > Create > Execute > Measure) in partnership with the Business & Market Intelligence (BMI) team, creating scalable products and capabilities that accelerate the insights-to-action lifecycle.
• Own and evolve the product strategy, roadmap, and requirements for capabilities that enable portfolio optimization teams to identify opportunities, generate recommendations, execute strategies, and measure business outcomes at scale.
• Serve as the primary business lead and relationship manager for the Mastercard Intelligence Centre (MIC), ensuring GPO insights, recommendations, and actions are effectively productized and operationalized through the platform.
• Define and drive GPO’s AI strategy by partnering with the AI Centre of Excellence, Foundry, AI Governance teams, engineering organizations, and external technology providers to identify, prioritize, and execute proof-of-concepts and pilots that demonstrate business value and scalability.
• Evaluate emerging AI, automation, and analytics capabilities to determine their feasibility, desirability, and viability within GPO workflows and operating models.
• Collaborate closely with stakeholders across the GPO verticals (Target, Create, Execute, and Measure) to understand end-to-end workflows, identify pain points and opportunities, define product requirements, and deliver solutions that improve efficiency, automation, scalability, and business impact.
• Develop deep understanding of Mastercard products, platforms, and capabilities that can enhance issuer portfolio performance across current and future GPO priorities, including Activation, Usage, and Top-of-Wallet initiatives.
• Build and maintain strong partnerships with product owners, platform leaders, and cross-functional stakeholders across Mastercard to identify opportunities for integration, capability reuse, and accelerated delivery of value to issuers.
• Translate complex business challenges into clear product requirements, business cases, prioritization frameworks, and measurable success metrics.
• Establish KPI frameworks and measurement approaches to evaluate the effectiveness, adoption, and impact of newly deployed products and capabilities.
• Lead cross-functional teams through the product lifecycle from opportunity identification and concept development through implementation, adoption, and optimization.
• Track and manage risks, dependencies, and stakeholder alignment while driving execution against key strategic priorities.

Skills

Product management

Stakeholder management

Data analytics

AI strategy

Cross-functional leadership

Strategic thinking

Job description

Mastercard seeks a Director of Product Management to lead the Global Portfolio Optimization team, shaping how insights become scalable products across Target, Create, Execute and Measure. You will partner with BMI, engineering, and external providers to drive AI-enabled solutions that improve issuer portfolio performance and top-of-wallet initiatives.

This role requires strong product leadership, technical fluency, and a data-driven mindset to translate complex business challenges into