Director, Product Management

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

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

Director, Product Management

Overview

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Within Mastercard Services, the Global Portfolio Optimization (GPO) team helps issuers maximize portfolio performance through data-driven strategies that improve customer activation, usage, engagement, and top-of-wallet positioning. The Director, Product Management, Global Portfolio Optimization (Target) will play a critical leadership role in defining and scaling the capabilities that enable GPO to accelerate the journey from insight to action. This role sits within the Target pillar of the Portfolio Optimization framework and is responsible for driving the continued productization of GPO’s end-to-end operating model (Target > Create > Execute > Measure) through close partnership with Business & Market Intelligence (B&MI), product teams, technology partners, and stakeholders across Mastercard. The role will lead the evolution of how portfolio optimization insights are transformed into scalable products, recommendations, and actions through Mastercard’s Intelligence Centre (MIC) platform. In addition, this leader will define and drive GPO’s AI strategy, identifying opportunities to leverage emerging technologies, automation, and advanced analytics to increase team effectiveness, accelerate decision-making, and enhance issuer outcomes. This is a highly cross-functional product leadership role that combines strategic thinking, technical fluency, quantitative rigor, and strong stakeholder management to deliver solutions that drive measurable business impact at scale. Have you successfully built and scaled products that transform complex business processes into repeatable, technology-enabled solutions? Are you comfortable operating at the intersection of business strategy, analytics, AI, and technology delivery? Do you enjoy translating insights into products that drive measurable outcomes for customers and internal stakeholders? Are you passionate about leveraging AI, automation, and product thinking to unlock new levels of organizational impact?

Role

• Lead the continued productization of the Global Portfolio Optimization operational framework (Target > Create > Execute > Measure) in partnership with the Business & Market Intelligence (B&MI) 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.

All About You

• 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. Ability to understand technical architectures and translate business needs into actionable product requirements.
• 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 (including Large Tabular Models), machine learning applications, and automation opportunities, with the ability to evaluate potential use cases and translate them into practical business solutions.
• Demonstrated experience leading cross-functional initiatives involving analytics, data products, workflow transformation, operational optimization, or AI-enabled solutions.
• Personal and professional proficiency using AI tools to improve productivity, decision-making, communication, analysis, and execution effectiveness.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, synthesize complex information, and create clear strategies and execution plans.
• Experience developing business cases, prioritization frameworks, and success metrics for new capabilities and investments.
• Exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to influence senior leaders and align diverse groups around a common vision and roadmap.
• Ability to identify opportunities for efficiency, automation, capability reuse, and scalable growth across products, platforms, and business processes.
• Strong strategic thinking skills combined with a hands‑on execution mindset.
• Experience working in matrixed organizations and driving outcomes through influence rather than direct authority.
• Team player able to work effectively across functions, levels, and geographies while fostering collaboration and driving consensus.
• Passion for innovation, continuous improvement, and leveraging technology to create measurable customer and business impact.

Corporate Security Responsibility

• 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.