Lead Software Engineer

Mastercard; New York (NY); On-site; USD 168,000 - 277,000; Full time

Job summary

Mastercard is looking for a Lead Software Engineer in New York City to own complex, cross‑service software problems and deliver robust, scalable solutions.

You will write code, drive design decisions, and mentor peers while pushing for engineering excellence. The role emphasizes security, reliability, and high performance across our global payments platform. The posted NYC pay range is $168,000 - $277,000 USD, with a competitive benefits package.

Qualifications

• Proficient in secure coding standards (OWASP, CWE, SEI CERT).
• Experience with frameworks like Spring Boot, Angular, or similar.
• Strong OS knowledge on Windows and Linux for performant code.
• Ability to analyze core/heap/thread dumps to troubleshoot issues.
• Familiar with CI/CD practices and automated deployment pipelines.
• Experience with code reviews, testing, and refactoring to improve quality.

Responsibilities

• Own complex problems with dependencies across services and drive resolution.
• Write code to build and enhance applications and services with strong code reviews.
• Define and develop service-level procedures to meet business requirements.
• Drive prioritization decisions with product stakeholders.
• Identify opportunities and build roadmaps to improve primary services.
• Automate and simplify software delivery and identify efficiency gains.
• Support observability, reliability, and maintainability post-deployment.
• Lead technical interviews and mentor team members.

Skills

Secure coding

Open frameworks

Windows/Linux

Performance debugging

CI/CD pipelines

Tools

Jenkins

Bamboo

AWS Pipelines

Azure Pipelines

SonarQube

Checkmarx

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

Lead 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

Lead Software Engineer

Who is Mastercard?

We work 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. We cultivate a culture of inclusion for all employees that respects their individual strengths, views, and experiences. We believe that our differences enable us to be a better team – one that makes better decisions, drives innovation, and delivers better business results.

Technology at Mastercard

What we create today will define tomorrow. Revolutionary technologies that reshape the digital economy to be more connected and inclusive than ever before. Safer, faster, more sustainable.

And we need the best people to do it. Technologists who are energized by the challenges of a truly global network. With the talent and vision to create the critical systems and products that power global commerce and connect people everywhere to the vital goods and services they need every day.

Working at Mastercard means being part of a unique culture. Inclusive and diverse, a rich collaboration of ideas and perspectives. A place that celebrates your strengths, values your experiences, and offers you the flexibility to shape a career across disciplines and continents. And the opportunity to work alongside experts and leaders at every level of the business, improving what exists, and inventing what’s next.

About The Role

• Own complex problems with dependencies across services and facilitate cross-functional team interactions to drive resolution.
• Write code to build and enhance applications and services, while promoting code reviews, code scanning, and standard development practices to deliver high-quality artifacts to production.
• Define, design, and develop procedures and solutions at the service level to meet business requirements and enhancements.
• Drive prioritization decisions and trade-offs in partnership with product stakeholders.
• Identify opportunities and build roadmaps to enhance the primary service or function.
• Automate and simplify all aspects of software delivery and development, actively identifying opportunities to improve efficiency.
• Drive seamless integration across connected services to meet end-user expectations.
• Support operational readiness by designing for observability, reliability, and maintainability after deployment. [Lead SE Skills | Excel]
• Drive a blameless postmortem culture to identify root causes of incidents and implement learnings.
• Introduce new technologies and architecture while following enterprise guidelines.
• Advocate for engineering principles outside of the current organization or platform.
• Provide development and architecture guidance to team members.
• Build relationships and effective partnerships across organizations.
• Write and evaluate recommendations for job promotions based on an unbiased view of accomplishments.
• Conduct technical interviews for engineering roles and help raise the performance bar.
• Lead by example with hands-on approaches that demonstrate engineering excellence.
• Encourage team members to share and seek knowledge within their Guild or Program to drive reuse of patterns, libraries, and practices.

All About You

• Has the ability to write secure code in three or more languages, such as C, C++, C#, Java, or JavaScript, and is familiar with secure coding standards, including OWASP, CWE, and SEI CERT.
• Has experience building applications using open frameworks to improve reuse and reduce development time, such as Spring Boot, Steeltoe, Angular, DXP, or similar frameworks.
• Understands operating system internals, including Windows and Linux, to write interoperable and performant code.
• Is able to debug and troubleshoot complex issues by analyzing core, heap, and thread dumps and resolving coding errors.
• Can select and optimize data structures to support efficient, scalable, and maintainable software design. [Lead SE Skills | Excel]
• Has experience documenting and coaching teams on development practices and coding guidelines, including branching, peer reviews, library use, logging, scanning rules, test-driven development, and error handling.
• Understands advanced design patterns, such as service‑to‑worker, MVC, API gateway, intercepting filter, dependency injection, and lazy loading, and can apply them to implement efficient code.
• Can perform technical reviews of code across applications and dependencies to identify anti‑patterns and promote continuous refactoring.
• Understands and communicates technical debt and operational issues to support prioritization discussions with stakeholders and improve the run experience.
• Understands system architecture and can plan for platform and infrastructure capacity, including database, compute, network, and storage.
• Has experience improving customer journeys by reducing mean time to mitigate incidents and supporting high availability.
• Has experience simplifying deployment and eliminating software and infrastructure snowflakes using standardized platforms, ephemer…
• Can orchestrate release workflows and pipelines and apply standardized pipelines through APIs to achieve CI/CD using industry-standard tools, such as Jenkins, Bamboo, AWS/Azure Pipelines, XL Release, or similar tools.
• Can configure rules and automation for vulnerability scanning and software composition analysis using tools such as Sonar, Checkmarx, Nexus, JFrog XRay, Veracode, or similar tools.
• Can define, organize, and report on test runs for major, minor, and hotfix releases, including unit, component-level, system-level, customer journey, prior customer issue, and regulatory control testing.
• Has experience conducting performance tests, including load, spike, breakpoint, and endurance testing, to understand application and service limits and behaviors.

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 [e-mail] 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

• 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

New York City, New York: $168,000 - $277,000 USD