Principal AI Platform Engineer for Real-Time Decisioning

Mastercard; Arlington (VA); On-site; USD 195,000 - 323,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401k match

Paid time off

Life insurance

HSA/FSA

Job summary

Mastercard is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead and contribute to the Decision Stream platform. The role blends hands-on engineering with enterprise-scale leadership to deliver AI-powered decisioning capabilities and real-time processing.

You will mentor engineers, drive architectural decisions, and advance cloud and platform practices while collaborating with executives and product teams to shape the AI strategy. This is a full-time, on-site role in Arlington, VA.

Qualifications

• Extensive software engineering and technical leadership experience.
• Proven delivery of large-scale distributed systems.
• Strong communication and mentorship skills.

Responsibilities

• Build software, tooling, and platform capabilities.
• Design and implement large scale distributed systems.
• Develop reusable services, patterns, and integrations.
• Contribute to new product and prototype development from concept through validation.
• Evaluate systems, frameworks, and tools across quality, cost, latency, scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
• Apply sound engineering judgment to trade-offs in distributed systems design and architecture.
• Apply AI tools as part of daily engineering practice to real product and platform problems.
• Lead architectural design for complex, enterprise-wide initiatives spanning multiple services and programs.
• Mentor engineers at all levels, fostering technical growth and leadership.

Skills

AI-assisted development

Distributed systems

Low-latency pipelines

Engineering leadership

Collaboration across teams

Education

Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent)

Advanced degree preferred

Tools

AWS

Job description

Mastercard is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead and contribute to the Decision Stream platform. The role blends hands-on engineering with enterprise-scale leadership to deliver AI-powered decisioning capabilities and real-time processing.

You will mentor engineers, drive architectural decisions, and advance cloud and platform practices while collaborating with executives and product teams to shape the AI strategy. This is a full-time, on-site role in Arlington, VA.