Vice President, Platform Architecture

Mastercard Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 254,000 - 407,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Paid time off

401(k) plan

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Mastercard in New York City seeks a Vice President, Platform Architecture to define the long-term architectural vision across AI, data, UX, and platform products. The leader will ensure scalable, secure solutions that work together as an integrated ecosystem across a global organization.

The role engages with executives, architects, product leaders, and engineers to translate strategy into technical direction, drive architectural excellence, and govern standards.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software engineering experience with 8+ years in enterprise/platform architecture.
• 5+ years leading architects and engineering leaders in global, matrixed organizations.
• Proven track record across complex multi-platform environments and governance.
• Deep expertise in AI/ML engineering, data platforms, and cloud-native architecture.
• Experience in financial services, payments, fintech, or regulated industries.
• Ability to influence executives and drive decisions through technical leadership.
• Experience guiding platform evaluations, vendor assessments, and build-versus-buy.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the long-term architecture strategy across AI, data, UX, and platform products.
• Lead architecture reviews and establish standards for design, scalability, resiliency, and security.
• Govern architecture artifacts including ADRs, data contracts, and integration patterns.
• Mentor principal architects and senior engineering leaders to elevate the team.
• Advise executives on strategy, investments, and vendor selections.
• Ensure platforms work together as an integrated ecosystem with governance.

Skills

Systems Thinking

Executive Communication

Technical Credibility

Strategic Foresight

Collaborative Leadership

Inclusive Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering

MBA or Master's in CS/Engineering (preferred)

Tools

AWS

Azure

GCP

Kubernetes

Delta Lake

Airflow

Job description

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

Vice President, Platform Architecture Overview

The Applied AI, Data & UX organization accelerates AI innovation and product delivery across Commercial & New Payment Flows (CNPF) through three pillars: This portfolio includes the Commercial Data Fabric, Agentic Development Frameworks, Unified UX Framework, Virtual C-Suite products, Commercial Business Directory, and other strategic AI capabilities.

Role

The Vice President, Enterprise Architecture will define and govern the long-term architectural vision across the organization's portfolio of AI, data, UX, and platform products. This leader will ensure solutions are scalable, secure, resilient, and composable while aligning technology investments with business strategy. The role serves as the senior architectural authority across the portfolio, driving enterprise-wide technical standards, influencing strategic decisions, and ensuring platforms work together as an integrated ecosystem rather than independent solutions. The ideal candidate is a systems thinker who can seamlessly engage with executives, architects, product leaders, and engineers to translate strategic objectives into clear technical direction and drive architectural excellence across a complex global organization.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture Strategy & Governance

Define and own the long-term architecture strategy across AI, data, UX, and platform products.

Lead the architecture review process and establish standards for system design, integration, scalability, resiliency, and security.

Govern key architecture artifacts including technical standards, architecture decision records (ADRs), and integration patterns.

Identify and mitigate enterprise-level technology risks before they impact delivery.

AI, Data & Platform Architecture

Provide architectural oversight for the Commercial Data Fabric, including data pipelines, governance, feature platforms, analytics, and AI workloads.

Define architecture for agentic platforms, multi-agent orchestration, memory and context management, AI guardrails, evaluation frameworks, and observability.

Ensure AI products leverage common platforms and reusable services to prevent fragmentation and technical debt.

Guide architectural decisions across the full AI lifecycle, including data ingestion, training, deployment, monitoring, and optimization.

Engineering Excellence & Security

Establish standards for APIs, service boundaries, deployment architectures, data contracts, and AI evaluation frameworks.

Embed security, compliance, auditability, privacy, and regulatory requirements into architectural patterns from inception.

Drive adoption of security-by-design and resilience engineering practices.

Ensure adherence to PII, PCI, and governance requirements across global platforms.

Executive Leadership & Strategic Advisory

Serve as trusted advisor to senior executives on architecture strategy, technology investments, vendor selection, and build-versus-buy decisions.

Develop multi-year architecture roadmaps aligned to business priorities and Mastercard enterprise standards.

Translate complex technical trade-offs into clear business recommendations for executive stakeholders.

Represent the organization in architecture governance forums and external industry engagements.

Talent & Organizational Leadership

Mentor and develop principal architects and senior engineering leaders.

Foster a culture of architectural excellence, innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning.

Promote architecture as an enabling capability that accelerates product delivery and business outcomes.

Required Technical Expertise

AI/ML Architecture

Enterprise-scale ML platforms, feature stores, model training infrastructure, deployment pipelines, monitoring, and evaluation frameworks.

Production experience in AI/ML systems with a strong understanding of scalability, reliability, and model governance.

Data Platforms

Modern lakehouse architectures, data governance frameworks, batch and streaming processing, data contracts, and multi-region data management.

Expertise in technologies such as Spark, Airflow, Delta Lake, DLT, and related ecosystems.

Agentic & AI Infrastructure

Multi-agent orchestration, context and memory management, policy enforcement, MCP integration, AI guardrails, evaluation pipelines, and observability.

Strong understanding of enterprise AI platform architecture and operational governance.

Distributed Systems & Cloud Architecture

Cloud-native platforms, microservices, event-driven systems, Kubernetes, service meshes, APIs, and resilience engineering.

Experience designing high-scale, mission-critical distributed systems in regulated environments.

Security & Compliance

Security-by-design principles, identity and access management, threat modeling, audit controls, PCI DSS, PII governance, and regulatory compliance frameworks.

UX Platform Architecture

Design systems, component libraries, design tokens, micro-frontends, experience telemetry, and scalable UX platform patterns.

Leadership Competencies

Systems Thinking: Evaluates decisions based on enterprise-wide impact and long-term sustainability.

Technical Credibility: Influences through deep expertise and sound architectural judgment.

Executive Communication: Translates technical complexity into business outcomes and risk-based decisions.

Strategic Foresight: Anticipates risks and opportunities before they emerge.

Collaborative Leadership: Drives alignment across product, engineering, architecture, and business teams.

Inclusive Leadership: Encourages diverse perspectives and develops technical talent globally.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software engineering experience with 8+ years in enterprise, platform, or systems architecture roles.
• 5+ years of senior technology leadership experience managing architects and engineering leaders within global, matrixed organizations.
• Proven track record developing and executing architecture strategies across complex, multi-platform environments.
• Deep expertise in AI/ML engineering, data platforms, distributed systems, cloud-native architecture, and enterprise governance.
• Experience within financial services, payments, fintech, or other highly regulated industries.
• Demonstrated success influencing executive stakeholders and driving decisions through technical leadership rather than formal authority.
• Experience leading strategic platform evaluations, vendor assessments, and build-versus-buy decisions.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

Preferred Experience

• building large-scale AI products, commercial data platforms, or agentic AI systems.
• Knowledge of payments technology ecosystems and enterprise-scale platform architectures.
• Expertise in AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and multi-region deployments.
• Experience establishing or leading Architecture Review Board functions.
• Industry thought leadership through publications, conference speaking, standards participation, or open-source contributions.
• Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or MBA.

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

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• 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: $254,000 - $407,000 USD

Everyone wants easier ways to pay; we invent them. Checkout lines are slow; we speed them along. Merchants want more sales; we give them data and insights. People need financial access; we connect them. Corporate purchasing is complicated; we make it simple. Commuters are busy; we speed them on their way. Governments need greater efficiencies; we help create them. Small businesses are virtual; we give them access to a world of buyers. Retailers want to fight fraud; we provide the tools.