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
Our Purpose We connect and power an inclusive digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere. We enable safe, simple, smart, and accessible transactions through secure data, strong networks, partnerships, and innovation. Our culture is driven by our Decency Quotient (DQ), fostering inclusion, respect, and diversity. We believe that diverse perspectives strengthen decision-making, drive innovation, and deliver better business outcomes.
The Mastercard Authentication Program owns how consumer authentication works for both in-store and e-commerce transactional use cases. The primary purpose of this role is to develop and deliver best-of-breed authentication products for e-commerce transactional use cases that will drive uptake and penetration for the products and revenue for Mastercard. The authentication Onboarding and configuration platform
If you want a challenging project that is changing the way people make payments, this is the role for you!
As a Lead Software Engineer, you will be responsible for:• Design and develop secure, reliable, maintainable, and scalable solutions for globally distributed, customer-facing products.• Support development teams and collaborate with stakeholders while promoting agile development practices.• Create a culture of technical excellence, engineering quality, and innovation.• Research, develop, and evaluate technical solution alternatives for business needs using current and emerging technologies and frameworks.• Drive advanced testing strategies, including automation, chaos engineering, and resilience testing, to validate system behavior under failure conditions.• Remain hands-on by contributing to code, including building services and APIs; writing unit, functional, integration, and acceptance tests; and developing architecture fitness functions.• Partner with business and product owners to architect and deliver services that support new products and bundles.• Participate in team agile processes, including prioritization, trade-off discussions, and delivery planning.• Drive architectural design across dependent services, service interactions, and policies.• Design solutions for operational readiness, observability, reliability, and effective production support.• Lead the diagnosis and resolution of complex system issues by applying structured troubleshooting and root-cause analysis practices.• Take ownership of improving the customer experience across a portfolio of services and applications.• Lead and contribute to initiatives that improve software engineering craftsmanship, including mentoring engineers at all levels.• Consult across teams and organizational boundaries to identify synergies and opportunities for reuse.• Conduct technical interviews and help raise the engineering talent bar.
Code Quality and Review Responsibilities• Conduct and lead code reviews, ensuring adherence to coding standards, performance optimization, security best practices, and maintainability.• Establish and enforce code-quality governance practices, including static analysis, peer reviews, and secure coding guidelines.• Mentor engineers through code reviews by promoting clean-code principles, reusable design, and continuous improvement.• Drive consistency in development standards across teams and ensure high-quality, production-ready deliverables.
Engineering Excellence and Fundamentals• Apply strong knowledge of data structures and algorithms to design efficient, scalable, and high-performance systems.• Optimize application performance through effective data modeling, memory management, testing, and monitoring techniques.• Make informed design trade-offs based on computational complexity, scalability, security, maintainability, and system constraints.• Guide teams in applying foundational computer science principles to solve complex engineering problems.
Technologies• Languages and development: Java, J2EE, JavaScript, HTML, CSS• Architecture and integration: Microservices, RESTful APIs, web services, API design and tooling best practices• Frameworks: Spring Boot, Spring Data, Spring Batch, Spring REST, Spring Cloud, Spring AOP, Hibernate, React, Angular• Cloud and DevOps: Kubernetes, Docker, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, CI/CD• Databases: Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Redis• Tools: IntelliJ, Eclipse, Sonar, Git, Maven, Jenkins, Gatling
All About You• Hands-on experience designing software solutions and delivering full-stack applications using modern technologies for large-scale enterprise systems.• Strong experience building Java microservices and developing user-interface components using frameworks such as React or Angular.• Experience deploying applications through CI/CD pipelines, Docker containers, and Kubernetes.• Working knowledge of application security principles, including encryption and decryption, PKI, hashing, JWT, OAuth, OIDC, and zero trust.• Experience designing systems with non-functional requirements in mind, including performance, scalability, availability, extensibility, maintainability, and supportability.• Experience designing applications for operational readiness, including observability, monitoring, reliability, and post-deployment support.• Ability to troubleshoot complex distributed systems, identify root causes, and drive issues through resolution.• Experience applying code-review best practices and maintaining high standards of engineering quality.• Strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, and performance-optimization techniques.• Experience designing and executing automated testing strategies, including unit, functional, integration, and system testing.• Ability to coach teams on full-stack development and end-to-end service ownership.• Skilled in leading trade-off discussions across competing priorities, including security, regulatory requirements, delivery timelines, and technical debt.• Strong communication skills with the ability to clearly articulate complex architectural decisions to technical and business stakeholders.• Experience leading advanced operational and failure-testing practices, such as chaos engineering and resilience testing.• Experience with Agile and modern software development lifecycle practices, including Scrum, Kanban, CI/CD, DevOps, and Quality Engineering.• Ability to operate effectively under pressure while managing complex initiatives and competing priorities.• Adaptability in fast-changing environments with evolving technologies.
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 [email protected] 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.
THIS POSTING RELECTS ONE OR MORE CURRENT VACANCIES ON OUR TEAM, AND MASTERCARD INTENDS TO FILL THIS POSITION BY 12/27/2026.
Pay Ranges
O'Fallon, Missouri: $140,000 - $231,000 USD