Lead Software Development Engineer

About the Role

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.

What You Will Do

• Software Architecture & Engineering Leadership: Lead software design and architecture decisions across multiple teams and platforms. Define engineering standards for software development, testing, security, operability, and deployment. Conduct architecture reviews and provide technical governance across projects. Mentor engineers and cultivate a culture of engineering excellence.
• Scalable Distributed Systems: Architect highly available, fault-tolerant distributed systems capable of processing millions of transactions daily. Drive performance engineering initiatives including load testing, capacity planning, scalability analysis, and production optimization. Design solutions supporting low latency, high throughput, resiliency, and operational excellence.
• Event-Driven Architecture: Design and implement large-scale event-driven architectures utilizing Kafka and modern messaging patterns. Drive adoption of asynchronous processing and distributed system design best practices.
• Cloud Native Engineering: Lead development and deployment using PCF, Kubernetes, Docker, and CI/CD platforms. Champion platform engineering and infrastructure automation practices.
• Security, Reliability & Operations: Establish secure coding standards and application security best practices. Drive operational readiness, observability, monitoring, and supportability strategies. Lead complex troubleshooting efforts, root cause analysis, and remediation activities. Establish standards for unit, functional, and integration testing.
• Agentic AI Engineering: Lead adoption of AI-assisted development, AI agents, MCP-based integrations, autonomous workflows, and modern engineering productivity tools. Evaluate and implement emerging AI engineering capabilities while ensuring governance and responsible AI practices.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience
• 3+ years leading large-scale distributed system initiatives
• Expert-level Java, Spring Boot, REST APIs, microservices architecture, and distributed systems expertise
• Strong software architecture and software design leadership experience
• Deep expertise in performance engineering and reliability engineering
• Extensive experience implementing secure coding standards and software quality practices
• Experience mentoring engineers and leading technical decision-making
• Deep understanding of observability, monitoring, operability, and production support
• Demonstrated experience with AI-assisted software development, AI agents, MCP, RAG, and agentic workflows
• Strong communication, stakeholder management, and technical leadership skills

Pay

O'Fallon, Missouri: $140,000 - $231,000 USD