Principal Software Engineer, Senior Architect

About the role

The Corporate Technology Solutions (CTS) team is seeking a senior Principal Architect to shape and advance the technical vision behind Mastercard’s most critical corporate platforms. This role sits at the intersection of strategy and execution—driving architecture decisions that modernize how Risk, Compliance, and People & Capabilities technologies operate at global scale.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve target architectures across third party SaaS, full stack engineering, and data platforms, modernizing core components of Mastercard’s corporate technology backbone.
• Drive adoption of modern data technologies and architectural patterns, designing scalable, resilient solutions while championing a data first mindset that enables enterprise analytics and AI outcomes.
• Provide hands on technical leadership and guidance, influencing engineering teams on design best practices, solution trade-offs, and implementation strategies.
• Act as a trusted advisor to senior stakeholders, clearly communicating complex architectural topics in concise, business oriented language to support informed decision making.
• Produce and govern key architectural documentation, ensuring compliance with Mastercard’s engineering principles and security standards.
• Mentor and empower cross functional teams, fostering a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement while governing architectural standards and documentation.

Requirements

• Proven experience operating as a Principal Engineer or equivalent, leading enterprise scale data architecture or platform strategy.
• Advanced expertise in designing, building, and modernizing enterprise-scale systems, including SaaS integrations and full stack custom solutions.
• Exceptional communicator, able to effectively articulate technical details to engineering teams and translate complex architectural concepts into business language for less technical audiences.
• Demonstrated success in modernizing data platforms, with strong understanding of modern data architectures (lakehouse, curated domains, metadata driven pipelines).
• Ability to lead and influence architectural initiatives, partnering effectively across engineering and business teams.
• Hands-on experience with technologies such as Java, REST APIs, middleware and integration, cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Databricks), containers/orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes), data platforms (Cloudera, Spark), and SaaS architecture patterns.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

Skills

• Deep hands-on technical expertise.
• Strong enterprise influence.
• Modern data architectures (lakehouse, curated domains, metadata driven pipelines).
• Effective communication skills.
• Leadership and influence in architectural initiatives.
• Experience with relevant technologies.

Benefits

• 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.
• Tuition reimbursement.

Pay

• Purchase, New York: $195,000 - $323,000 USD
• New York City, New York: $204,000 - $337,000 USD
• O'Fallon, Missouri: $170,000 - $281,000 USD

Schedule

• Full-time