Principal 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

Principal Software Engineer

Who is Mastercard?
Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses realize their greatest potential.
Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all.
Overview
The Enterprise and Risk Compliance Technology team is looking for a Principal Software Engineer, to lead and manage our the Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) area by consistently innovating and problem-solving. The ideal candidate is passionate about the internal partners experience journey, highly motivated, intellectually curious, analytical, and possesses an entrepreneurial mindset.
Role
In this role, you will:
* Collaborate with internal stakeholders to gather and map business requirements, design solutions, and provide technical leadership for implementations and upgrades.
* Identify and implement opportunities to enhance user experience, resolve issues, and support end users effectively.
* Drive continuous platform maturity through strategic planning and execution.
* Act as a liaison between business teams and vendor professional services, ensuring consistent capability uplift and solution alignment.
* Possess strong knowledge of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and enforce adherence to industry-standard development practices.
* Demonstrate deep expertise in Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) platforms and their application in enterprise environments.
* Guide teams to ensure timely delivery of business objectives and high-quality outcomes.
* Partner with cross-functional teams to design and deliver new solutions and system integrations.
* Promote efficiency through automation, process optimization, and continuous improvement initiatives.
* Proactively identify delivery risks and implement mitigation strategies to ensure project success.
* Communicate complex technical scenarios clearly and effectively to diverse stakeholders.
* Build strong working relationships with geographically distributed teams, fostering collaboration and trust.
All About You
•A seasoned technical leader with a proven track record in designing and delivering high-performance, scalable, and resilient platforms. Demonstrates deep architectural acumen, cross-functional leadership, and a commitment to engineering excellence, security, and compliance.
Technical Leadership
* Ensures alignment of software development and operational practices with internal governance frameworks and external regulatory mandates.
* Proactively identifies and mitigates risks related to security, compliance, and operational continuity.
* Embeds compliance controls into the SDLC, including secure coding, access governance, and audit readiness.
* Collaborates with risk and compliance teams to ensure traceability, reporting, and timely remediation of vulnerabilities and incidents.
* Drives awareness and adherence to corporate security policies, including mandatory training, incident response, and data protection standards.
* Supports audit and regulatory reviews through comprehensive documentation, evidence management, and compliance reporting.
* Fosters a culture of accountability, transparency, and continuous improvement in risk and compliance practices.
* Expert in architecting and building high-throughput, low-latency systems with a focus on scalability and operational resilience.
* Strong command of architectural design patterns, core engineering principles, and modern infrastructure components across hardware and software layers.
* Versatile development experience in Java, .NET, JavaScript, and SQL, with strict adherence to secure coding standards (OWASP, CWE, SEI CERT).
* Deep knowledge of DevOps methodologies, infrastructure as code, and cloud-native development strategies.
* Skilled in advanced deployment and testing strategies including A/B testing, canary releases, blue-green deployments, and feature flagging.
* Proficient in CI/CD pipelines, automation frameworks, containerization (e.g., Docker), and virtualization technologies.
* Leads the definition and institutionalization of reference architectures and engineering principles such as poison pill, active/active/active, auto-scaling, and self-healing systems.
* Advocates for full-stack development and end-to-end service ownership to drive accountability and innovation.
* Champions standardization and reuse of software patterns, libraries, and services across teams and domains.
* Coaches teams on estimation, planning, and execution of large-scale, complex programs.
* Facilitates trade-off decisions aligned with business value, balancing regulatory, security, innovation, and technical debt considerations.
* Provides strategic direction on automation, tooling, and platform engineering across business units.
* Communicates complex architectural concepts and implications effectively to executive stakeholders and clients.
* Promotes operational resilience through chaos engineering and proactive failure scenario testing.
* Experienced in Agile methodologies and modern SDLC practices including Scrum, Kanban, DevOps, and Quality Engineering.

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.