Principal Software Architect

Mastercard•O'fallon, MO

22h•Onsite

About The Position

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide, helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper through secure, simple, smart, and accessible digital payments. The company's technology, innovation, partnerships, and networks deliver products and services that help people, businesses, and governments realize their greatest potential. We are seeking a Principal Software Architect to serve as a senior individual contributor and cross-organizational technical leader. This role is designed for an architect who leads through influence, consensus-building, and technical judgment, shaping architectural direction across many teams and stakeholders. As a Principal Architect, you will operate across organizational boundaries, partnering with engineers, engineering leaders, product managers, and senior leadership to address the most complex and consequential technical challenges. You will not manage people directly, but you will mentor senior engineers, guide architectural decisions, and help align the organization around coherent technical direction. This role is inherently collaborative: success depends on the ability to gather input, build shared understanding, and drive alignment among teams with different goals, constraints, and perspectives.

Requirements

10+ years of professional software engineering experience
Proven experience operating at a principal or senior architecture level across multiple teams
Strong track record designing and evolving complex, distributed systems
Deep understanding of modern software architecture patterns (e.g., service-oriented, event-driven, API-centric systems)
Experience with cloud-native architectures and production concerns such as reliability, scalability, observability, and security
Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction through collaboration and consensus rather than authority
Excellent communication skills, including comfort engaging with senior leadership

Nice To Haves

Experience working in platform, shared-services, or foundational infrastructure contexts
Background in environments with high scale, high availability, or meaningful regulatory constraints
Experience helping organizations converge on architectural standards while preserving team autonomy
A reputation for sound judgment and pragmatic decision-making under ambiguity

Responsibilities

Shape and evolve architectural direction across multiple teams and systems through consensus-driven decision making
Identify cross-cutting architectural concerns and guide teams toward shared patterns, principles, and solutions
Evaluate trade-offs between short-term delivery and long-term system health, articulating risks and options clearly
Help the organization converge on architectures that are scalable, resilient, secure, and operationally sound
Act as a trusted technical partner to engineers, engineering managers, product leaders, and senior leadership
Facilitate architectural discussions that bring together diverse viewpoints and constraints
Translate complex technical concepts into clear, actionable guidance for both technical and non-technical audiences
Build strong working relationships across teams to enable alignment without formal authority
Contribute directly to the most complex and high-impact technical problems (approximately 10–20% hands-on)
Lead design spikes, proof-of-concept efforts, and deep technical investigations where clarity is needed
Participate in design and code reviews for critical initiatives to ensure architectural intent is preserved
Support teams during difficult implementation or scaling challenges
Mentor senior engineers and emerging technical leaders across the organization
Raise the quality of engineering through example, coaching, and thoughtful feedback
Promote strong engineering practices in system design, testing, documentation, and operational readiness
Contribute to a culture of technical rigor, collaboration, and continuous improvement

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
eligibility for tuition reimbursement