Principal Software Engineer

Mastercard • O'fallon, MO

3d • $170,000 - $281,000 • Onsite

About The Position

The Principal Software Engineer is a senior individual contributor within Architecture & Technology (A&T), responsible for driving enterprise engineering strategy, architecture standards, and technology excellence across Mastercard. This role provides deep technical leadership across distributed systems, cloud-native platforms, resiliency, observability, and software engineering practices while influencing technology direction across multiple teams and domains. The Principal Engineer partners with senior engineering leaders, architects, and platform organizations to define architectural standards, establish reusable patterns, and guide critical technology decisions. Through technical expertise, thought leadership, and cross-functional influence, this role helps teams build secure, scalable, reliable, and operationally excellent solutions that align with Mastercard's long-term engineering strategy.

Requirements

• Extensive experience designing and delivering highly scalable, resilient, and secure enterprise software solutions.
• Deep expertise in software architecture, cloud platforms, microservices, distributed systems, and platform engineering.
• Proven ability to influence technical strategy and architectural direction across multiple teams and business domains.
• Strong experience establishing engineering standards, governance models, architecture frameworks, and operational excellence practices.
• Expertise in reliability engineering, observability, performance optimization, and production operations.
• Experience developing reusable platforms, shared services, and enterprise technology capabilities.
• Strong understanding of modern software delivery practices, CI/CD, infrastructure automation, and DevSecOps methodologies.
• Experience evaluating emerging technologies and translating technical innovation into business value.
• Demonstrated success driving cross-functional technical decisions through influence and collaboration.
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to engage technical teams, executives, and business stakeholders.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and strategic thinking capabilities.
• Passion for innovation, continuous learning, and advancing engineering excellence at enterprise scale.

Nice To Haves

• Software Architecture
• Distributed Systems
• Cloud Platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP)
• Microservices
• Platform Engineering
• Reliability Engineering (SRE)
• Observability & Monitoring
• AI/LLM Engineering Solutions
• DevSecOps & CI/CD
• Performance & Scalability
• Technical Strategy
• Architecture Governance
• Enterprise Integration
• Engineering Standards & Best Practices

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and architectural guidance across multiple engineering organizations, driving consistent adoption of engineering standards, best practices, and enterprise technology patterns.
• Partner with platform CTOs, architects, and engineering leaders to evaluate technology investments, transformation initiatives, and architecture decisions.
• Lead architecture reviews and technical design discussions, identifying opportunities to improve scalability, resiliency, security, performance, and operational excellence.
• Define and evolve enterprise architecture patterns, reference implementations, decision frameworks, and reusable engineering capabilities.
• Serve as a recognized subject matter expert in cloud-native technologies, distributed systems, platform engineering, observability, and reliability engineering.
• Design and develop AI-enabled engineering tools, architecture assistants, and knowledge platforms that improve engineering productivity and decision-making.
• Drive adoption of AI-powered capabilities that make architecture standards, design guidance, and engineering best practices more accessible across the organization.
• Influence the evolution of Engineering Principles, SDLC, Secure Software Lifecycle Standards (SQLS), and architecture governance practices.
• Guide engineering teams in selecting technologies, architectures, and platform capabilities that align with Mastercard's strategic objectives.
• Promote build-once-run-many, platform reuse, and operational excellence through shared capabilities and engineering best practices.
• Collaborate with Security, Infrastructure Engineering, Product Engineering, and Business Operations teams to strengthen engineering effectiveness and operational readiness.
• Create technical thought leadership, architecture guidance, standards documentation, and executive-level communications that influence organizational engineering direction.
• Mentor senior engineers and architects while fostering a culture of engineering excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement.

Benefits

• insurance (including medical, prescription drug, dental, vision, disability, life insurance)
• flexible spending account and health savings account
• 16 weeks of new parent leave
• up to 20 days of bereavement leave
• 80 hours of Paid Sick and Safe Time
• 25 days of vacation time
• 5 personal days
• 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

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: No Education Listed