Lead 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

Lead Software Engineer

The Team
The Network Security Architecture team is responsible for defining, designing, and evolving the enterprise network architecture to ensure best in class performance, reliability, and security. This role partners with other Network Architecture teams to set the strategic direction for network security platforms, develops architectural standards and roadmaps, and oversees the design and delivery of complex solutions supporting a global, hybrid, and highly distributed environment.
The Role
As a Lead Software Engineer on the team, you will design and build secure, scalable, automated network security platforms and services. You will integrate multivendor systems, develop tooling and automation that enforce security policy and architectural standards, and drive platform lifecycle excellence from strategy through operations. This role blends software engineering, systems design, and network security architecture to deliver resilient services leveraged across Mastercard’s global network.
Architecture, Design & Platform Ownership
• Define, design, and evolve network security services, automation frameworks, and platform capabilities at scale.
• Develop service-level procedures, reusable patterns, and engineering solutions aligned to architectural standards and business needs.
• Introduce new technologies in alignment with enterprise guidelines and evaluate emerging capabilities that enhance automation, security, or reliability.
• Partner with Network Architecture teams to ensure secure by design integration across data centers, cloud environments, and hybrid infrastructure.
Engineering & Delivery
• Write high-quality, maintainable code to enhance network security tools and automation services.
• Build API-driven integrations across multivendor environments using Python, ensuring consistency, compliance, and operational efficiency.
• Promote engineering excellence through code reviews, automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, code scanning, and secure development practices.
• Automate and simplify processes, actively advocating for an automation first culture across the organization.
Operational Excellence & Lifecycle Management
• Lead complex, cross-service issue resolution and partner closely with peer engineering teams to drive timely solutions.
• Work with internal IT teams to diagnose and resolve platform issues, contributing to long term stability and operational readiness.
• Drive prioritization, roadmap decisions, and trade-off discussions with product partners and architectural leadership.
• Develop and maintain high-quality documentation for architecture, design, operations, and platform standards.
About You
• Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Infrastructure Technologies, or related field—or equivalent experience.
• Advanced proficiency in modern languages such as Go and Python, API integrations, and software-driven automation in multivendor environments.
• Strong understanding of networking fundamentals including TCP/IP, routing, switching, subnets, SDN, and network segmentation.
• Experience engineering and supporting large-scale, platform-level services in global, distributed environments.
• Strong grasp of modern software development methodologies: Git, CI/CD pipelines, testing frameworks, branching strategies, pull requests, and DevOps practices.
• Demonstrated leadership in driving technical direction, guiding engineering teams, and executing complex initiatives.
• Ability to develop operational processes and documentation that support scalable, resilient systems.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to exercise sound technical judgment.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to collaborate effectively across all levels of the organization.
• Self-motivated, organized, and capable of driving work forward with minimal supervision.
• Comfortable adapting to new technologies, evolving architectural direction, and emerging automation patterns.
• You want to work on an awesome team!

Nice to Have
• Experience with Ansible, Terraform, or Chef for infrastructure automation and orchestration.
• Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code