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.

We are seeking a hands-on Principal Forward Deployed Engineer to accelerate delivery across Mastercard Services. Modeled on the forward deployed engineering role that leading technology companies embed alongside their most important customers, this position turns that model inward. You will deploy into Services programs as an internal partner who writes production code, unblocks delivery, and puts AI to work in how we build. Reporting to the SVP of Developer Enablement within the Services Enablement & Transformation (SET) organization, you will move to wherever the need is greatest, adding senior engineering capacity during critical spikes, accelerating roadmaps, and helping teams adopt modern, AI-first practices.

The Principal Forward Deployed Engineer is a senior individual contributor who deploys into Services teams to deliver working software and durable capability. Engagements are deliberately fluid. Some last few weeks to help a team ship a critical feature or clear a bottleneck, while others run longer to stand up a capability a program is missing. In every engagement you write production code, pair with the team's engineers, put AI to work in how they build, and leave the team faster and more capable than you found it. Deliver Where It's Needed Most • Embed directly into Services product and engineering teams, writing production-quality code and shipping features alongside them. • Provide surge engineering capacity during critical delivery spikes, helping programs accelerate roadmaps and hit high-stakes milestones without permanently expanding headcount. • Diagnose and clear technical bottlenecks across architecture, performance, integration, tooling, and delivery process. • Fill short-term gaps with deep expertise, standing up new capabilities, and transferring them cleanly to the product team. • Move fluidly across Services as priorities shift, scoping each engagement with program leaders and Developer Enablement so effort lands where it matters most. Engineer AI Into How Services Builds • Design and deploy production-grade AI solutions such as assistants, agents, and multi-agent workflows that solve real problems inside Services programs. • Apply modern AI engineering practices, including LLMs, RAG, and agent frameworks, along with the evaluation, observability, and governance needed to run them safely in production. • Mature AI adoption across the software development lifecycle, including AI-assisted coding, testing, code review, and release. • Evaluate emerging AI capabilities and turn them into reusable patterns and reference implementations that Services teams can adopt. Upskill Teams and Scale What Works • Coach teams on AI-first ways of working