This role pays more than
81%
of similar roles. Most pay
$149,850–$208,800
— the shaded band above.
At the midpoint, this role pays about
$214k
versus about
$179k
for comparable roles.
Based on 240 similar postings.
Employer
About Mastercard
Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry, processing transactions between financial institutions and merchants using its extensive network of credit, debit, and prepaid card products. Industry: Payments Technology & Financial Services
Mastercard currently has
130 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$115,000–$185,500
across 116 roles with salary data.
As a Lead Software Engineer, you will join the team responsible for building backend and full-stack capabilities for the next-generation Decision Management Platform. This real-time system is designed to score and approve billions of payment transactions. You will own technical areas end to end, transforming ambiguous goals into reliable services, APIs, workflow tools, and user-facing experiences. Your daily responsibilities include writing code, shaping architecture, mentoring engineers, and conducting design and code reviews to ensure high quality. The role requires expertise in backend services, API design, domain modeling, and building scalable, low-latency, event-driven, or distributed systems. You will also work with AI coding tools and potentially engage with AI/ML systems, LLM-enabled experiences, and agentic harnesses. Key technical competencies include data modeling, secure coding, performance optimization, and troubleshooting within the payment processing domain.
Own backend and full-stack capabilities from initial problem definition through deployment and production support.
Design and build scalable services, APIs, workflow tools, and user-facing frontend experiences.
Set technical direction and make pragmatic architecture decisions to ensure maintainable solutions.
Conduct design and code reviews to improve engineering quality and reduce system complexity.
Write high-quality code and build prototypes using AI coding tools to increase team effectiveness.
Translate ambiguous product goals into reliable software, APIs, and measurable outcomes.
Mentor engineers through hands-on coaching and clear technical communication.
What we're looking for
Strong hands-on software engineering experience building backend services, APIs, full-stack applications, or complex production systems.
Experience owning technical areas end to end, including design, implementation, testing, deployment, and production support.
Strong fundamentals in software design, architecture, API design, data modeling, testing, code review, secure coding, performance, and troubleshooting.
Experience mentoring engineers and influencing technical direction through design reviews, code reviews, and clear communication.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
Experience with high-throughput, low-latency, event-driven, or distributed systems (preferred).
Experience with decisioning, rules, data, feature platforms, or real-time transaction processing (preferred).
Experience with AI/ML systems, LLM-enabled products, or AI-assisted development (preferred).