below marketmost similar roles pay hereabove market
This role pays more than
50%
of similar roles. Most pay
$142,450–$208,800
— the blue band above.
At the midpoint, this role pays about
$186k
versus about
$176k
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
150 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$122,000–$207,000
across 142 roles with salary data.
The Lead Software Engineer joins the Global Credit Authorization team to design, build, and validate mission-critical, highly available systems for processing secure financial transactions. This role involves developing software and automation solutions using Java and Python to support system validation and engineering objectives. Key responsibilities include defining validation strategies for functional behavior, transaction integrity, resiliency, and performance, while building and troubleshooting lab environments that replicate production architecture. The engineer will apply knowledge of TCP/IP networking, proxies, and load balancers to validate infrastructure behavior. Daily tasks involve executing end-to-end functional, integration, and capacity testing for distributed systems. The position requires troubleshooting complex issues by analyzing logs, traces, and packet captures to ensure operational readiness and reliability for high-throughput, business-critical transaction-processing workflows.
Design, develop, and enhance software, test applications, and automation solutions using Java and/or Python.
Define and execute comprehensive validation strategies for functional behavior, transaction integrity, performance, and resiliency.
Build, configure, and troubleshoot lab and lower-level test environments that replicate production architecture and network configurations.
Develop and execute end-to-end functional, integration, regression, failover, and capacity testing for distributed systems.
Design and implement automated testing frameworks and tools to improve quality and engineering efficiency.
Troubleshoot complex issues by analyzing application code, logs, traces, metrics, and network packet captures to drive root-cause analysis.
Evaluate system scalability and operational readiness under production-like workloads and failure conditions.
Define acceptance criteria, certification documentation, and production-readiness recommendations for mission-critical systems.
What we're looking for
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Previous experience as a Senior or Lead Software Engineer, Software Developer, or Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) on complex enterprise systems.
Hands-on programming experience with Java and/or Python to develop backend services, automation, test utilities, or frameworks.
Experience building, configuring, and troubleshooting test, lab, development, or lower-level environments for distributed applications.
Strong understanding of TCP/IP networking, including persistent connections, routing, proxies, load balancers, DNS, and network troubleshooting.
Experience analyzing packet captures, logs, traces, metrics, and operational telemetry to troubleshoot complex software and network issues.
Experience with functional, integration, resiliency, performance, and end-to-end testing of distributed or highly available systems.
Experience with financial messaging platforms, ISO 8583, payment switching systems, or high-availability transaction-processing environments (preferred).
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