Lead Software Engineer

Lead Software Engineer at Mastercard scores 45 out of 100 on AI centrality, which makes it AI Level 2 of 4 (Uses AI) on this board. The level measures how much of the work is AI, not seniority.

Lisbon, PortugalleadFull time

AI in this role

Lead software engineering teams building large-scale marketing platforms using modern frameworks and generative AI tools.

databricksjavaspring-bootreactgraphqlawssparkhadoop

software-architecturetechnical-leadershipcloud-transformation

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

Overview
Interested in building the next generation platform that empowers end-to-end marketing campaign management inclusive of audience targeting, campaign execution, and measurement? Our platforms operate at global scale, processing massive volumes of data and enabling data-driven marketing solutions across markets worldwide. The overarching goal of data-driven marketing is to deliver the right content, to the right person, at the right time.

We are looking for individuals who are passionate about reimagining products, features, and services at scale while helping shape the future of digital marketing technology. If you wish to be part of this Priceless® experience, read below.
The Marketing Services (MS) Technology team is looking for a Lead Software Development Engineer (Technical Lead) to provide technical ownership, with an emphasis on engineering efficiency, on-time delivery, innovation, and an outstanding experience for our customers.

The ideal candidate is passionate about architecting and building highly available, large-scale platforms using modern engineering practices. You will work across technologies including Java, Spring Boot, React, GraphQL, Databricks, AWS, Spark, Hadoop, real-time data processing frameworks, and cloud-native architectures.

Our teams leverage GenAI and Agentic AI capabilities throughout the product development lifecycle to accelerate delivery, improve quality, strengthen automation, and drive engineering effectiveness. This role provides an opportunity to lead innovative solutions while helping drive Mastercard's cloud transformation journey and the future of intelligent marketing platforms.

In this role, you will:
• Provide technical leadership and expertise for architecting new platform capabilities.
• Lead teams comprising dynamic UI developers, full-stack engineers, and data engineers to build highly available, large-scale, and fault-tolerant platforms.
• Be responsible for assessing technologies and approaches for integrating backend data services with user interfaces.
• Work closely with team members from across Mastercard to identify functional and system requirements.
• Understand complex application and data flows and bridge the gap between technical and business requirements.
• Drive engineering best practices across software quality, automation, observability, reliability, and performance.
• Design & develop REST APIs and web services using Java, Spring Boot, and modern cloud-native technologies.
• Champion adoption of GenAI, Agentic AI, automation, and modern cloud engineering practices across the software development lifecycle.
• Drive platform modernisation initiatives supporting Mastercard's cloud transformation strategy, including AWS and Databricks-based solutions.

All About You
The ideal candidate for this position is expected to:
• Provide technical thought leadership and expertise for architecting new platform capabilities.
• Be hands-on with Java, Spring Boot, and distributed service architectures (REST APIs).
• Be familiar with modern web development technologies including React and/or Angular, NodeJS, GraphQL, etc.
• Be familiar with Big Data and analytics technologies such as Databricks, Hadoop, Spark, Python, Scala, and cloud-based data platforms.
• Have experience working with real-time or near real-time data ingestion and processing systems.
• Be skilled at architecting large and complex distributed platforms.
• Understand Domain Driven Design (DDD) and Event Driven Design (EDD).
• Build and govern automated quality frameworks based on JUnit and Mockito and have a solid understanding of BDD testing frameworks.
• Understand CI/CD using tools such as Jenkins and automated deployment pipelines.
• Have experience architecting and delivering cloud-native solutions on AWS.
• Demonstrate a proven track record of delivering highly available, observable, automated, resilient, and high-performance products at scale.
• Have experience implementing monitoring, logging, alerting, reliability engineering, and operational excellence practices across the software lifecycle.
• Demonstrate experience using GenAI and AI-assisted development tools to improve engineering productivity, software quality, and delivery outcomes.
• Be familiar with Agile/Scrum methodologies.
• Have demonstrated ability to adapt to new technologies and learn quickly.
• Be strong, confident, and able to communicate solutions and architecture effectively to a wide variety of stakeholders.
• Have a passion for cloud transformation, platform modernisation, and adoption of emerging technologies.
• Last but not least, have a bias for action.

Corporate Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;
Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;
Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and
Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.

Prepare for this job

A free preview built only from this posting: what it asks for, what you could be asked in an interview, and how to adjust your resume.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

Software ArchitectureTechnical LeadershipCloud TransformationDatabricksJavaSpring BootReactGraphql

Questions you could be asked

Tell me about a project where software architecture was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where technical leadership was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where cloud transformation was part of your work. What did you do?
What's a project where you used Databricks hands-on?
Walk me through how you've used Java in your day-to-day work.

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: Software Architecture, Technical Leadership, Cloud Transformation, Databricks, and Java. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them — a tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
Put the AI tool in a bullet point about what you did, not just in a skills list — this role treats it as a required part of the job.

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