Lead Software Engineer

Mastercard is hiring a Lead Software Engineer in Atlanta, United States. Level rates it ; you can apply on Mastercard.

Level's read on this job

Level rates this software engineer role Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
Tools and skills the posting cites include Full Stack, software engineering and system design.
Level classifies it as a lead role.
Level lists 967 other open roles at Mastercard.

AI in this role

Lead Software Engineer for full-stack application development, architecture, and engineering standards across the lifecycle.

Full Stack

software-engineeringsystem-designfrontendbackend

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

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.

Overview

The Commercial Solution team is looking for a Lead Software Engineer-Full Stack to drive our customer experience strategy forward by consistently innovating and problem-solving. The ideal candidate is passionate about the customer experience journey, highly motivated, intellectually curious, analytical, and possesses an entrepreneurial mindset.

Role

• Provide technical leadership and hands-on engineering expertise in the design, development, and delivery of highly scalable, resilient, and secure full-stack applications aligned with enterprise technology strategies.
• Own and influence end-to-end architecture and technical direction, driving the adoption of modern engineering practices, design patterns, and technologies across the application lifecycle.
• Lead the development of complex, high-impact solutions across the front-end and back-end, ensuring performance, scalability, security, reliability, and maintainability.
• Partner with Product, UX, Data & Analytics, DevOps/SRE, and other technology stakeholders to translate business objectives into innovative and sustainable technical solutions.
• Establish and champion engineering standards, development methodologies, code quality, testing, security, and operational best practices across the team and broader engineering organization.
• Serve as a technical mentor and thought leader, coaching engineers, providing architectural guidance, conducting design and code reviews, and fostering a culture of engineering excellence.
• Drive technical initiatives and continuous improvement, proactively identifying opportunities to modernize platforms, improve engineering efficiency, and deliver measurable business and customer impact.

All About You

Essential Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• Full-stack software engineering expertise with hands-on experience developing enterprise applications using Java/Spring Boot and/or Python/Django, as well as modern front-end technologies such as Angular, React, Next.js, and TypeScript.
• Strong software architecture and system design experience, including defining system boundaries, API contracts, data models, and non-functional requirements related to scalability, availability, performance, resilience, and security.
• Proven experience designing and delivering backend services and RESTful APIs, including authentication/authorization, business logic, data access, third-party integrations, API versioning, backward compatibility, and robust error handling.
• Strong knowledge of cloud and DevOps engineering practices, including Docker, Kubernetes, Git, Jenkins, CI/CD, and cloud-native application development and deployment using AWS and/or Azure.
• Experience driving engineering quality, performance, reliability, and security, including automated testing, code quality standards, observability, performance optimization, secure coding practices, and production readiness.
• Demonstrated technical leadership and mentoring experience, with the ability to influence architecture and engineering direction, establish development standards, coach engineers, lead technical discussions, and effectively communicate risks, trade-offs, and recommendations to technical and business stakeholders.

Desirable / Additional Capabilities

• Experience driving application performance, reliability, observability, and production operations, including monitoring, logging, metrics, tracing, alerting, and improving MTTR.
• Strong understanding of secure-by-design development practices, including threat-aware development, dependency management, secrets management, input validation, and enterprise security standards.
• Experience championing quality engineering and accessibility, including automated testing, CI/CD quality gates, responsive design, and WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards.
• Experience modernizing or transforming large-scale enterprise platforms, influencing technology roadmaps, and driving adoption of modern engineering practices and technologies.

#LI-FT1

Mastercard is a merit-based, inclusive, equal opportunity employer that considers applicants without regard to gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disabled or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We hire the most qualified candidate for the role. In the US or Canada, if you require accommodations or assistance to complete the online application process or during the recruitment process, please contact reasonable_accommodation@mastercard.com and identify the type of accommodation or assistance you are requesting. Do not include any medical or health information in this email. The Reasonable Accommodations team will respond to your email promptly.

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.

In line with Mastercard’s total compensation philosophy and assuming that the job will be performed in the US, the successful candidate will be offered a competitive base salary and may be eligible for an annual bonus or commissions depending on the role. The base salary offered may vary depending on multiple factors, including but not limited to location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Mastercard benefits for full time (and certain part time) employees generally include: insurance (including medical, prescription drug, dental, vision, disability, life insurance); flexible spending account and health savings account; paid leaves (including 16 weeks of new parent leave and up to 20 days of bereavement leave); 80 hours of Paid Sick and Safe Time, 25 days of vacation time and 5 personal days, pro-rated based on date of hire; 10 annual paid U.S. observed holidays; 401k with a best-in-class company match; deferred compensation for eligible roles; fitness reimbursement or on-site fitness facilities; eligibility for tuition reimbursement; and many more. Mastercard benefits for interns generally include: 56 hours of Paid Sick and Safe Time; jury duty leave; and on-site fitness facilities in some locations.

How we rate this

Lead Software Engineer at Mastercard rates 0 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Little AI. AI is not part of the work.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Lead Software Engineer is an open job at Mastercard.
Level rates this role AI Level 1 of 4: Little AI.
The role is based in Atlanta, Georgia.
The job was posted on September 3, 2026.
Seniority: lead.
Applications are handled by Mastercard. Apply on Mastercard

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

Software EngineeringSystem DesignFrontendBackendFull Stack

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

C++JavaScript Google Cloud C#SQL Rust

Pay

Typical software engineer job: $167k

This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical software engineer figure when pay comes up. See software engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

Tell me about a project where software engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where system design was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where frontend was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where backend was part of your work. What did you do?
Walk me through how you've used Full Stack in your day-to-day work.

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: Software Engineering, System Design, Frontend, Backend, and Full Stack. 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.

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