Manager, Software Engineering, AI Foundations

Mastercard is hiring a Manager, Software Engineering, AI Foundations in Atlanta, United States. Level rates it ; you can apply on Mastercard.

Level's read on this job

Level rates this role Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
Tools and skills the posting cites include AI evaluation, AI safety and software engineering.
Level classifies it as a lead role.
Level lists 967 other open roles at Mastercard.
The role was posted in the last few days.

AI in this role

Manager of Software Engineering leading AI platform capabilities and agentic experiences at Mastercard.

ai-evaluationai-safetysoftware-engineeringpeople-leadershipai-platformsdistributed-systemsresponsible-ai

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

Manager, Software Engineering, AI Foundations

Overview:

Mastercard is seeking a Manager, Software Engineering to lead the design, development, and delivery of AI platform capabilities that enable intelligent products and agentic experiences across B&MI.

This role combines people leadership, technical ownership, and cross-functional delivery accountability. You will lead one or more engineering teams building reusable AI platform services, integration patterns, and production capabilities. You'll also shape architecture, enforce engineering standards, and make sure solutions meet Mastercard requirements for security, reliability, responsible AI, and governance. This role is ideal for a hands-on engineering leader who can scale teams, shape AI platform direction, and help product teams move AI solutions from experimentation into production.

Role:

• Lead, coach, and develop one or more teams of software engineers by setting clear goals, managing performance, and creating development plans aligned to individual and organizational objectives.
• Build a strong engineering culture focused on ownership, quality, accountability, and continuous improvement, and partner with leadership on hiring, team composition, and long-term planning.
• Guide teams through change and ambiguity, connecting team priorities to broader business and enterprise goals.
• Own end-to-end delivery of complex initiatives across multiple systems, services, or teams. This includes defining roadmaps and priorities with Product and stakeholders, managing dependencies and risks, and resolving cross-team blockers.
• Establish execution frameworks for planning, estimation, and tracking that enable predictable, high-quality delivery.
• Lead development of scalable AI platform services and reusable capabilities that support AI-powered products, intelligent workflows, and agentic systems, designed for secure integration, reliability, observability, and reuse across teams.
• Drive production integration of AI capabilities, including model inference, LLM-based services, orchestration, enterprise data and system connectivity, evaluation, and guardrails.
• Promote shared engineering patterns and standardization to speed up delivery and reduce duplication across teams.
• Define and evolve AI platform architecture in line with enterprise standards for scalability, security, interoperability, and maintainability, and translate complex product, AI, and integration requirements into robust system designs.
• Evaluate new technologies and lead adoption decisions based on business value, technical fit, and long-term sustainability, balancing near-term delivery with platform strategy and technical debt.
• Ensure systems meet Mastercard standards for reliability, security, compliance, performance, and observability, and establish best practices for AI evaluation, guardrails, lifecycle management, and production monitoring.
• Own production health, including troubleshooting, incident management, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement, and drive adoption of code review, CI/CD, automated testing, and secure coding practices.
• Collaborate with AI Engineers, Data Scientists, Product Managers, Architects, and platform teams to deliver integrated AI solutions, and communicate technical strategy, risks, and progress clearly to leadership and partners.

All About You:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• Proven experience leading software engineering teams that deliver shared platforms, distributed systems, or AI-enabled capabilities.
• Strong background in distributed systems, object-oriented programming, and backend engineering (e.g., Java, Python, or similar).
• Hands-on depth in software design and architecture, data structures, code review, and performance engineering.
• Experience designing or integrating production AI capabilities, including LLM-based services, agentic systems, workflow orchestration, model APIs, or related platform patterns.
• Demonstrated ability to drive architecture decisions and influence system design across teams.
• Experience owning delivery of complex, cross-team initiatives end to end.
• Strong understanding of operational practices, including observability, unit, functional, and integration testing, reliability, incident response, system performance, and secure software development.
• Proven people management experience, including performance management, mentoring, and team development.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience building reusable platform capabilities used by multiple product or engineering teams.
• Familiarity with AI evaluation, guardrails, responsible AI practices, and the challenges of running AI-enabled systems in production.
• Experience operating in regulated environments with strong security, governance, risk, and compliance requirements.

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. THIS POSTING RELECTS ONE OR MORE CURRENT VACANCIES ON OUR TEAM, AND MASTERCARD INTENDS TO FILL THIS POSITION BY 02/02/2027. If the fill date has passed, Mastercard intends to fill this position as soon as possible.

Pay Ranges

Atlanta, Georgia: $140,000 - $231,000 USD

How we rate this

Manager, Software Engineering, AI Foundations at Mastercard rates 90 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.

●●●● 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

Manager, Software Engineering, AI Foundations is an open job at Mastercard.
Level rates this role AI Level 4 of 4: Builds AI.
The role is based in Atlanta, Georgia.
The job was posted on November 4, 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

AI EvaluationAI SafetySoftware EngineeringPeople LeadershipAI PlatformsDistributed SystemsResponsible AI

Questions you could be asked

How do you decide that one model's output is better than another's for a given task?
How do you think about the risk of an AI system in this kind of role failing silently?
Tell me about a project where software engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where people leadership was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where ai platforms was part of your work. What did you do?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: AI Evaluation, AI Safety, Software Engineering, People Leadership, and AI Platforms. 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.
Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.

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