Manager, Software Engineering

AI in this role

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

Overview:
Mastercard's Global Credit Authorization team is seeking a Manager, Software Engineering to lead the development of highly scalable, mission-critical payment authorization systems that power billions of transactions worldwide. This role is ideal for a technical leader with strong expertise in C/C++ and distributed systems who enjoys building high-performing teams while remaining actively engaged in architecture, design, and software delivery.
In this role, you will lead a team of 5-10 engineers responsible for developing and supporting low-latency, high-throughput authorization services that operate at global scale. You will balance people leadership with hands-on technical contributions, guiding architectural decisions, mentoring engineers, and driving engineering excellence across the software development lifecycle.
You will play a key role in modernizing platforms, improving resiliency and performance, and adopting emerging technologies that help shape the future of digital payments. The position offers the opportunity to solve complex technical challenges in an environment where reliability, security, scalability, and availability are paramount.
This is a hybrid position based in O'Fallon, MO, requiring three days per week onsite.

Role:
• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of software engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Provide technical leadership and architectural direction for high-performance payment authorization platforms built primarily in C/C++.
• Partner with engineering, product, and business stakeholders to define technology roadmaps and deliver innovative solutions aligned with business objectives.
• Drive the design and development of scalable, resilient, and highly available distributed systems that support real-time transaction processing.
• Remain hands-on with design reviews, code reviews, troubleshooting, and performance optimization efforts.
• Establish and promote engineering best practices related to software design, coding standards, testing, observability, and operational excellence.
• Champion system reliability, security, resiliency, and performance across all phases of development and production operations.
• Foster Agile development practices, continuous integration, automated testing, and continuous delivery.
• Collaborate with global teams to manage priorities, dependencies, and deliverables across multiple initiatives.

All About You:
• Proven experience as a Software Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, Technical Lead, Architect, or Engineering Manager leading software development teams.
• Strong hands-on programming experience in C and C++, including modern C++ standards, multithreading, memory management, and performance optimization.
• Experience building and supporting high-performance, low-latency, mission-critical distributed systems in a Linux or Unix-based environment.
• Working knowledge of Java and related enterprise development frameworks is a plus.
• Strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, object-oriented design, design patterns, and software architecture principles.
• Familiarity with relational databases and data technologies such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, or similar platforms.
• Experience with cloud technologies, containerization, and orchestration platforms, including Docker and Kubernetes, is highly desirable.
• Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines, automated testing frameworks, DevOps practices, and observability tooling.
• Ability to drive technical strategy while effectively managing people, projects, and stakeholder expectations.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills with the ability to influence technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience working in Agile development environments with distributed global teams.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or equivalent practical experience.

This role is not eligible for Mastercard’s work authorization sponsorship. As such, candidates must be eligible to work in the United States, now as well as in the future, without employer sponsorship.

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 01/04/2027. If the fill date has passed, Mastercard intends to fill this position as soon as possible.

Pay Ranges

O'Fallon, Missouri: $140,000 - $231,000 USD

How we rate this

Manager, Software Engineering at Mastercard rates 36 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.