Principal Systems Engineer

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

Principal Systems 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 Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Partnerships and Cashflow division, team is looking for a Principal Systems Engineer to drive our customer experience strategy forward by consistently innovating and problem-solving. The ideal candidate will bring deep expertise in modern software architecture, with a proven ability to design and build cloud-native solutions that operate at global scale and support high transaction volumes.

As a key member of the engineering team, you will help shape a worldwide B2B technology platform that enables businesses of all sizes to seamlessly engage with Mastercard’s SME Program. As part of a global organization, you will design and deliver highly scalable, secure, resilient, and high-performing services capable of supporting a diverse and growing customer base. This is a unique opportunity to play a key role in the continued evolution and expansion of Mastercard’s SME Partnership Program while driving innovative solutions that create meaningful business impact.

Role

• Define and lead the architectural vision for Mastercard’s SME Partnerships platform, delivering secure, scalable, and cloud-native solutions that support global business growth.
• Design and champion modern engineering standards, ensuring all solutions align with 12-factor application principles, enterprise security requirements, and industry best practices.
• Develop and maintain architectural roadmaps, technical blueprints, and service designs that drive the evolution of partnership and Cashflow platforms.
• Partner closely with product, engineering, and technology leaders to translate business objectives into innovative, compliant, and high-performing technology solutions.
• Lead architecture reviews and governance activities to ensure consistency, reliability, scalability, and adherence to enterprise design standards.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship across engineering and architecture teams, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and engineering excellence.
• Represent the Mastercard SME Program as a trusted technical leader, collaborating with Architecture & Technology teams to advance global-scale cloud and hybrid solutions while leveraging AI-driven tools to enhance engineering efficiency and accelerate delivery.

All About You

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong foundation in computer science fundamentals, distributed systems, web applications, APIs, and microservices-based architectures.
• Proven experience designing and delivering cloud-native solutions using technologies such as Azure, AWS, Kafka, Kubernetes, and containerized platforms.
• Demonstrated success building and scaling high-volume transactional systems within financial services, banking, payments, or other mission-critical environments.
• Deep expertise developing large-scale backend services using Java, Spring, Spring Boot, Kafka, and modern event-driven architectures.
• Proficiency with modern web technologies, including HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and front-end frameworks such as React.
• Extensive experience designing and optimizing data solutions using PostgreSQL, NoSQL databases, and other storage technologies at enterprise scale.
• Hands-on experience with automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, Git-based development workflows, and modern software delivery practices.
• Strong collaborator and mentor who effectively partners with engineers, architects, product managers, and cross-functional stakeholders to deliver impactful solutions.
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to influence both technical and non-technical

#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.

Pay Ranges

Atlanta, Georgia: $170,000 - $281,000 USD