Director of Software Engineering – AI & Big Data Platforms

About the role

Mastercard is seeking a Director of Software Engineering to lead a strategic R&D group that builds and operates its core big‑data platform, consumer‑facing AI agent, and analytics ecosystem. The role reports to the VP of R&D and is responsible for delivering production‑scale, AI‑driven commerce experiences to millions of users worldwide.

Key responsibilities

• Lead and grow five engineering teams covering core infrastructure, data platform services, LLM‑based consumer agents, and analytics pipelines.
• Define and execute the technical vision and architecture for scalable, reliable, and secure systems.
• Drive cross‑functional R&D initiatives with high business impact, collaborating with Product, Data Science, and Business stakeholders.
• Ensure platform scalability, performance, reliability, and quality across all services.
• Foster a data‑driven engineering culture using KPIs, analytics, and measurable outcomes.
• Mentor engineering managers and senior engineers to expand leadership capacity.

Required profile

• 4+ years of senior engineering leadership experience, including managing multiple teams and managers.
• Strong background in infrastructure/platform engineering and large‑scale production environments.
• Experience building or leading AI/LLM‑based consumer products.
• Deep understanding of analytics ecosystems, telemetry, and data pipelines.

Required skills

• Big data platform design and implementation
• Artificial intelligence and large language models (LLM)
• Distributed systems architecture
• Infrastructure and platform engineering at scale
• Analytics ecosystems and data pipeline development