At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead innovative software solutions and set technical direction for complex products.
- Company: Join Mastercard's dynamic R&D team in Toronto, shaping the future of commerce.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, health benefits, remote work options, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Other info: Exciting environment with diverse challenges and excellent career advancement opportunities.
- Why this job: Be at the forefront of technology, driving impactful solutions on a global scale.
- Qualifications: Experience in software architecture, AI/ML, and strong collaboration skills required.
The predicted salary is between 135000 - 165000 $ per year.
Mastercard is looking for a Senior Principal Software Development Engineer to join the Mastercard Foundry Research and Development team in our Toronto location. In this role, you will establish the technical direction for complex, early-stage products, drive architecture decisions across teams, and bring innovative solutions to global markets at enterprise scale.
The Senior Principal Software Engineer thrives on setting direction where product concepts are ambiguous, aligning engineering choices to commercial outcomes. Our team is built on a foundation of research and development, mining innovation internally, innovating new product lines with emerging technology, managing new products from inception to market validation and engaging strategically with start-ups to shape the future of commerce with and for our customers. At Mastercard, you will help define the future of commerce globally.
This team will have a diverse focus both in terms of geography and variety of technology challenges driving hard to bring innovative payment solutions and services to market. As a Senior Principal Software Engineer on the R&D team, you will be at the forefront of the design of complex, large-scale new product concepts spanning Mastercard’s business units.
- Define highly scalable solution architectures for complex, early-stage product concepts across technology stacks, data platforms, and environments.
- Establish engineering best practices that accelerate responsible use of AI across solution architecture and software delivery, including patterns for AI-assisted development, evaluation, observability, and production readiness.
- Set technical direction for complex applications, interfaces, and integrations from concept through implementation, deployment, and release.
- Set technical strategy and lead architecture implementation for Data Platforms in Foundry R&D, creating reusable patterns that can scale across products.
- Influence technical direction across R&D, product, and technology teams, creating alignment on tradeoffs, delivery risks, and long-term platform choices.
- Identify high-impact technical risks, make architecture decisions under uncertainty, and design experiments or prototypes to de-risk product concepts before market validation.
- Act as a force multiplier for engineering excellence by coaching senior engineers, reviewing critical designs, raising quality standards, and creating technical practices that improve delivery across teams.
Demonstrated ability to set technical strategy for complex initiatives, make architecture decisions under uncertainty, and influence senior technical and business stakeholders without direct authority. Uses AI to innovate on and improve individual and team engineering practices. Hands-on experience architecting and building 0-to-1 applications using Generative AI, LLMs, or agentic patterns.
Excellent verbal and written communication and cross-functional collaboration skills. Experience representing technical work through internal forums, external conferences, publications, open-source contributions, patents, or other thought leadership channels. Strong working knowledge of AI/ML, data analytics, and data product development with emphasis on data quality, data privacy, and localization. Strong business acumen and ability to apply technology to solve business problems.
Proven track record raising the technical capability of senior engineers and teams through coaching, design review, standards-setting, and technical leadership. Deep experience with one or more modern AI frameworks and SDKs for agent orchestration, AI application development, or coding-agent workflows, such as LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, or Codex SDK. Expertise in cloud platforms such as Databricks, Snowflake, AWS, and Azure. Expertise with Java, Spring Boot, React, Typescript, Postgres, and other object-oriented languages, front-end frameworks, and database technologies. Proven track record creating reusable architecture patterns, platforms, or engineering practices that accelerate delivery, reduce technical risk, or improve quality across an organization.
Senior Principal Software Engineer in Toronto employer: Mastercard
Mastercard is an exceptional employer that fosters a dynamic work culture focused on innovation and collaboration. As a Strategic Partnerships Director, you will benefit from extensive professional growth opportunities while working in a vibrant environment that values diversity and inclusion. Located in a hub of technological advancement, Mastercard offers competitive benefits and the chance to make a meaningful impact in the payments ecosystem.
