Lead AI Software 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 Lead AI Software Engineer Job Title: Lead Software Engineer AI Lead, Treasury Service Location: Pune, India Overview: The Treasury Services Program is one of the key businesses of Mastercard. It provides vital systems and services to the Mastercard Treasury and Finance team to support global payments/customer funds movement, treasury operations, liquidity, foreign exchange, risk management, and capital management. As the engineering team of Treasury Service, we are directly responsible for moving billions of dollars in domestic and cross-border currencies worldwide daily between our customers. We are an agile development organization with teams distributed globally across technology hubs in the U.S., India, and Ireland. We’re looking for a senior technical leader to drive our AI initiatives—from building high-impact Proofs of Concept (PoCs) to productionizing Model Control Protocols (MCPs), evolving our AI framework, and supporting the drive to AI adoption across the entire Payment Network. You’ll own technical design, implementation, and collaborate cross-functionally to deliver scalable, secure, and reliable AI-powered systems using Python and TypeScript. Roles: All staff at Mastercard are expected to demonstrate 'Mastercard Way' cultural values daily - Create Value, Grow Together, Move Fast. As a Lead Software Engineer at Mastercard, you are expected to perform the following general duties: We’re looking for a senior technical leader to drive our AI initiatives—from building high-impact Proofs of Concept (PoCs) to productionizing Model Control Protocols (MCPs), evolving our AI framework, and supporting the drive to AI adoption across the entire Payment Network. You’ll own technical design, implementation, and collaborate cross-functionally to deliver scalable, secure, and reliable AI-powered systems using Python and TypeScript. Responsibilities: Architecture & Leadership o Own end-to-end architecture of AI services, data pipelines, and inference systems. o Design and implement MCPs, AI Agents, AI Workflow (or similar orchestration/control layers) to standardize model lifecycle, governance, and observability. o Lead PoCs from ideation → design → build → evaluation → handoff to production teams. o Establish engineering best practices (code quality, testing, CI/CD, security) according to Mastercard standard. • Framework Development o Enhance and modularize existing AI components (e.g., MCs, Prompts). o Build reusable SDKs and TypeScript APIs for product teams to integrate AI reliably. o Optimize performance and cost (batch vs. streaming, GPU/CPU utilization, caching, quantization, distillation). • Modeling & Integration o Work with AI engineers/data scientists on model selection, fine-tuning, prompt engineering, guardrails, and evaluation. o Integrate LLMs/Transformers with application logic (retrieval, grounding, tool-use, function calling). o Implement vector search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), including data curation and evaluation. • Operational Excellence o Ensure compliance with security & privacy (PII handling, role-based access, auditability). Partner with Product, Security, and Compliance to meet business and regulatory requirements. Qualifications: Education/Experience: 10–12+ years in software engineering with 3–5+ years in AI/ML systems; or equivalent track record delivering production AI systems at scale. • Languages: Expert in Python (data/ML, services) and TypeScript (APIs, SDKs, tooling). • Framework: Hands-on FastMCP, Dyad.sh, N8N, or similar ecosystems; experience with LLMs and Transformers. • Backend & APIs: Strong with FastAPI/Flask/Django; REST/GraphQL API design, authentication/authorization (OAuth2, JWT), rate limiting, and performance tuning. • Cloud & DevOps: Proficient with AWS/Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, IaC (Terraform/CloudFormation), and CI/CD (GitHub Actions/GitLab CI). • Data & Retrieval: Experience with ETL/data pipelines (Airflow/Flyte/Prefect), object storage, feature stores, and vector databases (pgvector, Weaviate). • Testing & Quality: Unit/integration tests for ML and services; model evaluation frameworks; can define SLAs/SLOs for AI systems. • Security & Governance: Practical knowledge of data privacy, model governance, and secure secrets management. ________________________________________ Preferred/Bonus Skills • Experience designing MCPs (or comparable orchestration/control protocols) for model lifecycle and policy enforcement. • Prompt engineering, RAG, grounding with enterprise data, and safety/guardrail frameworks. • Performance engineering: quantization, distillation, ONNX/TensorRT, GPU scheduling. • Event-driven systems (Kafka/PubSub), streaming inference, and cost-aware autoscaling. • Familiarity with LangChain, LlamaIndex, OpenAI/Azure OpenAI, bedrock, or on-prem LLM serving (vLLM/Triton). ________________________________________ Core Competencies • Systems Thinking: Designs for scale, reliability, and maintainability; clear tradeoff communication. • Technical Leadership: Mentors engineers, raises the bar on design reviews and code quality. • Product Mindset: Ties model metrics to business outcomes; balances innovation and delivery. • Communication: Explains complex concepts to diverse stakeholders—execs, product, and compliance. • Ownership & Execution: Bias to action; ships PoCs fast and production features reliably. ________________________________________ What You’ll Work On • Build MCPs that standardize system integration, security control, and integrate with AI workflow/Agents. • Deliver VibCoding & RAG: RAG-powered assistant with TypeScript SDK and Python inference service for Payment Network operators. • Enhance the AI framework with reusable components: data connectors, evaluation harness, fallback/guardrails, prompt templates, and A/B testing tools. ________________________________________ Tech Stack • Python: PyTorch, TensorFlow, FastMCP, FastAPI, Pandas • TypeScript: Node.js, Express/Fastify, SDKs, tooling (tsup/esbuild) • Infra: Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, GitHub Actions Data & Retrieval: Airflow/Prefect, S3/GCS, Postgres, Redis, Weaviate/pgvector 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.