Lead Product Manager - Technical

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 Product Manager - Technical

In the milliseconds between a card swipe and an authorization response, Mastercard’s Authorization Decisioning platforms deliver critical, market‑facing services—including industry‑leading fraud detection—at global scale. These platforms apply advanced AI and decisioning technologies to billions of transactions each day, forming part of the world’s essential financial infrastructure.

We are seeking a Lead Product Manager – Technical to join the AI & Decision Product Enablement (AI & DPE) organization, supporting the Authorization Decisioning platform. This role owns the definition, evolution, and delivery of high‑performance, real‑time AI and decisioning capabilities that process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second to protect payments at global scale.

Role Summary
As a Lead PM‑T, you will own the product vision, roadmap, and backlog for complex, highly technical platform capabilities. You will partner closely with Engineering, Architecture, TPMs, UX, and business stakeholders to translate customer and business needs into clear, actionable execution plans. Working backwards from outcomes, you will drive prioritization, trade‑off decisions, and delivery of scalable, resilient, and high‑quality solutions.
This role requires deep technical fluency, strong product judgment, and the ability to operate independently in a fast‑paced, ambiguous environment.

Key Responsibilities

Product Strategy & Ownership

Own product vision, roadmap, and backlog for platform capabilities aligned to business objectives and measurable outcomes
Champion customer obsession by deeply understanding customer needs, ecosystem dynamics, and market drivers
Make informed prioritization and trade‑off decisions based on value, risk, and long‑term platform strategy

Technical Product Management

Develop a deep understanding of the platform architecture and surrounding ecosystem
Produce high‑quality functional artifacts for Engineering, including system flows, sequence diagrams, APIs, and interface specifications
Translate system designs into well‑defined epics, features, and user stories with clear acceptance criteria

Backlog & Delivery Excellence

Lead story elaboration and refinement sessions; ensure features are execution‑ready
Partner with TPMs and Engineering to ensure clarity, alignment, and delivery readiness
Validate technical feasibility through rigorous analysis of application software and platform constraints

Agile & Continuous Improvement

Model and advocate for agile best practices across the product lifecycle
Use data and runtime metrics to evaluate outcomes, guide backlog decisions, and drive continuous improvement
Optimize processes, roles, and delivery execution for speed, quality, and reliability

Stakeholder Leadership

Collaborate across global, cross‑functional teams to align priorities and manage dependencies
Communicate clearly and effectively with executives, peers, and engineering teams
Influence without authority while building trusted, long‑term partnerships

Experience & Skills

Several years of product management or technical product leadership experience delivering complex platforms or services
Strong technical foundation with the ability to understand system design, architecture, and backend transaction systems
Proven experience owning roadmaps, backlogs, and end‑to‑end delivery from concept through deployment
Demonstrated ability to operate independently, thrive in ambiguity, and drive clarity
Excellent written and verbal communication skills with technical and non‑technical audiences

Product & Delivery Expertise

Deep experience with agile delivery methodologies (Scrum, Kanban) and Lean product management
Expertise in decomposing requirements into clear, actionable user stories with defined acceptance and exit criteria
Strong data‑driven decision‑making skills using SMART metrics (leading and lagging indicators)

Preferred

Payments, fraud, or financial transaction system experience
Background in software development or engineering

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.