Manager, Optimization, South LAC

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

Manager, Optimization, South LAC

Overview:

Optimization is a central pillar of the Core Payments strategy and, within LAC, sits under the Consumer Products organization. The Optimization Team is tasked with enhancing the performance of existing portfolios by leveraging benchmarking analytics, actionable insights, and compelling content to unlock key KPIs. Our mission is to accelerate growth in activation and usage across Consumer Products portfolios. This includes increasing approval rates, streamlining customer processes, and elevating the overall consumer experience. To achieve this, the Optimization Team will work in close partnership with colleagues across product, franchise, account teams and services to optimize both digital and physical commerce, focusing on priority customer segments in key markets.

The Role:
The Manager, Optimization Strategy & Execution will play a critical role in driving the execution of Mastercard’s approval rate optimization strategy across Latin America.
This role sits at the intersection of product, data, and market execution, ensuring that optimization initiatives are effectively translated into actionable plans and consistently implemented across markets.
The ideal candidate will combine strong product thinking with cross-functional leadership to drive alignment, enable market teams, and accelerate the adoption of key optimization levers across issuer, acquirer, and merchant portfolios.
Key Responsibilities
1. Drive Regional Execution of Optimization Strategy
• Translate regional optimization priorities into clear, actionable plans for markets
• Partner with Account teams, Franchise (market teams) and Services (D&S, analytics) to ensure consistent execution
• Track progress against key KPIs (approval rates, adoption, engagement) and escalate gaps
2. Orchestrate Cross-Functional Alignment
• Act as a central point of coordination across:
o Product (e.g., POP, Advice Codes, ABU)
o Data & Services
o Market / Franchise teams
• Ensure alignment on priorities, timelines, and responsibilities
• Proactively identify and unblock execution bottlenecks
3. Enable Markets & Drive Adoption of Optimization Levers
• Support account managers and market teams with:
o Clear optimization narratives
o Structured recommendations for issuers
• Drive adoption of key solutions such as:
o POP
o Auth Optimizer/Advice Codes
o ABU
• Ensure markets understand when and how to use each lever
4. Develop and Scale Optimization Playbooks
• Build and maintain standardized optimization frameworks and playbooks across issuers, acquirers, and merchants for specific divisions and markets.
• Translate data insights into repeatable approaches that can scale across markets
• Ensure consistency in how optimization opportunities are identified and executed
5. Support Data-Driven Insights & Performance Tracking
• Identify performance gaps and opportunities for Optimization
• Work with analytics teams to translate insights into clear actions for markets
• Monitor and report on progress, impact, and key trends
6. Strengthen the Optimization Narrative
• Help shape and communicate a clear, compelling value story around approval optimization
• Ensure consistent messaging across markets and stakeholders
• Position optimization as a growth and customer experience lever, not just a technical initiative
All about you:

Key Skills & Experience
Product & Payments Knowledge
• Strong understanding of payments ecosystem, especially issuer authorization flows
• Familiarity with optimization levers (fraud decisioning, tokenization, lifecycle management, etc.)
Cross-Functional Leadership
• Proven ability to work across product, analytics, and regional teams
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills (without direct authority)
Execution & Program Management
• Ability to translate strategy into execution
• Strong follow-through and accountability mindset
• Experience managing initiatives across multiple markets or regions
Data-Driven Thinking
• Comfortable interpreting data and turning insights into action
• Ability to simplify complex analysis into clear recommendations
Communication & Narrative Building
• Ability to craft and communicate clear, structured messages
• Comfortable supporting senior stakeholders and market-facing teams
Success in This Role Looks Like
• Increased adoption of key optimization levers across priority markets
• Improved approval rate performance in targeted segments
• Strong alignment across product, services, and market teams
• Consistent, scalable optimization frameworks used across LAC

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.