Lead AI Engineer

Overview

Lead AI Engineer at Mastercard. Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. We are driving the future of commerce by enabling secure, simple, and smart transactions. Artificial Intelligence is at the core of our strategy to make Mastercard stronger and commerce safer, smarter and more personal.

The Role

At Mastercard, we're building next-generation AI-powered platforms to drive innovation and impact. As a Lead AI Engineer, you'll work with cutting-edge tools, large language models (LLMs), and emerging frameworks to develop intelligent systems. You'll collaborate with senior engineers, data scientists, and product teams—gaining hands-on experience while contributing to real-world AI solutions. You'll help implement Agentic AI systems, develop backend services, and explore new AI capabilities. Your focus will include prompt engineering, guardrail design, and experimentation to ensure safe, scalable, and effective AI applications.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and enhance AI agents and backend systems for Mastercard's AI platform
• Evaluate LLMs and emerging technologies to identify innovation opportunities
• Design and optimize prompts for LLMs
• Implement safeguards to ensure secure, ethical AI responses
• Build APIs, microservices, and data integrations for AI features
• Write clean, maintainable code following industry best practices
• Stay current with advancements in AI and software engineering

All About You / Qualifications

Why Join Us

At Mastercard, you'll help shape the future of AI in global commerce—solving complex challenges at scale, driving financial inclusion, and reinforcing the trust and security that define our brand. You'll work with world-class talent, cutting-edge technologies, and will make a lasting impact.

Equal Opportunity

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is a merit-based, inclusive, equal opportunity employer that considers applicants without regard to gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disability or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We hire the most qualified candidate for the role. In the US or Canada, if you require accommodations or assistance to complete the online application process or during the recruitment process, please contact reasonable_accommodation@mastercard.com and identify the type of accommodation or assistance you are requesting. Do not include any medical or health information in this email. The Reasonable Accommodations team will respond to your email promptly.

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 :

Compensation and Benefits

In line with Mastercard's total compensation philosophy and assuming that the job will be performed in the US, the successful candidate will be offered a competitive base salary and may be eligible for an annual bonus or commissions depending on the role. The base salary offered may vary based on location, knowledge, skills, and experience. Mastercard benefits for full-time (and certain part-time) employees generally include : health insurance, flexible spending accounts, paid leaves (including 16 weeks of new parent leave and up to 20 days of bereavement leave), 80 hours of Paid Sick and Safe Time, 25 days of vacation, 5 personal days, 10 annual U.S. observed holidays, 401k with company match, deferred compensation for eligible roles, fitness reimbursement or on-site facilities, tuition reimbursement, and more.

Pay Ranges

Arlington, Virginia : $137,000 - $218,000 USD; Fallon, Missouri : $119,000 - $190,000 USD; Purchase, New York : $137,000 - $219,000 USD; San Francisco, California : $143,000 - $228,000 USD

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