Senior Director Software Engineering Jobs in Virginia

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
Director, Software Engineering
Director, Software Engineering
Mastercard's Business Experimentation & Optimization (BEO) program is seeking a Director, Software Engineering to lead the design, delivery, and evolution of our data platforms, analytics capabilities, and customer-facing solutions. This leader will be responsible for a global engineering organization that develops and operates the end-to-end data and analytics ecosystem powering customer insights and decision-making.
The role will initially focus on leading teams responsible for data ingestion, data engineering and data pipelines, custom analytics, and insight delivery, partnering closely with Product, Data Science, Analytics, and business stakeholders to deliver scalable, high-quality solutions that create measurable customer and business value. Over time, this leader will expand their scope to assume ownership of key customer-facing products and experiences, helping shape the future vision and technology strategy for the BEO platform.
As part of the Services Technology organization, BEO is undergoing a significant technology transformation to modernize how we generate and deliver insights to our customers. This is a highly visible technical leadership opportunity to drive innovation through cloud-native platforms, modern data architectures, AI-enabled capabilities, and emerging technologies including agentic workflows. The successful candidate will play a critical role in shaping the next generation of experimentation, analytics, and insight delivery capabilities across the platform.
This hybrid role is based in Arlington, VA and requires three days per week onsite. The leader will manage a global organization of approximately 25 engineers and engineering leaders, including 4-5 direct reports across the United States, India, and Europe. Success in this role requires strong technical leadership, working with ambiguity in a rapidly changing ecosystem, stakeholder management, and the ability to drive execution across globally distributed teams.
Role:
• Lead engineering teams responsible for ingesting, transforming, and managing large-scale data assets that power analytics and customer-facing insights.
• Build and scale modern data platforms, APIs, and applications that support experimentation, measurement, reporting, and advanced analytics use cases.
• Partner closely with Product, Data Science, and Analytics teams to translate business needs into scalable technical solutions.
• Lead modernization efforts leveraging cloud technologies, AI-enabled workflows, and automation to improve speed, quality, and customer outcomes.
• Champion improvements in developer experience, engineering tooling, and best practices, including the adoption of AI to improve productivity and engineering effectiveness.
• Lead, coach, and develop engineers and engineering managers across global, cross-functional teams.
• Identify, assess, and mitigate technical risks in collaboration with senior technology leaders.
• Foster a culture of innovation, experimentation, and continuous technical learning.
• Set high standards for engineering excellence and elevate team performance.
• Navigate complex cross-team dependencies and drive alignment across stakeholders.
• Promote agile ways of working and enable teams to adapt quickly to changing priorities and insights.
• Engage and influence senior stakeholders on technology direction and product decisions.
• Anticipate and plan for future scaling needs aligned with business growth and customer demand.
All about you:
• Proven experience as an Engineering leader in an agile, production-scale environment.
• Experience leading multiple engineering teams and developing engineering leaders in a global, distributed setup.
• Strong track record of defining architecture, design, and delivery of large-scale, multi-team systems.
• Hands-on familiarity with full-stack, data, and cloud technologies such as Databricks, AWS (Data Services + Agentic/ML Services including EMR, Agent Core, Bedrock etc), .NET/C#, Java, Spring Boot, React, Python, Spark, or similar.
• Strong technical foundation with ability to quickly learn and adopt new technologies.
• Relentless focus on customer value, business outcomes, and delivery excellence.
• Experience improving engineering organizations, structures, and delivery processes at scale.
• Ability to influence across teams, functions, and geographies to drive technical alignment.
• Proven success leading distributed global teams across multiple regions.
• Strong understanding of SDLC methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe) and when to apply them.
• Proven ability to build, mentor, and retain high-performing engineering leaders
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to influence executive, business, and technical stakeholders.
• Strong analytical thinking and decision-making capabilities in ambiguous and complex environments.
• Bachelor's degree in engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field, or equivalent practical experience.
Mastercard is a merit-based, inclusive, equal opportunity employer that considers applicants without regard to gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disabled 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:

• 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.

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 depending on multiple factors, including but not limited to location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Mastercard benefits for full time (and certain part time) employees generally include: insurance (including medical, prescription drug, dental, vision, disability, life insurance); flexible spending account and health savings account; 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 time and 5 personal days, pro-rated based on date of hire; 10 annual paid U.S. observed holidays; 401k with a best-in-class company match; deferred compensation for eligible roles; fitness reimbursement or on-site fitness facilities; eligibility for tuition reimbursement; and many more. Mastercard benefits for interns generally include: 56 hours of Paid Sick and Safe Time; jury duty leave; and on-site fitness facilities in some locations.
Pay Ranges
Arlington, Virginia: $195,000 - $323,000 USD