Principal Software Engineer - Applications Architect

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 Principal Software Engineer - Applications Architect Principal Engineer – Applications Architect Worker Type Level Location Number of Positions Employee L5 Pune 1 Who is Mastercard? Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses realize their greatest potential. Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all. Overview Payments Network Technology is seeking a Principal Engineer to provide technical and delivery leadership across payment-network initiatives. This role will connect architecture, release coordination, dependency management, and engineering execution across multiple teams. Roles and Responsibilities • Define and evolve architecture for secure, scalable, and highly available payment-network services, predominantly Java based. • Coordinate technical delivery across teams, including releases, dependencies, defect triage, and resolution of cross-cutting issues. • Partner with product and engineering leaders to translate business needs into architecture and implementation direction. • Lead design reviews and drive decisions on APIs, service interactions, data, resiliency, security, and operational readiness. • Identify reuse opportunities and promote common engineering patterns and standards. • Mentor engineers and technical leads across teams. • Communicate architecture trade-offs, delivery risks, and recommendations to senior stakeholders. • Provide technical or product leadership, mentor team members, and drive decisions across multiple workstreams. Essential Skills • Extensive software architecture and hands-on Java development experience in large-scale systems. • Deep knowledge of Java, Spring Boot, microservices, REST APIs, messaging, event-driven architecture especially Kafka, SQL/NoSQL, and cloud-native platforms. • Experience with secure engineering, DevOps, performance, resiliency, observability, and production-readiness practices. • Ability to lead through influence across organizational boundaries. • Bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology, engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience. All About You • Experience working in Agile delivery environments and across the software development lifecycle. • Clear communication, collaboration, problem-solving, and stakeholder-management skills. • Ability to work with globally distributed product, engineering, architecture, operations, and business teams. • Experience leading SOAR (Solution Architecture Review) and driving technical strategy, architecture alignment, engineering excellence, and risk management across multiple teams. • Experience creating and reviewing TADs (Technical Architecture Documents) for large-scale distributed systems, ensuring alignment with ente