Principal Software Engineer (AI Solution 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 (AI Solution Architect) Principal Software Engineer (AI Solution Architect) - Foundry R&D, Singapore We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer (AI Solution Architect) to join Mastercard Foundry R&D. You will help drive innovation by exploring new technologies and shaping scalable architectures for AI‑powered solutions. The ideal candidate is hands‑on, curious, analytical, and comfortable working in fast‑moving R&D environments. What you'll do * Architect scalable solutions: Design lightweight, modular architectures that support rapid experimentation and can scale toward production. Build systems with clear separation of components, reusable patterns, and flexible deployment paths across cloud environments. * Architect AI solutions: Lead end‑to‑end AI solution design, from understanding requirements to defining data flows, model selection, integration patterns, and technical blueprints. Balance innovation with practical considerations such as performance, cost, and security. * Define best practices and governance: Establish standards for AI development, infrastructure choices, and data pipelines. Apply Responsible AI guidelines, including data handling, fairness considerations, guardrails, and safety controls. Publish reference architectures, templates, and guidance to support adoption across teams. * Cross-functional collaboration: Work with product managers, analysts, engineers, and customers to translate business needs into sound technical designs. Explain architectural decisions clearly and prepare documentation, presentations, and demos for both technical and non‑technical stakeholders. * Technical leadership in delivery: Support engineering teams through design reviews, troubleshooting, and iterative development. Provide guidance to resolve integration challenges and help convert architectural plans into actionable tasks. Contribute to prototypes where needed. * Product transition and scaling: Lead efforts to harden prototypes into reliable products by improving robustness, security, performance, and compliance. Collaborate with platform teams to deploy solutions at scale. * Stay current on AI: Track emerging AI tools, models, and frameworks. Evaluate new techniques, lead experiments, and guide the team in applying modern approaches such as new LLM capabilities or fine‑tuning methods. What you'll bring * Extensive software engineering experience: 15+ years building complex software systems across front‑end, backend, and distributed components. Ability to dive into any part of a system and make informed architectural decisions. * Solution architecture experience: 5+ years translating requirements into scalable architectures involving multiple components, integrations, and services. Familiarity with distributed systems, performance optimization, and security. * Deep AI and ML expertise: Strong understanding of generative AI, large language models, and traditional ML. Hands‑on experience designing and integrating AI systems and selecting appropriate modeling approaches for various problems. * AI integration experience: Practical experience deploying AI models into real applications, such as NLP systems or computer vision. Familiar with frameworks, SDKs, and tools that support AI workflows and prompt‑based systems. * Full-stack and DevOps proficiency: Strong programming skills in languages such as Python and Java/Node.js. Experience with cloud platforms, containers, o ... (truncated, view full listing at source)