Role Overview
The team is looking for a Lead Software Engineer to
help build the next generation of intelligent, agentic products and platforms
powering the Mastercard Virtual C-Suite. This is a hands-on technical
leadership role for an experienced engineer who combines strong software
engineering fundamentals with practical experience building production-ready AI
systems.
You will lead the design and delivery of secure, scalable, and reliable agentic
applications that can reason, orchestrate tools, interact with enterprise
systems, and deliver measurable business value. You will work closely with
Applied AI, Data Science, Product, Security, and Platform teams to move from
concept to experimentation to governed production deployment.
This role will suit a builder who enjoys solving complex problems, working
across disciplines, and helping teams deliver high-quality software at pace. We
are particularly interested in engineers who know how to use AI responsibly
both within products and across the software development lifecycle to improve
quality, productivity, engineering effectiveness, and delivery outcomes.
Based in Ireland, this role offers the opportunity to work on globally scaled
products while collaborating with distributed teams across regions. We welcome
candidates from a range of backgrounds and experiences who are excited by the
opportunity to shape practical AI innovation in a regulated, high-impact
environment.
Position Responsibilities
As a Lead Software Engineer, you will:
· Lead hands-on
architecture, design, and implementation of agentic applications, AI-powered
services, and platform capabilities from concept through production
· Define engineering
patterns and best practices for production AI systems, including evaluation,
monitoring, guardrails, resiliency, cost control, and rollback strategies
· Drive end-to-end software
delivery across the SDLC, from discovery and prototyping to testing, release,
and production operations
· Use engineering tools to
accelerate design, coding, testing, documentation, troubleshooting, and
delivery while maintaining strong engineering judgment and code quality
standards
· Champion an AI-enabled
SDLC by improving developer workflows, automation, test generation, code review
quality, release confidence, and team productivity
· Partner closely with
Product, Applied AI, Data Science, and business stakeholders to translate
ambiguous opportunities into scalable product capabilities
· Provide technical
leadership through architectural decisions, design reviews, code reviews,
hands-on contribution, and mentoring of engineers across the team
· Build highly available,
secure, and maintainable cloud-native services with strong observability,
performance, and operational readiness
· Shape technical roadmaps,
identify short- and long-term platform needs, and influence architecture
choices that enable scale, reuse, and faster delivery
· Collaborate across teams
and business units to solve complex business and engineering problems with
practical, high-impact solution
· Keep senior stakeholders
informed of progress, risks, trade-offs, and implementation decisions in a
clear and concise manner
Requirements
Ideal
Candidate Qualifications:
• Strong software
engineering experience building scalable, secure, maintainable production
systems, including experience leading complex technical initiatives end to end
• Hands-on experience
building and shipping AI-powered products or agentic applications using LLMs,
orchestration frameworks, tool-calling patterns, retrieval, and context-aware
workflows
• Strong understanding of
agentic system design, including planning, reasoning loops, workflow
orchestration, memory, grounding, evaluation, safety, and human-in-the-loop
controls
• Experience taking AI
solutions from prototype to production with sound engineering discipline around
reliability, observability, latency, cost, security, and governance
• Experience with modern AI
frameworks, SDKs, and tooling for building AI applications, agent workflows,
and developer productivity use cases
• Strong programming skills
in one or more backend languages such as Java and Python, with the ability to
write high-quality, well-tested, production-ready code
• Experience with modern
front-end frameworks such as React and/or Next.js for building intuitive
product experiences would be beneficial
• Experience building
services in cloud-native environments using Kubernetes and managed cloud
services on AWS, Azure
• Good understanding of
APIs, distributed systems, event-driven architectures, data pipelines, and
integration patterns across enterprise platforms
• Experience with CI/CD,
automated testing, and engineering automation, including the ability to improve
SDLC efficiency and release quality using AI tools
• Practical experience
using AI coding and engineering assistants to improve productivity across
design, implementation, testing, debugging, documentation, and operational
support
• Strong background in
software security, including authentication, authorisation, secrets management,
encryption, threat modelling, and secure deployment practices for AI-enabled
systems
• Proven ability to create
reusable platforms, frameworks, or internal engineering capabilities that
improve developer experience and accelerate delivery across teams
• Strong product mindset
with the ability to translate user needs and business goals into practical,
high-impact technical solutions
• Excellent collaboration
and communication skills, with experience influencing across engineering,
product, data science, and leadership stakeholders
Skills Matrix
Bucket
| Skills
/ Metrics
|
Must-Have
| · Strong hands-on
programming expertise in Java and Python, with the ability to
design, build, test, and optimise production-grade backend services
· Strong experience with React for building modern, responsive, and intuitive user interfaces for enterprise
applications
· Experience with Next.js or modern front-end architecture patterns alongside React
· Deep experience
building cloud-native applications using containers, Kubernetes,
microservices, and managed cloud services in AWS and/or Azure
· Strong expertise in
designing and building APIs, including RESTful services, service
contracts, versioning, security, and integration patterns
· Proven experience with event-driven
architecture, asynchronous messaging, streaming, and resilient
distributed system design
· Practical experience
using AI tools to improve engineering productivity across coding,
testing, debugging, documentation, and release workflows
· Strong understanding of software engineering quality metrics such as code quality, test
automation, reliability, performance, observability, and maintainability
|
Good to Have
| · Experience building agentic
applications or AI-powered systems using LLMs, orchestration frameworks,
retrieval, tool calling, and workflow automation
· Experience with API
gateway, service mesh, and enterprise integration patterns
· Experience with Kafka,
event streaming platforms, or large-scale messaging ecosystems
· Exposure to CI/CD
automation, infrastructure as code, and release engineering practices
· Experience in regulated
enterprise environments where security, governance, compliance, and
auditability are critical
· Ability to mentor
engineers and influence architecture, engineering standards, and developer
productivity at team level
|
All
About You
• You are a hands-on
technical leader who enjoys building and shipping real products, not just
prototypes
• You have experience
building or operating AI-enabled or agentic applications in production and
understand what it takes to make them secure, reliable, and useful at scale
• You combine strong
software engineering fundamentals with curiosity and good judgment in applying
emerging AI capabilities to real business problems
• You actively use AI to
enhance your own engineering productivity and help teams adopt better ways of
designing, coding, testing, documenting, and operating software
• You understand where AI
can accelerate delivery and where human review, engineering discipline, and
thoughtful controls remain essential
• You care deeply about
customer value, developer experience, quality, resilience, and long-term
maintainability
• You are comfortable
working in collaborative, cross-functional, and internationally distributed
teams
• You raise the bar for
others through mentorship, technical leadership, and a practical,
delivery-focused mindset
• You communicate complex
technical concepts clearly and effectively to both engineering teams and senior
stakeholders