Senior Principal Software Engineer – R&D

About the role

Mastercard is seeking a Senior Principal Software Engineer to lead the technical direction of early‑stage, large‑scale product concepts within the Foundry R&D team in Toronto. You will shape architecture across multiple technology stacks, drive AI‑enabled solutions, and influence global commerce initiatives.

Key responsibilities

• Define highly scalable solution architectures for complex, early‑stage products across data platforms and environments.
• Establish engineering best practices for responsible AI use, including AI‑assisted development, evaluation, observability, and production readiness.
• Set technical direction and lead implementation for data platforms, creating reusable patterns that scale across products.
• Identify high‑impact technical risks, make architecture decisions under uncertainty, and prototype to de‑risk concepts before market validation.
• Coach senior engineers, review critical designs, raise quality standards, and create practices that improve delivery across teams.

Required profile

• Hands‑on experience building 0‑to‑1 applications with Generative AI, LLMs, or agentic patterns.
• Proven ability to set technical strategy for complex initiatives and influence senior stakeholders without direct authority.
• Strong business acumen with a track record of applying technology to solve business problems.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and cross‑functional collaboration experience.

Required skills

• Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), agentic patterns
• AI frameworks/SDKs such as LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, Codex SDK
• Cloud platforms: Databricks, Snowflake, AWS, Azure
• AI/ML, data analytics, data quality, data privacy, data localization
• Java, Spring Boot, React, TypeScript, PostgreSQL

What we offer

• Competitive salary range: $208,000 – $333,000 CAD per year.
• Eligibility for a discretionary annual incentive program.