Lead Software Quality Engineer

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

Lead Software Quality Engineer

Job Overview:
As a Lead Software Quality Engineer in the Virtual Card domain, you will lead software quality engineering efforts across secure, scalable, and real-time virtual card issuance and transaction systems. You will define and execute the QE roadmap, build automation frameworks, and ensure compliance with industry and regulatory standards (e.g., PCI DSS, PSD2, GDPR). This role blends deep domain expertise with strong software engineering and leadership capabilities to deliver high-quality, resilient solutions in a fast-evolving payments ecosystem.
You will also contribute to strategic planning, architecture, and delivery of software solutions, ensuring alignment with business goals, service-level agreements (SLAs), and compliance requirements.

Key Responsibilities:
Leadership & Strategy

• Lead quality engineering across virtual card platforms, aligning with business goals and regulatory expectations.
• Define and execute the QE roadmap for virtual card issuance, lifecycle management, and transaction flows.
• Drive innovation, cost-effectiveness, and faster time-to-market through strategic planning and solution architecture.
• Mentor and coach QE team members, fostering a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and technical excellence.
• Represent QE in compliance audits, risk assessments, and executive presentations.

Domain-Specific Quality Engineering

• Design and implement test strategies for virtual card provisioning, tokenization, authorization, and fraud prevention.
• Ensure test coverage across APIs, mobile SDKs, and backend services.
• Validate integration with card networks, token service providers, and fraud detection systems.

Automation, Performance & Engineering Excellence

• Build and maintain scalable test automation frameworks using tools like Selenium, JUnit, JBehave, REST-assured.
• Integrate quality gates into CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, Bamboo) and ensure 80%+ code coverage using tools like Sonar or Clover.
• Lead performance benchmarking and stress testing using JMeter, LoadRunner, or similar tools.
• Drive shift-left testing, TDD/BDD practices, and early automation across the SDLC.
• Ensure cross-browser/device compatibility and deployment quality for web and mobile applications.

Compliance, Risk & Quality Governance

• Ensure quality processes align with PCI DSS, GDPR, and internal audit controls.
• Lead quality assurance and control processes including requirements, design, code, and security reviews.
• Define quality metrics, test coverage goals, and defect management processes.
• Ensure compliance with audit requirements and represent the team during compliance reviews.

Collaboration & Delivery

• Partner with product managers, architects, and developers to define quality KPIs and release criteria.
• Participate in design and architecture reviews to ensure testability and resilience.
• Lead root cause analysis and resolution of production issues, ensuring continuous feedback into development.
• Collaborate with project managers to define technical scope, cost/time estimates, and manage delivery risks.

Innovation & Continuous Improvement

• Evaluate emerging tools and technologies in the virtual card and payments space.
• Conduct PoCs and recommend solutions to improve test efficiency, coverage, and observability.
• Promote a data-driven approach to quality through dashboards, metrics, and reporting.
• Lead brown-bag sessions, technical training, and knowledge sharing across teams.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years in software quality engineering, with 2+ years in a leadership role.
• Strong domain knowledge in virtual cards, digital payments, or tokenized payment systems.
• Proven experience in test automation, CI/CD, and agile development environments.
• Familiarity with regulatory and security standards in the payments industry.
• Experience with tools like JIRA, Rally, Quality Center, and data virtualization platforms.
• Strong software development skills in Java/.NET/C++, REST, JSON, XML, and related frameworks.
• Exposure to infrastructure tools (e.g., Chef, Puppet) and performance profiling (e.g., JVM, databases).
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to lead cross-functional teams and manage multiple test paths simultaneously.

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.