Senior Technical Program Manager - job 1 of 2

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

Senior Technical Program Manager

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
The Agentic AI team is looking for a Senior Technical Program Manager – Agentic AI to drive our groundbreaking AI product strategy forward by consistently innovating, problem solving, and keeping complex, multi disciplinary projects on track. The ideal candidate is intellectually curious, passionately entrepreneurial, analytically sharp, and thrives on turning cutting edge research into production scale solutions. You will work side by side with world class AI researchers and engineers, shaping the next generation of autonomous generative AI systems.

Role
• Own the end to end planning, execution, and delivery of large scale agentic AI product initiatives with minimal supervision.
• Lead cross functional delivery across engineering, data science, and research squads: track progress, manage dependencies, surface gaps, and remove blockers to keep programs on schedule.
• Operate within Agile/Scrum frameworks—facilitate ceremonies, champion collaboration, and ensure all work aligns with product road maps, OKRs, and KPIs.
• Partner with Engineering Managers and Research Leads to secure resources, define scope, set priorities, and establish realistic milestones for AI focused features.
• Drive a continuous improvement culture through retrospectives, process streamlining, and lean execution experiments.
• Serve as the primary communication hub: synthesize technical updates for leadership, curate stakeholder briefings, and facilitate high impact meetings.
• Proactively identify and mitigate risks, communicating scope, timelines, and mitigation strategies with crystal clear transparency.


All About You
• Proven track record defining and delivering technical products at scale (platform level experience preferred).
• Strong analytical, investigative, and problem solving ability; can translate data insights into concrete business outcomes.
• Strategic thinker who turns data analytics into clear road maps and measurable results.
• Expert coordinator of multiple stakeholders and vendors across locations; often acts as the single source of truth.
• Independent self starter who maps solutions end to end and drives them to completion.
Desirable / Additional Capabilities (Intermediate level)
• Hands on experience with agentic or autonomous AI systems (LLM driven agents, RL based products).
• Demonstrated curiosity driven learning—rapidly up skilled on emerging AI techniques (e.g., prompt engineering, multi modal models).
• Entrepreneurial flair: built or launched a product/service from concept to market or have a startup background.
• Direct experience with MLOps, model versioning, and serving platforms (KFServing, Seldon, TFX).
• Comfort with large scale data pipelines, streaming data, and distributed compute.
• Proficiency with Python/R, ML libraries (PyTorch, TensorFlow), and data visualisation tools (Plotly, Streamlit).
• Understanding of core data science concepts, model evaluation frameworks, and trade offs around latency, cost, and accuracy.
• Experience designing evaluation frameworks for autonomous agents (safety, alignment, interpretability).
• Personal Traits We Value
• Insatiable curiosity – you constantly ask “what’s possible?” and dive deep into emerging tech.
• Growth mindset – you love learning, iterating, and quickly applying new knowledge.
• Entrepreneurial spirit – you take ownership, make decisions with incomplete data, and thrive in uncertainty.
• Strong collaboration skills – you build trust, influence without authority, and rally teams around a shared vision.

What You’ll Gain
• Direct mentorship from leading AI researchers and senior engineers who have built production grade LLM and agentic systems.
• Ownership of high visibility AI programs that will shape the future of autonomous agents across our platform.
• Exposure to cutting edge AI research (prompt engineering, retrieval augmented generation, RL from human feedback) and the chance to translate breakthroughs into real products.
• A fast paced, innovation first culture where experimentation is encouraged and successful ideas are quickly scaled.
• Competitive compensation, equity, flexible work arrangements, and a learning stipend (conference budget, internal AI labs, etc.).

#AI2
#LI-FT1

Mastercard is a merit-based, inclusive, equal opportunity employer that considers applicants without regard to gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disabled or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We hire the most qualified candidate for the role. In the US or Canada, if you require accommodations or assistance to complete the online application process or during the recruitment process, please contact [email protected] and identify the type of accommodation or assistance you are requesting. Do not include any medical or health information in this email. The Reasonable Accommodations team will respond to your email promptly.

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.

In line with Mastercard’s total compensation philosophy and assuming that the job will be performed in the US, the successful candidate will be offered a competitive base salary and may be eligible for an annual bonus or commissions depending on the role. The base salary offered may vary depending on multiple factors, including but not limited to location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Mastercard benefits for full time (and certain part time) employees generally include: insurance (including medical, prescription drug, dental, vision, disability, life insurance); flexible spending account and health savings account; paid leaves (including 16 weeks of new parent leave and up to 20 days of bereavement leave); 80 hours of Paid Sick and Safe Time, 25 days of vacation time and 5 personal days, pro-rated based on date of hire; 10 annual paid U.S. observed holidays; 401k with a best-in-class company match; deferred compensation for eligible roles; fitness reimbursement or on-site fitness facilities; eligibility for tuition reimbursement; and many more. Mastercard benefits for interns generally include: 56 hours of Paid Sick and Safe Time; jury duty leave; and on-site fitness facilities in some locations.

Pay Ranges

New York City, New York: $113,000 - $188,000 USD