Lead Technical Program Manager

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 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.

The Digital Solutions Engineering team is responsible for Mastercard’s electronic payment system as well as ensures payments are convenient and secure. The products are primarily focused on authentication, tokenization, fraud prevention, and risk mitigation across all payment channels as well as all stakeholders, issuers, acquirers, merchants, processors, and consumers. The key objectives of the solutions are to prove identity, reduce abandonments, reduce fraud, increase approval rates, and secure the payments ecosystem.

We are hiring a Lead Technical Program Manager (TPM) as part of the Authentication Solutions platform. The core Authentication Solutions (3DS and Passkey based) teams use a mix of technologies as we work to revolutionize our technology offerings.

Job Overview:
Technical Program Managers at Mastercard collaborate to define the how and when of our strategic delivery goals. This role plays a pivotal role in driving complex, cross-functional projects and maintain alignment of our goals to organizational objectives. The responsibility of this teammate is to ensure technical solutions are delivered on time and meet the desired outcomes.
We are seeking a Technical Program Manager to drive progress, manage complex projects, and ensure optimal delivery. This role requires a strategic thinker who excels in decision-making, problem decomposition, and effective communication, while maintaining a strong grasp of business context and technical details.

Key Responsibilities:
· Accelerate project progress by making crisp, timely decisions and clearing blockers.
· Navigate difficult situations to find viable paths forward and decompose problems into manageable units from ideation to execution.
· Organize work for optimal delivery, negotiating priorities, facilitating progress, and raising issues to management as needed.
· Maintain TPM artifacts, track SDLC milestones, and manage dependency target dates actively.
· Secure shared understanding and buy-in for solutions, clearly describing their impact on Mastercard and its customers.
· Use communication as a preventive control, ensuring meetings are effective, consensus is built, and decisions are well-documented.
· Optimize approaches, demonstrate improvements using data, and drive continuous improvements through retrospectives, staff meetings, and status updates.
· Proficiently manage scrum delivery, understand business context, customer use cases, and the functionality, architecture, and dependencies of involved systems.
· Represent team services to stakeholders and external partners, bringing developers or SMEs to meetings as necessary.
· Actively manage dependencies, influence vendors and partners, and ensure alignment with program goals.
· Deliver independently while occasionally seeking direction from peers and managers.

All About You:
· Born simplifier.
· Proven experience in technical program management, with a strong ability to make timely decisions and manage complex projects.
· Proficiency in scrum delivery and a track record of optimizing processes and demonstrating improvements with data.
· Deep understanding of business context, customer use cases, system functionality, and industry technologies.
· Excellent communication skills with the ability to lead effective meetings, build consensus, and clearly articulate decisions.
· Experience in managing dependencies, influencing external partners, and representing team services to stakeholders.

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

O'Fallon, Missouri: $122,000 - $207,000 USD