Principal Software Engineer

SOKIFY PROFESSIONAL PLACEMENT OPPORTUNITY Position: Principal Software Engineer Organization: Mastercard Location: Nairobi, Kenya About Mastercard Mastercard is a global technology enterprise focused on revolutionizing the payments industry across more than 210 countries and territories. The organization's vision centers on connecting and strengthening an inclusive digital economy where transactions are secure, simple, smart, and accessible to everyone. Through strategic partnerships, secure networks, and data-driven innovation, Mastercard empowers individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses to unlock their full potential while building a sustainable future. Position Overview Mastercard seeks an accomplished Principal Software Engineer to join the Mastercard Foundry Research and Development team based in Nairobi. You will become a key member of an agile, AI-native development pod responsible for designing and launching innovative large-scale software platforms that transform commerce. This hands-on architectural role involves moving product concepts from initial conception through market validation, with particular focus on leveraging Generative and Agentic AI throughout the entire development lifecycle. As a technical architect in this R&D environment, you will be at the center of designing sophisticated, data-intensive product solutions that operate at scale. You will collaborate with high-performance teams to rapidly prototype, experiment with, and refine AI-native approaches to software engineering while working with extensive Mastercard datasets and other proprietary information sources. Key Responsibilities Your contributions will include designing highly scalable solution architectures for emerging product concepts across diverse technology ecosystems and data platforms. You will serve as a cultural champion for responsible AI adoption and innovation, influencing how the engineering organization approaches artificial intelligence across all product development phases. Your technical leadership will guide projects through the complete lifecycle of architecture, design, implementation, deployment, and release of complex applications and integrations. Additionally, you will shape the technical strategy and oversee the architecture implementation of data platforms within Foundry R&D. You will lead the optimization of AI systems with emphasis on observability, evaluation metrics, and cost efficiency. A critical component involves establishing best practices for responsible AI that prioritize compliance, explainability, and data privacy protection. Finally, you will mentor teams on technical excellence and practical AI integration throughout the product development process. Required Qualifications and Experience You bring hands-on experience architecting and building foundational applications using Generative AI, Large Language Models, or agentic design patterns. Your background demonstrates expertise in leading the complete architecture, design, implementation, and release cycle of complex enterprise products and applications. You have held senior engineering roles in large-scale enterprise environments and possess proficiency with modern AI frameworks and orchestration tools such as LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, or Codex SDK. Your technical depth extends to cloud platforms including Databricks, Snowflake, AWS, and Azure. You possess comprehensive knowledge of AI and machine learning practices with particular strength in data analytics, data product development, data quality assurance, data privacy frameworks, and localization considerations. You use AI as an integral part of your daily engineering practice and can code fluently in Java, Spring Boot, React, Typescript, Postgres, and related object-oriented languages, front-end frameworks, and database technologies. Beyond technical capabilities, you demonstrate strong business acumen with the ability to translate technology solutions into business value. You communicate effectively both verbally and in writing across functional teams and have an established track record as a highly effective technical mentor. You balance deep engineering expertise with a product-focused mindset. Information Security Responsibility All work involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks carries inherent organizational risk. Every team member is responsible for information security compliance, which includes adhering to Mastercard's security policies and practices, protecting the confidentiality and integrity of accessed information, reporting suspected security violations or breaches, and completing all mandatory periodic security training according to organizational guidelines.