Lead Java Developer

Role Overview The team is looking for a Lead Software Engineer tohelp build the next generation of intelligent, agentic products and platformspowering the Mastercard Virtual C-Suite. This is a hands-on technicalleadership role for an experienced engineer who combines strong softwareengineering fundamentals with practical experience building production-ready AIsystems. You will lead the design and delivery of secure, scalable, and reliable agenticapplications that can reason, orchestrate tools, interact with enterprisesystems, and deliver measurable business value. You will work closely withApplied AI, Data Science, Product, Security, and Platform teams to move fromconcept to experimentation to governed production deployment. This role will suit a builder who enjoys solving complex problems, workingacross disciplines, and helping teams deliver high-quality software at pace. Weare particularly interested in engineers who know how to use AI responsiblyboth within products and across the software development lifecycle to improvequality, productivity, engineering effectiveness, and delivery outcomes. Based in Ireland, this role offers the opportunity to work on globally scaledproducts while collaborating with distributed teams across regions. We welcomecandidates from a range of backgrounds and experiences who are excited by theopportunity to shape practical AI innovation in a regulated, high-impactenvironment. Position Responsibilities

As a Lead Software Engineer, you will:

· Lead hands-onarchitecture, design, and implementation of agentic applications, AI-poweredservices, and platform capabilities from concept through production

· Define engineeringpatterns and best practices for production AI systems, including evaluation,monitoring, guardrails, resiliency, cost control, and rollback strategies

· Drive end-to-end softwaredelivery across the SDLC, from discovery and prototyping to testing, release,and production operations

· Use engineering tools toaccelerate design, coding, testing, documentation, troubleshooting, anddelivery while maintaining strong engineering judgment and code qualitystandards

· Champion an AI-enabledSDLC by improving developer workflows, automation, test generation, code reviewquality, release confidence, and team productivity

· Partner closely withProduct, Applied AI, Data Science, and business stakeholders to translateambiguous opportunities into scalable product capabilities

· Provide technicalleadership through architectural decisions, design reviews, code reviews,hands-on contribution, and mentoring of engineers across the team

· Build highly available,secure, and maintainable cloud-native services with strong observability,performance, and operational readiness

· Shape technical roadmaps,identify short- and long-term platform needs, and influence architecturechoices that enable scale, reuse, and faster delivery

· Collaborate across teamsand business units to solve complex business and engineering problems withpractical, high-impact solution

· Keep senior stakeholdersinformed of progress, risks, trade-offs, and implementation decisions in aclear and concise manner

Requirements

IdealCandidate Qualifications:

• Strong softwareengineering experience building scalable, secure, maintainable productionsystems, including experience leading complex technical initiatives end to end

• Hands-on experiencebuilding and shipping AI-powered products or agentic applications using LLMs,orchestration frameworks, tool-calling patterns, retrieval, and context-awareworkflows

• Strong understanding ofagentic system design, including planning, reasoning loops, workfloworchestration, memory, grounding, evaluation, safety, and human-in-the-loopcontrols

• Experience taking AIsolutions from prototype to production with sound engineering discipline aroundreliability, observability, latency, cost, security, and governance

• Experience with modern AIframeworks, SDKs, and tooling for building AI applications, agent workflows,and developer productivity use cases

• Strong programming skillsin one or more backend languages such as Java and Python, with the ability towrite high-quality, well-tested, production-ready code

• Experience with modernfront-end frameworks such as React and/or Next.js for building intuitiveproduct experiences would be beneficial

• Experience buildingservices in cloud-native environments using Kubernetes and managed cloudservices on AWS, Azure

• Good understanding ofAPIs, distributed systems, event-driven architectures, data pipelines, andintegration patterns across enterprise platforms

• Experience with CI/CD,automated testing, and engineering automation, including the ability to improveSDLC efficiency and release quality using AI tools

• Practical experienceusing AI coding and engineering assistants to improve productivity acrossdesign, implementation, testing, debugging, documentation, and operationalsupport

• Strong background insoftware security, including authentication, authorisation, secrets management,encryption, threat modelling, and secure deployment practices for AI-enabledsystems

• Proven ability to createreusable platforms, frameworks, or internal engineering capabilities thatimprove developer experience and accelerate delivery across teams

• Strong product mindsetwith the ability to translate user needs and business goals into practical,high-impact technical solutions

• Excellent collaborationand communication skills, with experience influencing across engineering,product, data science, and leadership stakeholders

Skills Matrix

Bucket

Skills / Metrics

Must-Have

· Strong hands-on programming expertise in Java and Python , with the ability to design, build, test, and optimise production-grade backend services

· Strong experience with React for building modern, responsive, and intuitive user interfaces for enterprise applications

· Experience with Next.js or modern front-end architecture patterns alongside React

· Deep experience building cloud-native applications using containers, Kubernetes, microservices, and managed cloud services in AWS and/or Azure

· Strong expertise in designing and building APIs , including RESTful services, service contracts, versioning, security, and integration patterns

· Proven experience with event-driven architecture , asynchronous messaging, streaming, and resilient distributed system design

· Practical experience using AI tools to improve engineering productivity across coding, testing, debugging, documentation, and release workflows

· Strong understanding of software engineering quality metrics such as code quality, test automation, reliability, performance, observability, and maintainability

Good to Have

· Experience building agentic applications or AI-powered systems using LLMs, orchestration frameworks, retrieval, tool calling, and workflow automation

· Experience with API gateway , service mesh, and enterprise integration patterns

· Experience with Kafka , event streaming platforms, or large-scale messaging ecosystems

· Exposure to CI/CD automation, infrastructure as code, and release engineering practices

· Experience in regulated enterprise environments where security, governance, compliance, and auditability are critical

· Ability to mentor engineers and influence architecture, engineering standards, and developer productivity at team level

AllAbout You

• You are a hands-ontechnical leader who enjoys building and shipping real products, not justprototypes

• You have experiencebuilding or operating AI-enabled or agentic applications in production andunderstand what it takes to make them secure, reliable, and useful at scale

• You combine strongsoftware engineering fundamentals with curiosity and good judgment in applyingemerging AI capabilities to real business problems

• You actively use AI toenhance your own engineering productivity and help teams adopt better ways ofdesigning, coding, testing, documenting, and operating software

• You understand where AIcan accelerate delivery and where human review, engineering discipline, andthoughtful controls remain essential

• You care deeply aboutcustomer value, developer experience, quality, resilience, and long-termmaintainability

• You are comfortableworking in collaborative, cross-functional, and internationally distributedteams

• You raise the bar forothers through mentorship, technical leadership, and a practical,delivery-focused mindset

• You communicate complextechnical concepts clearly and effectively to both engineering teams and seniorstakeholders