Director, AI Strategy & Solutions Delivery Job Listing at Mastercard in Purchase, NY (Job ID R-260309-Purchase, United States of America, 10577-2509)

Description

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

Director, AI Strategy & Solutions Delivery Reporting to a VP in the Mastercard AI Center of Excellence, this role drives enterprise-scale AI and automation strategy and execution. You'll define the roadmap, architect solutions, and lead cross-functional delivery to unlock measurable efficiency and innovation. Sitting at the intersection of product leadership, technical program management, and intelligent solutions architecture, you'll deliver agentic automation and AI solutions from strategy and portfolio shaping to solution delivery and operating model design. You will work hands-on with data scientists, ML and platform engineers, and senior business leaders to deliver high-impact use cases; and, when the use case calls for it, lead data science teams in model developing in shaping modeling strategy, evaluation frameworks, and production pathways to value. This role is designed for a leader who can move from whiteboard to working solution to scaled adoption, while keeping value capture, safety, and sustainability front and center. This role is responsible for ensuring value creation by:
• Developing long-term strategies to build AI solutions that maximize business value
• Enabling rapid and iterative execution of AI projects
• Augmenting our innovative AI operating model by creating processes, establishing standards, and contributing thought leadership

The Role
1. Developing AI-driven strategies to support business value
o Identify, qualify, and prioritize high-impact AI, analytics, and agentic automation opportunities across business domains.
o Quantify full value at stake and value levers (automation, augmentation, revenue lift, risk mitigation), with clear dependencies and path to realization.
o Bring together expertise in AI, data engineering, solution architecture, and relevant business domains to design fit-for-purpose solutions leveraging LLMs, RAG, and agentic automation.
o Translate ambitious north star visions into executable plans, building alignment among relevant executives and business stakeholders on timing and delivery.
o Achieve maximum scale from AI solutions by proactively identifying and addressing barriers to scale and generalizing solutions to multiple applications.
o Partner with Microsoft and internal platform teams on best practices for Copilot Studio, Azure OpenAI, and Power Platform governance to ensure enterprise-grade scalability, security, and compliance.

2. Enabling rapid and iterative delivery of AI solutions with consistent value creation
o Serve as solutions architect and product owner for critical initiatives—defining scope, non-functional requirements, SLAs/SLOs, and acceptance criteria.
o Partner with AI and ML engineering leaders to manage versioning, iteration planning, and solution delivery, creating transparency for business stakeholders and proactively mitigating delivery issues.
o Build productive relationships with key business stakeholders to help them co-own the AI solutions, enabling the business to provide feedback and guidance at all stages of development.
o Bring business expertise and focus on value capture to AI problem-solving during development, helping the team to maximize impact and minimize unnecessary complexity.
o Augment our business stakeholders' teams with AI and change management expertise, helping them to realize maximum value from AI solutions.

3. Advancing our innovative operating model for AI teams
o Lead interactions with AI and ML engineering teams to develop and codify more effective ways for AI and strategy teams to collaborate.
o Monitor industry trends and emerging technologies to ensure the organization remains at the forefront of AI and automation advancements.
o Oversee the needs for documenting knowledge, creating templates, and authoring playbooks to help the team scale.
o Develop and maintain three synchronized roadmaps: stakeholder engagement & adoption, use case portfolio, and technical capabilities/platform evolution.
o Conduct peer training and author thought leadership along with other members of the team to augment the full team's skills.
o Develop new delivery frameworks and help the team build new service offerings.

All about you
• 8–12+ years using data and AI to solve complex business problems and drive measurable impact in large, regulated environments.
• Proven track record influencing and aligning executives and cross-functional teams to deliver outcomes at portfolio scale.
• Hands-on leadership of technology strategies in AI/ML, analytics, BI, and automation—spanning both low-code (e.g., Copilot Studio/Power Platform) and pro-code stacks.
• Strong communicator—executive presence, crisp storytelling, and the ability to translate complex technical concepts into actionable business strategy.
• Familiarity with large datasets, ML modeling, and modern AI patterns (LLMs, RAG, vector databases, embeddings, prompt/response optimization, agents & tools).
• Practical understanding of evaluation and safety for LLM/ML solutions (offline/online testing, adversarial testing, guardrails, telemetry, policy enforcement).
• Comfortable with analytics scripting (Python/R preferred) and data/ML platforms (e.g., Azure, Databricks/Snowflake, MLflow, feature stores, CI/CD).
• Deep experience with Agile at scale and TBM/portfolio practices; adept at structuring multi-horizon investment cases and benefits realization.
• Payments/financial services experience preferred (PCI, data privacy, model risk management, compliance).
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related; Master's preferred—or equivalent practical experience. 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 reasonable_accommodation@mastercard.com 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.

Pay Ranges

Remote - Washington: $148,000 - $237,000 USD Arlington, Virginia: $170,000 - $273,000 USD Austin, Texas: $148,000 - $237,000 USD New York City, New York: $178,000 - $284,000 USD Purchase, New York: $170,000 - $273,000 USD Seattle, Washington: $170,000 - $273,000 USD

Job Posting Window

Posting windows may change based on the volume of applications received and business necessity. Candidates are encouraged to apply expeditiously.

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