What's your job about? 

As a software engineer in the Product & Engineering team at Mastercard, my work revolves around the Mastercard Payment Gateway System. While it is an incredibly expansive and intricate system with lots of moving parts, its objective is rather simple: a fast and secure way of connecting consumers, merchants, and banks. Every time you tap your card at a store or pay for something online, this payment is processed by our system, enabling swift and safe payments across the globe.

I’m currently working with the performance engineering team, and our job is to ensure that this system is performing as efficiently and securely as possible, which means there’s lots of rigorous testing happening in the background. We collaborate with lots of teams worldwide in our endeavour to keep this system performing seamlessly, so that the people behind the billions of transactions occurring every year can rest easy.

A day in my life can have you working across projects that can involve coding, debugging, testing new features, or fixing bugs in existing code. There’s a great collaborative culture at Mastercard so we’re all helping each other do our best.

What's your background?

I came to Sydney from India for my bachelor’s at the University of Sydney. I’d always been really interested in technology so a degree in computer science always seemed like a no-brainer. During my time here in Australia and at university, I specialised in software engineering, acquiring a broad range of technical and qualitative skill sets.

I was initially drawn to Mastercard as it’s pretty much a household name, but my interest was further piqued when I learnt about the amazing culture that exists within Mastercard that drives their business. Everyone I’ve met really strives to have decency at the core of what they do, and the work we put out is a testament to that. 

I’d previously worked as a software engineering intern at a startup and a finance company, and these experiences had helped me find the intersection of technology and finance to be an incredibly exciting space that was brimming with innovation that impacted the daily lives of people. And with the global reach and weight of Mastercard, I’m thrilled to be able to learn so much on the next frontier in the realm of fintech and have an opportunity to contribute!

Could someone with a different background do your job?

While there is a foundation of computer science knowledge that would be beneficial in aiding your tasks, I do think that there is some merit in not having a niche. A lot of the projects and frameworks are vastly different to one another and there’s an advantage to being language-agnostic when it comes to being a software engineer. If you possess a strong quantitative and computing aptitude, the sky is the limit.

What's the coolest thing about your job?

The best part must be the direct impact that you can observe that can be traced back to just a few lines of code that you might’ve written. There is an immense gratification that you can feel when you’ve productively collaborated and worked into introducing a feature/update that gets deployed onto servers worldwide that people use millions of times each day.

What are the limitations of your job?

The technology industry is forever evolving, and so should you. There are always going to be new things to learn, and there will hardly be a moment of complacency where the knowledge you’ve acquired is going to be sufficient for the entirety of your journey. Being a curious and driven person will always push you forward in a field where innovation challenges you to stay on your feet. 

3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...

• It’s okay to not know exactly where you’re heading but is important to have faith in yourself. You’re never going to know what job you’ll end up in, but you’ll always have faith in moving forward if you believe you’ve acquired skills and experiences that you’ve enjoyed and learnt from. There’s never a singular correct path to take, but a series of intermingling roads, and your conviction will be your best friend driving you forward.
• Don’t be afraid of failure: if anything, embrace it. Failure will always be an inevitable part of your life, and the real failure will be to have never learnt from them.
• Stay curious! The more you know, the more you know you don’t know. Be curious and learn about whatever interests you!