Mastercard Plans 250+ AI and Cybersecurity Jobs in Singapore, Taking Its Team Past 1,000 by 2029

Mastercard plans to add over 250 specialist roles in Singapore by the end of 2029, and its Singapore workforce of more than 850 employees is expected to exceed 1,000 by the end of 2029. The plan came with the opening of its largest Innovation Centre of Excellence in Asia Pacific, a facility of more than 7,200 square feet. The new roles will support responsible AI, trusted digital commerce, cybersecurity, data, and payments across the region. For Metaintro readers in tech, fraud or payments, this guide covers what the centre does, which Singapore roles are already listed, what they ask for, and the work pass rules that shape who gets hired.

What Did Mastercard Open in Singapore, and What Is the Hiring Plan?

The centre opened on November 12, 2026, as a regional hub where financial institutions, merchants, governments and technology partners can work alongside Mastercard specialists. The facility brings together expertise in artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, customer experience and rapid prototyping.

The hiring figure is a plan with a deadline. The company has not published a yearly breakdown of when the new specialist roles will be filled, only that they come as part of its expansion in Singapore.

The two figures measure different things. The new-role figure counts specialist roles Mastercard plans to add, while the workforce figure is the expected Singapore total in a city that is home to its Asia Pacific headquarters and a key market support centre for the region.

Senior leaders attended the launch, including Png Cheong Boon, Chairman of the Singapore Economic Development Board, and Dr Tan See Leng, Singapore's Minister for Energy, Trade and Industry (Energy and Industry).

Are the New Specialist Roles Open Right Now?

No. The new roles are a hiring plan, not a list of open vacancies. The centre already has more than 55 specialists working across the ICoE.

Full-time Singapore roles on the Mastercard careers site include a Manager, Fraud Attack Response & Insights for Asia Pacific posted 18 days ago, a Lead AI Engineer and an AP Lead Data Scientist for Financial Crime both posted 30+ days ago, and a Lead Platform Engineer in Network Operations posted 3 days ago, as each listing shows.

None of these listings says it belongs to the new specialist hiring plan tied to the centre. Two of them overlap with its themes. The data science role is tied to a new Centre of Excellence in Asia-Pacific, designed to act as a regional hub for the Cyber & FCS vertical, and the fraud role covers fraud affecting account opening, payment cards, and account-to-account transactions.

What Will the Four Spaces Inside the Centre Do?

The centre combines four complementary spaces together in one facility, and each one points to a different type of work.

• AI Centre of Excellence. It is meant for advancing responsible AI solutions that can make commerce safer, smarter and more intuitive, including applications in agentic commerce, fraud and scam prevention.
• Fusion Centre. It combines expertise in cybersecurity, fraud and physical security to identify emerging risks, coordinate responses and strengthen resilience across the ecosystem.
• Mastercard Experience Centre. It will allow partners to explore emerging technologies, with an immersive space for financial institutions, merchants and public sector partners.
• Makerspace. It offers a hands-on environment to rapidly prototype, test and refine ideas, shortening the journey from concept to reality.

Read together, the four spaces cover AI build work, security and fraud response, client-facing demos and fast prototyping. The centre will serve financial institutions, merchants and technology partners across more than 40 Asia Pacific markets, not just Singapore.

Singapore will continue to be a key hub where companies like Mastercard can innovate and pioneer the next generation of technologies for global markets, and create high-value jobs for Singaporeans, EDB Chairman Png Cheong Boon said, according to the Mastercard newsroom release.

What Does the Fraud and Financial Crime Work Ask For?

The fraud manager role in Singapore is about analyzing fraud attacks impacting Mastercard customers across the region and translating those incidents into actionable intelligence, remediation recommendations, and risk mitigation opportunities. It is not a corporate or information security function.

The fraud manager role asks for experience in payment fraud, fraud operations, fraud intelligence, or fraud risk management, a strong understanding of payment card fraud, account opening fraud, account-to-account fraud, and emerging payment threats and experience conducting fraud investigations, attack analysis, or incident response activities. It also lists knowledge of payment ecosystems, card security controls, authentication technologies, and fraud mitigation techniques, plus the ability to present complex findings to senior audiences and experience working across functions, regions, and cultures. Its education line reads Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience, so a degree is not the only way in for that role.

The financial crime data scientist role is more technical. The successful hire will be building and maintaining data science models that help detect fraud, scams, and money laundering using payments data. Among its requirements, it asks that you can write Python to a high standard and are familiar with the standard data science libraries such as pandas, polars, scikit-learn and networkx, and that you had professional exposure delivering data science solutions, ideally within a regulated or payments adjacent environment and with an understanding of regional market, customer, and regulatory considerations. The hire should be able to communicate with non-tech colleagues about technical matters, and you are comfortable putting yourself in other people's shoes and comfortable operating in a federated model, balancing global standards and guidance with local ownership, execution, and customer engagement.

Desirable extras for the data science role include a strong academic foundation in a scientific or closely related discipline, such as data science, computer science, mathematics, statistics, physics, or engineering, plus network and graph based analysis to model complex behaviours. The role also requires that the hire is Fluent in English.

What Do the AI and Engineering Listings Ask For?

The Lead AI Engineer role sits in the Mastercard Foundry R&D team in Singapore. The hire will lead the design and development of advanced AI solutions and proof-of-concepts focused on generative AI and provide hands-on technical leadership to a small, agile team of engineers.

The AI role calls for specific techniques. It expects the hire to keep exploring new model architectures, multimodal AI, agent-driven automation and to experiment with retrieval-augmented generation, knowledge-grounded LLMs. It also asks the lead to mentor junior engineers and foster an innovation mindset within the team.

The network engineering role shows the operations side of the business. The Lead Platform Engineer role asks candidates to have 5+ years in network operations with strong L1/L2 support experience, to be highly proficient in BGP/EIGRP/OSPF, OSI troubleshooting, and packet analysis, to have operational familiarity with common enterprise vendors (Cisco/Arista/Aruba/Fortinet/CheckPoint/Palo Alto) and to be strong in coaching, multitasking, and calm execution during high-severity incidents.

This network role comes with a shift pattern. It is a hybrid working environment while supporting a 24 by 7 Global Network operations, and it requires a willingness to work in a shift-based environment, including nights, weekends, and holidays as required.

How Does This Build on Mastercard's Earlier Singapore Plans?

The centre was flagged months earlier. In April 2026, Mastercard set out plans to launch its regional AI Center of Excellence (CoE) in Singapore later that year, combining its innovation hub, advanced cybersecurity capabilities and AI expertise to create Mastercard’s largest innovation space in Asia Pacific.

In that April 2026 release, Mastercard counted more than 2,000 data scientists, engineers and consultants focused on data and AI globally, and AI has supported fraud detection, cybersecurity and real‑time risk management for more than a decade across its network.

The security side goes back further. In December 2022, Mastercard unveiled the Mastercard-NTU Joint Lab with Nanyang Technological University as part of a goal of establishing its first Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence (COE) for the Asia Pacific region, based in Singapore.

The 2022 plan included an advanced 12-week joint Mastercard-NTU cybersecurity curriculum, which was to be open to students and mid-career professionals through the government’s SkillsFuture and Enterprise Learning Transformation programs administered by NTU.

Why Is Mastercard Building This in Singapore?

The Singapore Economic Development Board chairman called the centre a new chapter in a long-standing and multi-faceted partnership. From Singapore, the centre will develop solutions to address the region's diverse needs, with the potential for successful initiatives to be scaled globally.

The minister at the launch set out a regional role for the centre. Dr Tan voiced the hope that it would become a lighthouse for payments innovation in Asia Pacific, where new solutions are developed and proven in Singapore, before being adapted and deployed across ASEAN, India and beyond.

Mastercard is not the only payments firm with a Singapore headcount goal, as Airwallex plans to grow its Singapore team too, and Singapore finance firms have pledged AI training for their workers.

The ICoE builds on Mastercard’s longstanding collaboration with EDB and Singapore’s strength as a proven testbed for innovation, Richard Wormald, President, Asia Pacific at Mastercard, said, according to the Mastercard press release.

What Is Driving Demand for AI and Fraud Specialists?

The opening comes as businesses across Asia Pacific look to close the gap between technology experimentation and adoption. By 2030, more than one in 10 online shoppers are projected to routinely use AI agents to make purchases on their behalf, a projection Human Resources Online credits to Mastercard.

Between US$3tn and US$5tn in global consumer commerce could be influenced or orchestrated by agentic AI, an estimate Human Resources Online credits to McKinsey & Company.

Security is the other driver. Cybercrime already accounts for more than 30% of recorded crime in the region, a figure Human Resources Online credits to INTERPOL. Mastercard's case is that businesses must deploy new technology with security, governance and human oversight built in from the outset.

In April 2026, Mastercard rolled out the first wave of authenticated agentic transactions across Singapore and Malaysia, with the bank UOB as its partner for the initial region-wide testing.

Can Foreign Professionals Apply for These Singapore Roles?

None of the four listings mentions nationality, and Singapore's Employment Pass eligibility rules apply to any foreign hire. Before submitting new Employment Pass applications, employers must first advertise on MyCareersFuture and fairly consider all candidates, and they should not make a job offer to a candidate during the mandatory FCF job advertising duration of at least 14 consecutive days.

Foreign candidates face a 2-stage eligibility framework. They must earn at least the EP qualifying salary, which is benchmarked to the top 1/3 of local PMET salaries by age, and then, unless exempted, pass the points-based COMPASS framework, where an application needs to earn 40 points to pass.

The salary floor depends on the sector, and US dollar figures here use a rate of 1.286283 Singapore dollars to the US dollar. For financial services, the EP qualifying salary is S$6,200 (about $4,820), rising with age up to S$11,800 at age 45 and above (about $9,174). For all other sectors it is S$5,600 (about $4,354), rising with age up to S$10,700 (about $8,319). Employers can check their organisation's sector classification with the Workforce Insights tool on myMOM Portal.

For new applications from 1 Jan 2027, and for renewal of passes expiring from 1 Jan 2028, the financial services minimum moves to S$6,600 (about $5,131), up to S$12,700 at age 45 and above (about $9,873). The minimum for all other sectors moves to S$6,000 (about $4,665), up to S$11,500 at age 45 and above (about $8,940). Employers that pre-select a foreigner and skip local applicants risk being debarred from hiring foreign employees, and since January 2020 the minimum period of work pass debarment has increased from 6 months to 12 months.

What This Means for Job Seekers, and What Should You Do Next?

This is a slow-build hiring plan, and that works in your favour if you prepare now. The specialist hiring plan runs for years, so there is time to build the skills the current listings name. The listings themselves mix AI build work with fraud and financial crime analysis.

• Match the fraud skill set. If you work in a bank's fraud team, the fraud manager role wants experience in payment fraud, fraud operations, fraud intelligence, or fraud risk management, so describe the attacks you handled in plain terms on your CV.
• Show working code. The data science role asks you to demonstrate previous work on new algorithms, so bring a fraud or graph analysis project you can walk an interviewer through.
• Learn the agentic commerce basics. The AI Centre of Excellence covers applications in agentic commerce, fraud and scam prevention, so be ready to explain how an AI agent can pay safely.
• Check both job boards. Watch the Mastercard careers site and MyCareersFuture, because employers submitting Employment Pass applications must first advertise on MyCareersFuture unless the job is eligible for advertising exemption.

Lacey Kaelani, Metaintro's CEO, puts it this way: A hiring plan that runs for years is a reading list, not a deadline. Study the listings that are live today, build the two or three skills they keep repeating, and you will be the obvious pick when the next batch of roles opens.

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People Also Asked

Q: How many jobs is Mastercard creating in Singapore?

A: Mastercard plans to add over 250 specialist roles in Singapore by the end of 2029, and it expects its Singapore workforce to exceed 1,000 by the end of 2029.

Q: What kind of jobs will the Mastercard innovation centre create?

A: The roles will support work in responsible AI, trusted digital commerce, cybersecurity, data, and payments across the region. Separate from that plan, current Singapore listings include a Lead AI Engineer and a fraud attack response manager.

Q: How big is the new Mastercard centre in Singapore?

A: It is Mastercard's largest Innovation Centre of Excellence in Asia Pacific, spanning more than 7,200 sq ft.

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