Open Banking
We are Mastercard: Kayla Kent charts courses
Open banking is a big deal.
That means that Mastercard’s platform (which includes services from Mastercard’s wholly owned subsidiary, Finicity Corporation) is a combination of the work of many different disciplines like engineering, financial expertise, security and more. At the center of it all are product analysts like Kayla Kent, who began at Mastercard in December 2021, after moving to Utah from Northern Virginia.
What’re your responsibilities?
I’m on the consumer experience team, and we support the development of Mastercard’s open banking products. As a product analyst, I’m kind of the middleman between our development team, our design team, marketing, legal, etc, making sure basically that we’re on track and aligned with our product roadmap. I help support the team through the software development lifecycle with an agile project methodology.
What kinds of challenges do you solve?
When we’re going through our backlogs and getting work ready for our development team, there’s a bit of planning that goes into that, so a project management hat goes on. And then we’re working with our design team and reviewing product designs and features that are going in, so I’m putting on more of a creative hat. When we’re doing competitive analysis and seeing how we can be better, I’m wearing an analytical hat.
How does your team exemplify Mastercard values like urgency?
Our team just gets the work done. If there’s something blocking us, we’ll escalate it immediately. We help each other out by seeing if there are ways to fix any issues that are keeping the project from progressing, making sure we’re pulling in the right people to address those problems and things like that.
What’s the culture like on your team?
We have a lot of team bonding social events. So we’ll do a lot of lunches together; we do a bi-weekly team social where we’ll play games and stuff, which is super nice. Because it’s not just like it’s all work between your colleagues. You’re kind of building a relationship past that and having that cohesive team feeling.
I think what’s really cool is that, like, on Slack, there’s all these various team channels, and there’s one that’s called “#misc_womenatfinicity” where we’ll share upcoming volunteering events or career development events that are going on. Another cool resource is Unlocked, which is a resource where you can build your profile and find other volunteering opportunities if you want to develop certain skill sets, or even find a mentor.
What does working at Mastercard enable you to do in your spare time?
There’s a good work-life balance at a Mastercard company, and my fiance and I wanted to live in the Salt Lake City area because of all the outdoor activities the area has to offer. So in my free time, we do a lot of skiing, hiking, camping and exploring the national and state parks down in southern Utah, which has been super fun.
It’s a bit of a slower-paced lifestyle here, which I like because you get a chance to breathe, whereas in Washington, or really in any urban area, you get really wrapped up in your work, you’re pulling a lot of overtime and you’re kind of consumed in that.
Why should someone consider joining the Mastercard open banking team?
I was interested in working in fintech because you get more opportunity to truly innovate, which you don’t get at every workplace. Another thing is that Mastercard has subsidiaries and offices everywhere, so you’re working with people in places like Europe or in India, and you get that different perspective or background from them. The four weeks of work-from-anywhere time is also really nice—since my family and a lot of my friends are based on the East Coast, it’s nice to be able to take advantage of that.
Interested in joining our team?
We’re growing! Search for and apply to our open positions here.
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