Associate Consultant, Launch Graduate Program 2026

**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**

Associate Consultant, Launch Graduate Program 2026 - Lisbon, Portugal

Associate Consultant, Launch Graduate Program 2026 - Lisbon, Portugal

At Mastercard, our Advisors & Consulting Services (ACS) group helps clients drive impact through data-driven insights, hands-on implementation, and a collaborative, tech-enabled culture. We invest in talent through global engagements, continuous learning, and programs like the Global Ambassadors Program, while fostering purpose through volunteerism, pro-bono work, and innovation that benefits both clients and communities.

Make an Impact as an Associate Consultant

As an Associate Consultant, you will collaborate within small teams to help some of the world's biggest brands answer and implement solutions for their most challenging strategic questions. You will immediately create meaningful contributions through taking ownership of deliverables and building external relationships with clients. Focusing on technology and data, you will gain broad exposure to a range of industries, including financial services, retail, restaurants, hospitality and more.

Specialization Tracks

We are looking for passionate and talented professionals, who share our vision for helping our customers with their most urgent business needs, and we are recruiting for four career tracks that make up our team. Track placement will indicate the types of projects where you will spend most of your time; however, we encourage and enable working across tracks to allow team members to acquire diverse skills and experiences.

Business Experimentation

Leverage Mastercard's industry-leading predictive analytics platform, Test & Learn®, and SQL to run data-backed business experiments for our clients. Consultants focus on data science-based solutions to provide insights on various business initiatives, including product launches, marketing campaigns, customer loyalty, and pricing across various industries that touch many Fortune 500 companies. Partner directly with clients to share findings and help determine which ideas are effective, as well as where, when, and how to implement them.

Sampling of questions we help our customers answer:
Where should a retailer open new stores to maximize profitability and minimize the cannibalization of nearby omnichannel sales?

What bonus should be provided to someone opening a credit card account to entice them to use the card regularly?

Team members will typically support 2-4 clients concurrently and develop a deep understanding of client business challenges through longer term engagements (typically lasting 1-2 years).

Strategy & Transformation

Guide clients through strategic, tactical, operational, and transformational challenges to enhance performance and operations. Our engagements cover diverse areas, including product development, marketing, customer loyalty, and innovation. Working with clients from various industries, many S&T engagements directly interface with numerous Fortune 500 companies. This role aligns with the practices of traditional management consulting firms.

Sampling of questions we help our customers answer:
How can a global financial services institution be successful at entering a hyper competitive new market?

How can a customer improve its operating model to better achieve operational, financial and strategic goals?

Team members typically support 1-3 projects concurrently, with each project lasting for approximately 8-16 weeks.

Performance Analytics

Sampling of questions we help our customers answer:
How does a financial institution's fraud/authorization metrics fare against competitors, and what are strategies that can help it be best-in-class?

How is a technology customer’s market share changing over time, and are there any segments where the client is relatively under penetrated?

Team members support typically support several customers concurrently, and include both short and long term projects that can last anywhere from 4 weeks up to 1 year.

Marketing

Develop strategies and lead implementation of marketing campaigns and engagements; evaluate results to drive performance on behalf of Mastercard’s clients. Provide deep direct marketing expertise across channels, leveraging customer, behavioral and transactional data and defining tangible results to both the client and Mastercard.

Sampling of questions we help our clients answer:
How does a fintech client optimize new customer acquisition and existi