Associate Consultant, Launch Program - Arlington, VA; Washington, DC)

Associate Consultant, Launch Program 2027 - United States

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.

Why join Mastercard's Launch Program? Over the course of this 18-month program, you'll build specialized expertise through hands-on experience, structured learning, and mentorship from industry leaders. You'll work on real business challenges, applying your skills to projects that create meaningful impact. Along the way, you'll deepen your knowledge of Mastercard's business, collaborate with teams across the organization, and develop the technical, analytical, and professional capabilities needed to accelerate your career.

By the end of the program, you'll have a strong foundation in your chosen field and the confidence to continue to grow here at Mastercard.

About the team Mastercard's Advisors & Consulting Services (A&CS) team 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.

What you'll do 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. Create meaningful contributions through 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. 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. We are currently hiring for the Business Experimentation Track.

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).

What we're looking for - Undergraduate or accelerated master's degree with an expected graduation date Spring 2027. This role is not eligible for Mastercard's work authorization sponsorship. As such, candidates must be eligible to work in the United States, now as well as in the future, without employer sponsorship.

We recruit for and value the following core competencies:
Passion:
Actively seeks responsibility and takes pride in delivering the highest quality results and recommendations to our clients. Proven record of leadership in a work setting and/or through extracurricular activities. Analytic Excellence:
Demonstrates a strong aptitude for structured problem solving, analytical, and quantitative skills. Experience using data analysis or querying tools (e.g., SQL, SAS, Excel or Tableau) is an asset (particularly for Performance Analytics or Business…