Associate Consultant, Launch Program 2027 – Milan/Rome, Italy

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 Program 2027 – Milan/Rome, Italy

Associate Consultant, Launch Program – 2027- Milan/Rome, Italy

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. We are recruiting four specialization 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.

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

Use quantitative and qualitative skills and enterprise applications (e.g., Business Intelligence Platforms, SQL, Python, and more) to drive data-led consulting solutions for customers. Weave together vast amounts of Mastercard, client & 3rd party data assets to investigate trends, build propensity models, develop data visualizations, and synthesize millions of data points into a cohesive story. Engage with client stakeholders through virtual and in-person meetings, leveraging insights to inform strategic recommendations.

Sampling of questions we help our customers answer:

How does a financial institution 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 existing customers’ life cycle value through effective targeting and communications?

How does a retail client drive foot traffic into store post-covid and/or optimize their ecommerce website to increase basket-size and average spend per customer?

How can a large financial institution best execute a portfolio conversion – for example, after purchasing another issuer’s portfolio – including components like internal and external communications, market launch, and more?

Team members typically support 1-3 projects from any domain and build fundamental marketing and consulting toolkit.

Deploy

Help clients implement, launch, and scale Mastercard products, platforms, and business transformation initiatives. Combine program management, stakeholder engagement, and implementation expertise to guide complex initiatives from strategy into execution.

Work closely with client and Mastercard teams, coordinate cross-functional efforts, manage risks and dependencies, and drive adoption to ensure clients realize value from their investments.

Sampling of questions we help our clients answer:

How can a financial institution successfully implement and launch a new payments, fraud, or digital banking solution while minimizing disruption to customers and internal teams?

What governance structure, implementation roadmap, and stakeholder engagement plan will best position a client to deliver a large-scale transformation on time and within scope?

How can a client accelerate adoption and maximize the value of a newly deployed platform, product, or technology investment across its organization?

Team members typically support 1-2 projects or customers concurrently in execution and implementation. These projects are usually for 6-12 months.

What we’re looking for

Undergraduate or accelerated master’s degree with an expected graduation date between Dec 2026 - August 2027

Eligibility to work

This position does not have a compensation range. The fixed annual salary for this position is EUR 43,475 gross.

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 Experimentation tracks).

Business Interest: Clear interest in the world of business, and intuition for the way that companies make decisions.

Rapid Growth: Eagerness to learn quickly, both through Mastercard's structured training curriculum and organic development opportunities.

Teamwork: Willingness to work within small teams to produce outst