Associate Consultant, Launch Graduate Program - 2027, Johannesburg, South Africa

Mastercard Inc.; Sandton; On-site; ZAR 300,000 - 500,000; Full time

Job summary

Mastercard invites you to join the Launch Graduate Program in Johannesburg as an Associate Consultant. Over the 18‑month program, you’ll gain hands‑on experience, structured learning, and mentorship from industry leaders while tackling real business challenges that create meaningful impact.

You’ll work in Mastercard's Advisors & Consulting Services (A&CS) team, collaborating across projects in Strategy & Transformation and Marketing, with opportunities to develop technical, analytical, and

Qualifications

• Undergraduate or master's degree with an expected graduation date in 2026–2027.
• Ability to communicate complex ideas effectively in English (written and spoken).
• Availability to start in March or September 2027.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate within small teams to answer and implement solutions for strategic questions for major brands.
• Build external relationships with clients, focusing on technology and data to gain exposure across industries such as financial services, retail, and hospitality.

Skills

Communication skills

Data analysis

SQL

SAS

Excel

Tableau

Education

Undergraduate or master's degree

Tools

SQL

SAS

Excel

Tableau

Job description

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 - 2027, Johannesburg, South Africa

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've had 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 two 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.

1. 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.

• 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.

2. 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.

• 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.

What we're looking for

• Undergraduate or master's degree with an expected graduation date in November 2026 - August 2027
• Ability to communicate complex ideas effectively - both verbally and in writing - in English
• Availability: Must be available to start in March or September 2027

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 outstanding deliverables, with a will to win attitude.
• Integrity: Outstanding record of academic achievement. Commitment to Mastercard's values of honesty and integrity with a willingness to embrace and learn from mistakes.
• Diverse Perspective: Brings a unique skillset or approach to the table in every client engagement or internal activity.
• Communication: Ability to communicate complex ideas effectively. Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard's security policies and practices;
• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;
• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and
• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard's guidelines.