Mastercard
Associate Consultant, Launch Graduate Program 2026 - Budapest, Hungary
Be an Early Applicant
As an Associate Consultant, you will solve strategic problems for clients, work with data and technology, and receive mentorship. You'll collaborate on various projects across industries, developing consulting skills while helping businesses improve performance.
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 - Budapest, Hungary
Services within Mastercard is responsible for acquiring, engaging, and retaining customers by managing fraud and risk, enhancing cybersecurity, and improving the digital payments experience. We provide value-added services and leverage expertise, data-driven insights, and execution.
Advisors team is a key differentiator for Mastercard, providing cutting-edge services that help our clients grow. Focused on thinking big and scaling fast around the globe, this agile team is responsible for end-to-end solutions for a diverse global client base. We combine traditional management consulting with our rich data assets and in-house technology to provide our clients with powerful strategic insights and recommendations.
Make an Impact as an Associate Consultant
As an Associate Consultant, you will collaborate with exceptional colleagues to help some of the world's biggest brands answer their most challenging strategic questions. Working with technology and data, you will gain broad exposure to a range of industries, including financial services, retail, restaurants, hospitality and more.
As an Associate Consultant, you will: • Work on small teams to solve our clients' most challenging strategic problems. • Build strong relationships with clients to understand their business needs, find strategic solutions and guide impactful decisions. • Grow your career by receiving hands-on mentorship from an experienced management team. • Have an immediate opportunity for meaningful contributions, increased responsibility, leadership roles, and professional advancement. • Collaborate with colleagues across different areas of the organization and quickly gain exposure to business development, account management, and product management. • Receive extensive training focusing on helping you build your core consulting skill set.
We are looking for passionate and talented professionals, who share our vision for helping our clients with their most urgent business needs, and we are recruiting for three career tracks that make up our team:
1) Strategy & Transformation:
Lead clients through sound decision making as they tackle strategic, tactical, operational, and transformational challenges, spanning across diverse topics including product, marketing, loyalty, innovation, and more. Apply a broad set of problem-solving techniques to improve overall performance and operations.
Sampling of questions we help our clients answer: • How can a global financial services institution be successful at entering a hyper competitive new market?• How can a client improve its operating model to better achieve operational, financial and strategic goals?
Team members typically support 2-4 projects concurrently, with each project lasting for approximately 3-6 months.
2) 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 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:
o How does a financial institution's fraud/authorization metrics fare against competitors, and what are strategies that can help it be best-in-class?
o 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.
3) 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, behavioural 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 on 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.
In your CV, please indicate your first and second track preference. This information will be leveraged to best match applicants with their desired tracks.
Track placement will indicate the types of projects where you will spend the majority of your time, however, we encourage and enable working across tracks to allow team members to acquire a diverse set of skills and experiences.
Bring your Passion and Expertise
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. • Analytic Excellence: Demonstrates a strong aptitude for structured problem solving and quantitative skills. • 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: Commitment to Mastercard's values of honesty and integrity with a willingness to embrace and learn from our mistakes. • Diverse Perspective: Brings a unique skillset or approach to the table in every client engagement or internal activity. • Communication: Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with demonstrated leadership abilities.
Qualifications:
• Available to start on either March 2nd or September 1st, 2026.• To be a Final Year Masters/Undergraduate Student or to have graduated no earlier than December 2025• Outstanding record of academic achievement • Proven record of leadership in a work setting and/or through extracurricular activities • Exceptional analytical and quantitative problem-solving 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). • Demonstrated ability to effectively communicate complex ideas in English, both verbally and in writing, and preferably in two additional foreign languages such as German, Spanish, French, or others.
Application Process:
• Submit your application (The selection process will begin shortly after the application deadline, which is November 14) • If eligible, receive invitation for a digital interview; this includes answering pre-recorded interview questions that advance your application • If recommended to advance, first, you will be part of language check (for your stated second foreign languages) and then you will receive invitation for final round interview(s); you will have the opportunity to meet with us to learn more about our business and culture
Corporate 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:
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 - Budapest, Hungary
Services within Mastercard is responsible for acquiring, engaging, and retaining customers by managing fraud and risk, enhancing cybersecurity, and improving the digital payments experience. We provide value-added services and leverage expertise, data-driven insights, and execution.
Advisors team is a key differentiator for Mastercard, providing cutting-edge services that help our clients grow. Focused on thinking big and scaling fast around the globe, this agile team is responsible for end-to-end solutions for a diverse global client base. We combine traditional management consulting with our rich data assets and in-house technology to provide our clients with powerful strategic insights and recommendations.
Make an Impact as an Associate Consultant
As an Associate Consultant, you will collaborate with exceptional colleagues to help some of the world's biggest brands answer their most challenging strategic questions. Working with technology and data, you will gain broad exposure to a range of industries, including financial services, retail, restaurants, hospitality and more.
As an Associate Consultant, you will: • Work on small teams to solve our clients' most challenging strategic problems. • Build strong relationships with clients to understand their business needs, find strategic solutions and guide impactful decisions. • Grow your career by receiving hands-on mentorship from an experienced management team. • Have an immediate opportunity for meaningful contributions, increased responsibility, leadership roles, and professional advancement. • Collaborate with colleagues across different areas of the organization and quickly gain exposure to business development, account management, and product management. • Receive extensive training focusing on helping you build your core consulting skill set.
We are looking for passionate and talented professionals, who share our vision for helping our clients with their most urgent business needs, and we are recruiting for three career tracks that make up our team:
1) Strategy & Transformation:
Lead clients through sound decision making as they tackle strategic, tactical, operational, and transformational challenges, spanning across diverse topics including product, marketing, loyalty, innovation, and more. Apply a broad set of problem-solving techniques to improve overall performance and operations.
Sampling of questions we help our clients answer: • How can a global financial services institution be successful at entering a hyper competitive new market?• How can a client improve its operating model to better achieve operational, financial and strategic goals?
Team members typically support 2-4 projects concurrently, with each project lasting for approximately 3-6 months.
2) 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 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:
o How does a financial institution's fraud/authorization metrics fare against competitors, and what are strategies that can help it be best-in-class?
o 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.
3) 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, behavioural 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 on 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.
In your CV, please indicate your first and second track preference. This information will be leveraged to best match applicants with their desired tracks.
Track placement will indicate the types of projects where you will spend the majority of your time, however, we encourage and enable working across tracks to allow team members to acquire a diverse set of skills and experiences.
Bring your Passion and Expertise
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. • Analytic Excellence: Demonstrates a strong aptitude for structured problem solving and quantitative skills. • 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: Commitment to Mastercard's values of honesty and integrity with a willingness to embrace and learn from our mistakes. • Diverse Perspective: Brings a unique skillset or approach to the table in every client engagement or internal activity. • Communication: Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with demonstrated leadership abilities.
Qualifications:
• Available to start on either March 2nd or September 1st, 2026.• To be a Final Year Masters/Undergraduate Student or to have graduated no earlier than December 2025• Outstanding record of academic achievement • Proven record of leadership in a work setting and/or through extracurricular activities • Exceptional analytical and quantitative problem-solving 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). • Demonstrated ability to effectively communicate complex ideas in English, both verbally and in writing, and preferably in two additional foreign languages such as German, Spanish, French, or others.
Application Process:
• Submit your application (The selection process will begin shortly after the application deadline, which is November 14) • If eligible, receive invitation for a digital interview; this includes answering pre-recorded interview questions that advance your application • If recommended to advance, first, you will be part of language check (for your stated second foreign languages) and then you will receive invitation for final round interview(s); you will have the opportunity to meet with us to learn more about our business and culture
Corporate 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.
Top Skills
Excel
Python
SAS
SQL
Tableau
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