Associate Consultant Intern, Summer 2027 – Lisbon, Portugal

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

Why join Mastercard’s internship program?

Mastercard's internship program offers more than hands-on work. It provides an opportunity to build skills, expand your network, and make a meaningful impact while working on projects that support business priorities. It provides an opportunity to build skills, expand your network, and make a meaningful impact while working on projects that support business priorities.

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 Intern, 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 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.

You will:

Work in small teams to support strategic consulting projects across industries

Collaborate with colleagues across different areas of the organization and gain exposure to business development, account management, and product management

Analyze data, identify trends, and help translate insights into recommendations

Create clear and compelling presentations for internal teams and clients

Support problem solving by structuring challenges and exploring solutions

Build an understanding of how consulting engagements are delivered end to end

Participate in volunteer and team building experiences

Gain exposure to our leadership team through networking sessions and speaker series

Begin to build relationships with clients to understand their business needs, seek strategic solutions and guide impactful decisions

Grow by receiving hands-on mentorship from an experienced management team

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 five 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.

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?

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?

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?

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?

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?

As an intern, you'll benefit from

Mentorship and coaching from experienced professionals and leaders

Networking opportunities with fellow interns, employees, and senior leaders

Professional development experiences focused on career growth and skill-building

Exposure to innovative technologies and global business challenges

Volunteer, community engagement, and team-building activities

What we’re looking for

Undergraduate or master’s degree with an expected graduation date between Dec 2027-July 2028

Language Proficiency:

Proficiency in English is mandatory

Proficiency in two or more languages is considered a strong plus.

Availability: Must be available to start the internship on the 1st of June 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.

Many of our interns continue building their careers with Mastercard through full-time opportunities, early career programs, or future internships.

To participate in our job simulation and experience what it’s like to work as a Consultant at Mastercard visit: https://www.theforage.com/simulations/mastercard/advisors-client-services-xvlw

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.