Mastercard Associate Consultant Internship 2026

About the Role - Associate Consultant Intern

As an Associate Consultant Intern, you will:

• 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.
• Have an opportunity for meaningful contributions
• Collaborate with colleagues across different areas of the organization and gain exposure to business development, account management, and product management

We are looking for passionate and talented professionals, who share our vision for helping our customers with their most urgent business need. We are recruiting for three career 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.

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.

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.

Requirements

• Undergraduate or master’s degree with an expected graduation date between November 2026 - August 2027
• Outstanding record of academic achievement
• Exceptional analytical and quantitative problem-solving skills
• Ability to communicate complex ideas effectively – both verbally and in writing in English

Please note: This role is not eligible for Mastercard’s work authorization sponsorship. As such, candidates must be eligible to work in the country where the position located (South Africa), now as well as in the future, without employer sponsorship.

Skills and Competencies we Value

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.