Associate Consultants, Launch Graduate Program 2026 - Japan

Make an Impact as an Associate Consultant

As an Associate Consultant, you will collaborate within small teams to help some of the world's biggest brands answer and often implement solutions for their most challenging strategic questions. You will immediately create meaningful contributions through taking 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.

We are looking for passionate and talented professionals, who share our vision for helping our customers with their most urgent business needs, and we are recruiting for 2 career tracks that make up our team:

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?

Team members will typically support 2-4 clients concurrently, and develop a deep understanding of client business challenges through longer term engagements (typically lasting 1-2 years).

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.

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. 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 Business Experimentation track).

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.

Qualifications:

Bachelor's or Master's students enrolled in a full-time degree program, and graduating in 2026, but no later than September 2026.

Strong local office language proficiency in Japanese language, and English language.

You do not require work visa sponsorship to take up full time employment in Japan now nor any time in the future.

In your cover letter, please indicate your first track preference. This information will be leveraged to best match applicants with their desired track.
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.

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.