Associate Specialist, Product Management, Launch Graduate Program 2026 - Shanghai, China

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 Specialist, Product Management, Launch Graduate Program 2026 - Shanghai, China
Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses realize their greatest potential.
The Mastercard Launch program is aimed at early career talent, to help you develop skills and gain cross-functional work experience. Over a period of 18 months, Launch participants will be assigned to a business unit, learn and develop skills, and gain valuable on the job experience.
Overview • Acts as a business owner and manages long-term and short-term strategic initiatives for a commercialized product • Roles in this family oversee product evolution, establish go-to-market strategy, optimize products and resources, implement incremental improvements within the product's life cycle, conduct ongoing care and maintenance, and manage P&L.
Responsibilities • Assists in analyzing and interpreting user data, considers context and bias in data, and makes a point to highlight data issues / inconsistencies • Seeks to learn drivers of product stakeholder priorities/preferences and how to bring new insights to own team • Actively listens to and learns how to probe for additional information from key stakeholders • Seeks to understand the importance of building cross-cultural peer networks and actively works towards building one's own • Seeks to understand Mastercard's business operations and how value is created at each step of the payments value chain • Asks meaningful and appropriate questions to understand and translate business requirements into desired functionality • Exhibits general knowledge of Mastercard business processes, systems, products, customers and how they impact own area of work • Develops awareness of key business issues and major stakeholders in own area by helping to perform research & analysis • Takes personal ownership for seeing tasks through to timely completion while keeping team updated on progress • Approaches work situations with intellectual curiosity regularly sharing ideas for process modifications/ improvements. • Participates in Guild activities which develop others and reinforces good team spirit while working with others • Demonstrates active learning and sharing of product development practices via Guild/Product community initiatives • Understands relationships within own work area and participates in teamwork and collaborative efforts • Shows eagerness to learn new business knowledge, technologies, tools or systems • Exhibits effective oral, written and non-verbal communications within Mastercard and delivers high quality work • Exhibits understanding of the importance of collaboration in communications planning and execution • Contributes near-term input (quarterly) for the product portfolio and roadmap • May coordinate internal forums to collect and identify feature-level development opportunities • Helps build product documentation that are clear and easily consumable by product teams • Deliver assigned work seeking guidance from experienced team members
Experiences • Exposure to relevant Microsoft Office programs and ability to create deliverables on a timely basis (e.g., Excel, PowerPoint, Access, etc.) • Exposure to collecting and/or working with data including standardizing, summarizing, offering initial observations and highlighting inconsistencies • Exposure to working with various product lines, technologies, and industries • Takes the time to fully learn the product portfolio • Familiar with business and technical writing.
All about you: • Currently enrolled in a bachelor's or accelerated master's program graduating between Dec 2025 - July 2026.• Able to start work on 20 July 2026 (Start dates are fixed).• You do not require any work visa sponsorships to work in China.• Highly motivated, intellectually curious, analytical, and a strong team player. • Extremely organized and able to independently manage multiple projects and initiatives with varying scope concurrently. • Excellent relationship building skills; able to foster and maintain strong, positive working internal and external relationships across multiple business functions and markets. • Highly customer focused with a demonstrated ability to understand and respond to customer needs. • Outstanding communication and presentation skills, able to clearly tailor the message to the audience and communicate complex products and processes.• Ability to communicate complex ideas effectively - both verbally and in writing - in English and the local office language (viz. Mandarin).
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.