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

Senior Managing Consultant - Strategy & Transformation - Fraud, Auth & Identity Lead, Advisors & Consulting Services

Advisors & Consulting Services
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. Our Advisors & Consulting Services team combines traditional management consulting with Mastercard's rich data assets, proprietary platforms, and technologies to provide clients with powerful strategic insights and recommendations. Our teams work with a diverse global customer base across industries, from banking and payments to retail and restaurants.

The Advisors & Consulting Services group has five specializations: Strategy & Transformation, Performance Analytics, Business Experimentation, Marketing, and Program Management. Our Strategy & Transformation consultants lead clients through impactful decision-making as they tackle strategic, tactical, operational, and transformational business challenges. They apply a broad set of problem-solving techniques to improve the client's overall strategy, performance, and operations.

Positions for different specializations and levels are available in separate job postings. Please review our consulting specializations to learn more about all opportunities and apply for the position that is best suited to your background and experience: https://careers.mastercard.com/us/en/consulting-specializations-at-mastercard

Role Overview
We are seeking a seasoned Fraud & Authentication expert with deep experience in the financial services domain to lead and deliver consulting engagements across the region. This role combines domain expertise, client leadership, and strong project/program management, with responsibility for end-to-end delivery of fraud and identity-related initiatives for banks and financial institutions.
The individual will act as a trusted advisor to senior client stakeholders, lead multi-workstream engagements, and help shape regional growth across Eastern Europe markets in fraud, authentication, identity and financial crime consulting.

Key Responsibilities

Client & Consulting Leadership
• Lead fraud and authentication consulting engagements for banks and financial institutions across the region.
• Act as the primary client interface, managing senior stakeholders (CIO, CISO, Head of Fraud, Risk, Compliance).
• Translate business and regulatory requirements into practical fraud, identity, and authentication solutions.

Fraud & Authentication Expertise
• Advise clients on fraud risk across channels: digital banking, payments, cards, onboarding, and account takeover.
• Lead workstreams across areas such as:
o Fraud detection and prevention
o Authentication and access control (MFA, behavioral biometrics, device intelligence)
o Identity verification, KYC, and onboarding
o Transaction monitoring and fraud analytics
• Support selection, design, and implementation of fraud and authentication platforms (vendor-agnostic).

Project & Program Management
• Own end-to-end delivery of engagements, including scope, planning, milestones, risks, and financials.
• Manage multi-vendor and cross-functional teams (business, technology, data, security).
• Ensure high-quality, on-time delivery across multiple concurrent projects in the region.

Regional Ownership & Growth
• Lead consulting delivery for fraud and authentication initiatives across assigned countries/accounts.
• Contribute to proposals, client presentations, and solution shaping.
• Support practice development through thought leadership, frameworks, and reusable assets.

Required Experience & Qualifications
• 10-14 years of experience in financial services, with significant focus on fraud, authentication, and identity.
• Strong background in consulting or advisory roles (Big 4, tier-1 consulting, or specialist firm)
• Hands-on experience working with banks, fintechs, or payment providers.
• Proven track record of leading large-scale consulting or transformation projects.
• Deep understanding of:
o Fraud typologies (payments fraud, ATO, social engineering, mule activity)
o Authentication methods and trade-offs (MFA, biometrics, risk-based auth)
o Regulatory and compliance expectations (AML, KYC, data privacy)
• Experience working with fraud and identity technology vendors (e.g., fraud platforms, IDV solutions, analytics tools).
• Experience in the Eastern Europe and Middle East financial services market.

Core Skills
• Strong project and program management capabilities.
• Excellent client communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to bridge business, risk, and technology discussions.
• Structured problem-solving and executive-level storytelling.
• Comfortable operating with regional responsibility and ambiguity.
• Experience managing key client relationships
• Knowledge of business KPIs, financials, and organizational leadership
• Ability to communicate effectively in English
• Eligibility to work in the country where you are applying, as well as apply for travel visas as required by travel needs
• Ability to travel to client sites on a semi-regular basis

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.