What's your job about?
Currently, I am part of Mastercard’s Prepaid Management Services division, specifically within the Divisional Product team. Whilst the product team has many responsibilities, at its core, it is focused on balancing user experience, business goals, and technical feasibility to solve a customer problem and create a successful product for the market. It is an interesting team to be a part of as you can see how products are created to suit different client use cases and verticals with the team working across clients in retail, crypto, BNPL, travel, and transit.
The team works to manage the long and short-term strategic initiatives of the client whilst always championing the customers’ needs throughout the entire process. Typically, a project involves working with the client and different internal teams to oversee the product lifecycle, from product ideation to development, and renewal. This also includes establishing go-to-market strategies, optimising products, and resources in response to market trends, and managing and implementing improvements within the products lifecycle.
Day-to-day in my role varies greatly, depending on the client project. Supporting the team at different stages of a project can involve identifying pain points, completing the market analysis, defining product roadmaps, managing stakeholders, or even completing testing. As an example, in a day, I may liaise with the implementation team to discuss system integration processes or collaborate with the marketing team around card requirements and design. Being able to work with and learn from many different internal teams is one of the great parts of being in the product team.
What's your background?
My personal and academic background can be described in two ways: dynamic and non-linear. I moved to Sydney, Australia when I was seven years old. Growing up, I changed what I wanted to be every week, from interior designer to orthodontist, to chef. However, coming from a family with a strong academic background, it was encouraged that I pursue a “practical” degree such as law, engineering, or medicine. Hence, I pursued a double degree in Engineering and Commerce with a major in Finance. I started off with Flexible First-Year Engineering in which you can try each engineering stream to determine which best suits you. I loved the logic and structured problem-solving required in coding and transferred to Software Engineering. However, in the third year, I decided to change mid-way through to Electrical Engineering as I had completed work experience as a software developer and couldn’t see myself pursuing that role.
Alongside my studies, I loved to be involved in student societies, which allowed me to form long-lasting friendships, and case competitions, which developed my analytical and transferable skills. The professional networking opportunities hosted by student societies were also pivotal in allowing me to better understand the career paths I could pursue. This motivated me to gain as much experience as I could, and I completed a range of internships and part-time roles across consulting, engineering, and technology. This diverse set of experiences helped me realise what I loved; technological innovation, working with people and solving complex problems. Luckily, I had partaken in a society mentoring program and was allocated a mentor from Mastercard. She’d told me all about the Mastercard Launcher program and the interesting work they do which persuaded me to apply. I’ve been in the product team for 2 months now, loving every minute of it!
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Definitely! Each person in my team has come from a different degree background or has transitioned from a different career path. Whether you studied media, arts, sciences, business, or something else, you only need the willingness to learn, great communication skills, and a love of solving problems to thrive in the role. As I continue to collaborate with other teams and meet more of my colleagues, I can see that Mastercard truly values the diversity of experience and perspective that everyone brings to the workplace.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
There are two aspects that I love most about my role. The first is the amount of responsibility I was entrusted with from the onset and the second is the ability to see the tangible and positive social impact of my work. Within a few months of joining, I was given the responsibility to manage the digital certification process for real client projects. This involved communicating with external stakeholders, presenting recommendations, and overseeing different workstreams during product implementation. From start to finish, I was able to see how my work influenced key decisions and how the products we were creating would deliver value to both our client and their customers.
What are the limitations of your job?
One of the challenges of my role is working with multiple teams across many different time zones. For one project, you may be working with specialist teams in the UK, Singapore, Japan, and New Zealand. Aside from the early morning/late night meetings, this can be particularly challenging as it requires constant communication to ensure each stakeholder is engaged appropriately and prioritisation to ensure that short-term outputs are being achieved in line with the higher-level strategic direction for the product.
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