Associate U.S. Economist, Business and Economic Insights

Visa•Foster City, CA

20h•Hybrid

About The Position

Visa is seeking an intellectually curious recent economics graduate student with a passion for applied economic analysis and interest in learning more about the payments industry to join our team of economists covering the U.S. market. The role will leverage data to help tell the economic and payment industry stories most relevant to our clients and executives. This is an exciting opportunity for a recent economics graduate student to contribute to the work of our macroeconomics team covering the U.S. region. The Associate U.S. Economist will work as part of a team of U.S. economists to apply economic analysis to the payments industry, generating business intelligence for internal and external clients. This position is project focused and typically requires managing multiple projects and priorities within strict time constraints. Develop and maintain relationships with internal Visa stakeholders and partners. This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in office will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.

Requirements

2 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD, or PhD)
Graduate degree in economics or an undergraduate degree with a Certified Business Economist (CBE) designation required.
Strong interest in economics with knowledge attained through coursework, individual study or prior work experience.
Advanced problem solving skills and basic understanding of econometrics is required.
Previous experience conducting applied economic research using AI tools including Copilot, ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc. required.
Intellectual curiosity and willingness to learn or expand knowledge of the payments industry and financial services.
Self-starter with the ability to manage priorities and adapt as required to a fast-paced work environment.
Ability to work effectively in a team environment as well as independently.
Excellent verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills.
Proficiency with Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and Word required.

Nice To Haves

Experience constructing time series economic forecast models would be a plus.
Experience building AI agents to streamline research and data analysis would be a plus.
Experience using statistical software such as EViews, STATA, SPSS or SAS; functional knowledge and experience with S&P Global DataInsight Desktop, Haver Analytics and Bloomberg would be a plus.
Prior experience using Tableau visualization software and/or large data applications (SQL, Hadoop, etc.) would be a plus.

Responsibilities

Assist members of the U.S. economics team in researching and analyzing key macroeconomic trends as they impact consumer spending and the payments industry.
Build and leverage artificial intelligence (AI) agents to generate insights from data, including from our proprietary consumer survey dataset.
Work with other members of the U.S. economics team to develop economic content for the team’s client presentations and U.S. economics publications.
Utilize internal Visa data along with external data sources to generate key economic and payments industry insights.
Build and maintain data visualizations for key macroeconomic and payments industry data.
Support the team’s merchant focused content generation and client facing deliverables.
Participate in the team’s economic and industry forecasting efforts including forecast model construction and maintenance.
Provide general research support for special reports and ad-hoc requests.
Aggregate third-party research and update other team members through verbal and written summaries.