General Information
Type of contract
Fixed-term contract which may be converted into a permanent contract after three years subject to individual performance and organisational needs
Who can apply?
EU nationals
Salary
F/G (bracket 1 - step 1) full time monthly net salary: €5,438 plus benefits, for further information see
what we offer.
Role specialisation
Market Ops Policy & Implementation
Working time
Full time
On-call?
Yes
Shift?
Yes
Place of work
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Closing date
21.04.2021
Your team
You will be part of the Market Operations Systems Division in the Directorate General Market Operations. Our Directorate General safeguards the effective implementation of the ECB’s monetary policy and the management of its financial assets by providing state-of-the-art frameworks and high-quality market intelligence.
The tasks performed by the Division cover a wide range of services related to the ECB’s treasury management system (TMS), as well as other systems within the Directorate General. These services include functional support, project management, software test management, supplier relations, end-user support and training, and client liaison.
In your role as Market Operations Expert, you will be part of a team of 35-40 members of staff responsible for:
- implementing, maintaining, further developing, testing and configuring the ECB’s portfolio management applications used for the management of the ECB’s foreign reserves and own funds and for the conduct of ECB monetary policy operations;
- providing relevant expertise (e.g. in the subject matter, project management, business analysis, coordination and support) in tasks, projects and processes related to the Directorate General’s activities;
- coordinating various tasks and activities carried out across the divisions of the Directorate General;
- working closely with other divisions of the Directorate General and the wider TMS user community, both within the ECB and across national central banks (NCBs).
The ECB is an inclusive employer and we strive to reflect the diversity of the population we serve. We encourage you to apply irrespective of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or other characteristics.
Your role
As a Market Operations Expert in Market Operations Systems you will:
- provide functional support to all users of the ECB’s TMS, investigating and following up on any issues reported by them and liaising with both the IT department and the system vendor;
- establish and maintain the static data required in the TMS for the different portfolios and operations managed internally by the ECB and the Eurosystem in the context of foreign reserve management and monetary policy asset purchase programmes;
- establish and maintain portfolios and instruments, the sets of counterparties, issuers and other third parties, reports, limits, eligibilities and compliance checks;
- provide daily monitoring and maintenance of the TMS, checking that start-of-day and end-of-day processing are properly executed, following up on any errors logged in these processes, investigating the underlying reasons and addressing them in a timely manner, and ensuring that asset-backed securities (ABS) purchased under the asset-backed securities purchase programme are accurately maintained.
- In addition to these regular tasks, as a member of the support team you may be involved in:
- contributing to or coordinating the implementation in the TMS of new business requirements (e.g. new currencies, new instrument types) and ensuring collaboration with the different business areas involved;
- contributing to the work relating to TMS maintenance and the transition to the future ECB TMS (Openlink Findur), which includes maintaining the related configuration, preparing and running test material and implementing solutions in production, all in close cooperation with colleagues from other business areas;
- drafting communication documents addressed to the user community, work procedures, system documentation and training material, and contributing to reports made regularly to Eurosystem working groups.
The position offers you excellent opportunities to understand the interactions and dependencies among different business areas at the ECB and NCBs, and to gain a detailed insight into financial instruments and the testing and project management of systems relevant for market operations and monetary policy. You will be part of a multicultural team that strives for continuous innovation to make a positive impact on the lives of European citizens.
Qualifications, experience and skills
Essential:
- a master’s degree or equivalent in economics, finance, science, business administration, mathematics or another relevant field (click here for details on degree equivalences), or a bachelor’s degree in one of the aforementioned fields plus one year of relevant professional experience;
- in addition to the above, a minimum of three years’ professional experience in front/middle/back office operations and/or accounting, and/or with treasury management systems in the fields of functional support, portfolio management, risk management, settlement and/or financial accounting;
- as part of the above-mentioned minimum professional experience, practical experience in carrying out complex functional configuration work and implementing business requirements in the Wallstreet Suite or Openlink Findur treasury management systems;
- a sound understanding of financial instruments and markets (fixed income and related derivatives), structured finance (e.g. ABS) and forex instruments;
- professional experience with financial market data systems such as Reuters or Bloomberg;
- an advanced (C1) command of English and an intermediate (B1) command of at least one other official language of the EU, according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
Desired:
- a sound understanding of central bank market operations, and the related governance and working procedures;
- professional experience in the functional software testing of treasury management systems, including test automation;
- professional certification in the field of financial instruments and operations (e.g. FIC, OCP, CFA);
- professional certification in project management, business analysis and/or test management;
- programming experience with languages such as Java or Python.
You engage collaboratively with others. You pursue team goals and learn willingly from other people’s diverse perspectives. You signal any need for change by explaining it and proposing alternative solutions. You analyse complex information effectively and can evaluate different views to arrive at solutions. You know and anticipate stakeholder needs.
You are motivated to be part of our team and to use your skills and competencies to achieve the objectives of this position.
Working modalities
To enable the Division to maintain its business continuity capability, you will occasionally be expected to perform work during non-standard working hours and work at the ECB’s standby sites.
We are willing to discuss part-time arrangements.
Further information
Some of the contracts will be convertible into permanent contracts after three years subject to individual performance and organisational needs.
Temporary appointments may be extended or made permanent subject to organisational needs and budgetary constraints. This may result in a staff member with a non-convertible fixed-term contract being offered a convertible contract in accordance with the ECB Conditions of Employment
For additional information on this specific vacancy, you can speak to the hiring manager, Isabel Soares, on +49 (0)69 1344 7492 between 15:30 and 17:30 on Thursday, 15 April.
Application and selection process
For further information on how to join us, read more.
The recruitment process for this position will include a remote written test, a presentation and interviews.
