General Information
Type of contract
Traineeship
Who can apply?
EU nationals eligible for our traineeship programme
Grant
The trainee grant is €1,170 per month plus an accommodation allowance (see further information section)
Working time
Full time
Place of work
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Closing date
25.04.2024
Your team
You will be part of the Oversight Division in the Directorate General Market Infrastructure and Payments. All staff in the Directorate General actively contribute to ensuring that Europe’s financial markets can rely on safe and efficient market infrastructures, while embracing innovation and contributing to further European integration. We have three main responsibilities: we provide infrastructure for payment and securities settlement under the TARGET Services brand; we work with the financial sector to promote innovation and the harmonisation of business practices across Europe; and we oversee market infrastructures and the overall payments ecosystem.
The Oversight Division has around 40 members of staff and is responsible for the oversight of payment systems, payment instruments, payment schemes and arrangements, securities settlement infrastructures (including TARGET2-Securities), and central counterparties. In addition, the Division is responsible for maintaining and implementing the Eurosystem’s cyber resilience strategy for pan-European market infrastructures, which includes a broad range of state-of-the-art tools.
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 trainee you will work closely with ECB experts and will:
- support analytical and/or policy-related projects looking at market infrastructures, their efficiency and interconnectedness, and any systemic risk;
- participate in monitoring the compliance of payment systems, payment instruments, payment schemes and arrangements, and securities settlement infrastructures with oversight standards and applicable regulations;
- contribute to the work on regulatory initiatives in the fields of payments and securities;
- contribute to the overall Eurosystem cyber resilience strategy for financial market infrastructures as well as individual cyber resilience initiatives and tools under the Euro Cyber Resilience Board for pan-European Financial Infrastructures (ECRB);
- support the preparation of briefings, memos, papers and reports on analytical projects and policy topics;
- help to prepare presentations for different internal and external audiences;
- support the collection, analysis and sharing of data in our areas of responsibility and the development of new approaches, proposing creative ways to address technical questions.
We are recruiting four trainees who will be working in different teams. All four positions offer excellent opportunities to learn about financial market infrastructures and to contribute to the Eurosystem’s oversight tasks in this field.
Depending on the team to which you are allocated, you will primarily contribute to ensuring the safety and efficiency of (i) payment systems; (ii) payment instruments, schemes and arrangements; or (iii) securities settlement infrastructures; or (iv) promoting the cyber resilience of financial market infrastructures.
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 bachelor’s degree or higher in economics, business administration, computer science, auditing, law or a similar field;
- a good knowledge of the MS Office package;
- 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 master’s degree in economics, business administration, computer science, auditing, law (with a specialisation in the area of financial markets) or a similar field;
- a basic knowledge of payment instruments, payment systems, securities settlement infrastructures, other financial market infrastructures or post-trade processing, or basic cyber resilience concepts;
- experience in drafting reports, briefings or analytical notes in English;
- good presentation skills;
- a general awareness of EU regulatory processes and frameworks relevant to financial market infrastructures (e.g. the ECB Regulation on oversight requirements for systemically important payment systems (SIPS Regulation), the Eurosystem oversight framework for electronic payment instruments, schemes and arrangements (PISA framework), the EU Payment Services Directive, EU post-trading regulations and the CPMI-IOSCO Principles for financial market infrastructures);
- a working knowledge of data management tools (e.g. MS Excel), statistical packages or programming languages (e.g. Stata, R, MATLAB, VBA or Python) and/or data visualisation software (e.g. Tableau).
You are curious and eager to learn, and want to further develop your ability to analyse information. You are keen to collaborate with others, pursue team goals and learn from other people’s diverse perspectives. You strive to know and anticipate stakeholder needs, and will signal any need for change and propose alternative solutions.
You are motivated to contribute to the ECB’s mission, to serve the citizens of the EU as a member of a public institution and to work with colleagues from all over Europe. You are keen to be part of our team and to use your skills and competencies to achieve the aims of this position.
Further information
Initial traineeship of six months, with the possibility of extension to up to twelve months in total.
Application and selection process
The recruitment process for this position will include an online interview and a remote written exercise.
Further information on
how to apply is available on our website.
If you are not selected for this position but are still considered suitable, you will be placed on a reserve list for 12 months from the closing date for applications, from which you might be considered for other traineeship positions within the ECB.
