Traineeship in Market Operations

Traineeship in Market Operations

Your team

The ECB’s Directorate General Market Operations ensures that monetary policy decisions are implemented and appropriately reflected in the financial markets. We do so by conducting Eurosystem monetary policy and foreign exchange operations. We are also the ECB’s “eyes and ears” in the financial markets, monitoring market developments through market intelligence and deep-dive market analysis. As part of our activities in the financial markets, we also manage the ECB’s foreign reserves and own funds portfolios. We develop and maintain the Eurosystem monetary policy implementation framework, put together policy proposals for its continuous improvement, and adapt the Eurosystem’s toolkit to fit a tokenised ecosystem.

This traineeship offers graduates with an interest in financial data analysis, financial markets and/or monetary policy implementation a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience in central banking.

Your role

As a trainee in the Directorate General Market Operations you will join one of our divisions, depending on your skillset and organizational needs. There you will contribute to operational and analytical tasks, working closely with experts and analysts. You will have a unique opportunity to develop your teamwork skills and gain hands-on experience, delivering insights, findings, reports, presentations and other analytical output to colleagues in your division and various stakeholders within the Eurosystem.

You will also be able to showcase and expand your data analysis skills by:

• collecting, managing and integrating data from different sources as part of one of our data management teams;
• visualising and communicating findings using tools such as Tableau, Power BI and Python;
• bringing innovation to business processes, using automation, new technologies, data analytics and visualisation tools.

Throughout your traineeship you will be given opportunities to learn and contribute to the goals of your division while collaborating with more senior colleagues on some of the activities listed below:

Cross Market Analysis and Intelligence Division

• contributing to the financial market monitoring and analysis that is central to the ECB’s monetary policy implementation;
• working closely with financial market experts to prepare high-impact briefings and presentations for board members;
• supporting in-depth analysis on the functioning of euro area and international markets, financial innovation and monetary policy implementation;
• helping develop quantitative tools and data analytics for market analysis in close collaboration with experts in the Division.

Financial Operations Services Division

• independently carrying out cash and custody account reconciliation activities across various ECB portfolios, including foreign reserves, monetary policy and own funds;
• investigating, analysing and resolving discrepancies and exceptions by liaising with correspondent and custodian banks, as well as national central banks within the Eurosystem;
• helping prepare regular reports and dashboards, providing insights into reconciliation and settlement-related statistics;
• actively participating in innovation, digitalisation and process automation initiatives, supporting process reviews and the implementation of new technologies.

Liquidity and Investments Division

• supporting the Division’s activities in relation to various ECB portfolios (foreign reserves, monetary policy and own funds);
• contributing to regular reports on financial markets, covering developments in major bond, equity and foreign exchange markets;
• assisting with the production of ad hoc analyses and summaries of meetings with external counterparties, in particular investment banks;
• analysing bidding behaviour in the ECB’s monetary policy operations, examining changes in the Eurosystem’s balance sheet and investigating the effects of monetary policy decisions on liquidity conditions and money market rates.

Market Operations Frameworks Division

• monitoring and analysing the performance of the Eurosystem monetary policy implementation framework and its impact on the Eurosystem’s balance sheet, and helping to prepare related policy proposals;
• learning about and helping to maintain and enhance the Eurosystem’s collateral and counterparty frameworks by performing data analysis, testing software and improving internal business intelligence reporting;
• working closely with our experts to adapt the Eurosystem monetary policy implementation framework to new technologies, as well as to the challenges of climate change and the application of climate change-related sustainable and responsible investment principles in Eurosystem non-monetary policy portfolios.

Market Operations Solutions and Innovation Division

• driving innovation in business processes, using automation, new technologies and data analytics and visualisation tools;
• engaging in a range of machine learning and AI projects, including sentiment analysis, building LLM-powered systems and performing statistical analysis;
• analysing and configuring financial instruments in the ECB’s treasury management system and helping users to ensure operations run smoothly;
• contributing to project coordination, managing and supporting the maintenance, development and testing of systems and related procedures used within the Directorate General Market Operations and corresponding areas of national central banks;
• developing, executing and organising manual and automated testing of the ECB’s treasury management system.

The traineeship offers you considerable exposure to financial markets and practical approaches to implementing monetary policy. You will also be able to dive deep into data, experience a dynamic operational environment and feel part of a wider mission.

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 finance, economics, econometrics, STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) or a related discipline;
• familiarity with financial markets and ECB monetary policy operations;
• experience of using one or more programming or query languages or tools used in economic and financial analysis (e.g. SQL, Python, R, MATLAB, Stata, VBA or Java);
• experience in preparing, analysing and visualising complex data (e.g. financial market data, transaction-level data, micro data, high frequency data or survey data);
• 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 finance, economics, econometrics, data science, STEM or a related discipline;
• experience with market data services such as Bloomberg, LSEG/Refinitiv (Workspace and/or DataStream);
• an advanced knowledge of MS Excel;
• experience of using Tableau or Power BI.

You are curious and eager to learn, and want to further develop your ability to analyse complex 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 a possible extension to up to 12 months in total. Start dates vary between the second half of 2026 and early 2027.