Market Infrastructure Experts (offline technology) - Digital Euro Project

Join the European Central Bank’s Directorate Digital Euro as a Market Infrastructure Expert in the Offline Team, part of the Directorate General Market Infrastructure and Payments. The Directorate leads the digital euro project, supports its governance bodies in steering, controlling and monitoring the project, and oversees project workstreams managing the scope, budget and resources approved by the Governing Council.

In this role, you will be part of a team of about eight staff members responsible for refining and prioritising offline digital euro use cases and aligning them with policy, risk, privacy and inclusion objectives. The team also supports and steers pilot and technical workstreams by coordinating with original equipment manufacturers and other stakeholders and feeding back lessons learned into the Rulebook and the digital euro app design.

Your role

• Build and maintain relationships with key stakeholders, such as consumer organisations, merchants, payment service providers, device manufacturers and standardisation bodies, to understand and integrate their needs and constraints for offline payments into the project.
• Define and refine offline payment use cases, such as peer-to-peer and consumer-to-merchant, with clear constraints including transaction limits, usage caps and risk mitigation measures.
• Ensure offline use cases incorporate strong privacy protections, cash-like where possible, while meeting regulatory requirements, and define safeguards against risks such as double spending, fraud and misuse.
• Develop offline payment scenarios to enhance system resilience during network outages or disasters and ensure the continuity of basic payments when online infrastructure is unavailable.
• Support offline payment pilots, gather feedback from users and stakeholders, and translate findings into refined requirements.
• Collaborate with usability, security and technical experts to validate solutions.
• Draft offline-specific rules and requirements, such as transaction limits, dispute handling and synchronisation behaviour, for inclusion in the Rulebook, ensuring alignment with the overall digital euro framework.
• Promote offline payment solutions that support financial inclusion and integrate accessibility considerations into user journeys and device interactions for users with limited connectivity, low digital literacy or disabilities.

The position offers the opportunity to help develop innovative functionality for digital payments as part of a multicultural team focused on continuous innovation and positive impact for European citizens.

The ECB actively supports professional development through learning opportunities such as training and mentoring, and encourages horizontal mobility after some years in the same position.

Qualifications, experience and skills

Essential

• A master's degree or equivalent in a STEM subject (science, technology, engineering or mathematics) or another relevant field.
• A minimum of four years’ professional experience specialising in secure elements, applied cryptography or a security-related domain.
• Proven analytical skills and experience in drafting concise and clear notes and reports, as well as presenting complex topics adapted to different audiences.
• An advanced (C1) command of English and an intermediate (B1) command of at least one other official language of the EU.

Desired

• Experience in developing an offline, or partially offline, payment solution.
• Technical knowledge of the standards applicable to payments, payment schemes or solutions in the bank-to-consumer domain.
• Experience with SAFe or agile project management approaches.
• Experience in successfully launching a product on the market.

You engage collaboratively with others, pursue team goals and learn willingly from diverse perspectives. You signal any need for change by explaining it and proposing alternative solutions. You analyse complex information effectively, evaluate different views to arrive at solutions and anticipate stakeholder needs.

You are motivated to be part of the team and to develop and use your skills and competencies to achieve the aims of this position.

Working modalities

A part-time arrangement can be discussed for this role.

Further information

The formal title for this position will be Market Infrastructure Project Management Expert.

The contracts offered will be fixed-term, with appointment until 31 March 2028. 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.