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
20.10.2026
Your team
The Directorate General Monetary Policy is responsible for preparing the monetary policy decisions of the ECB’s Governing Council. It analyses the ECB’s monetary policy strategy as well as financial and monetary developments. It also contributes to external communications, for example through economic research papers, speeches and official ECB publications. If selected, you will be offered a traineeship in one of the following two divisions within the Directorate General.
The Capital Markets and Financial Structure Division analyses financial markets from a monetary policy perspective. It assesses the non-bank transmission of monetary policy, covering the term structure of interest rates, sovereign bonds, corporate bonds, stock markets and the financing structure of non-financial corporations. The Division analyses the impact of the ECB’s policy measures on financial markets using quantitative models, such as vector autoregressions (VARs), factor models and panel data models, and contributes to internal and external publications on monetary policy and euro area financial markets. The Division also coordinates the survey on the access to finance of enterprises (SAFE) in the euro area.
The Monetary Policy Strategy Division analyses and assesses the ECB’s monetary policy stance and longer-term strategic issues. To this end it uses state-of-the-art tools – such as dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models, VARs and machine learning models – and conducts its own survey of monetary analysts. It contributes to preparing supporting analysis for the Governing Council’s decisions on the ECB’s key interest rates and other monetary policy measures. It also develops models and tools for analysing euro area money markets, the Eurosystem’s balance sheet, the ECB’s communication on monetary policy as well as the impact of monetary policy instruments on financial conditions and the wider economy. In addition, the Division contributes to ECB communication on monetary policy and to research on the design and impact of a digital euro.
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:
- process datasets, including macroeconomic and microeconomic data as well as financial and intraday data, and maintain, update and further develop the data infrastructure;
- contribute to preparing and updating charts and tables for regular internal and external reports and presentations in liaison with other business areas within the ECB;
- develop and automate data workflows, including building dashboards with business intelligence and other tools, retrieving and integrating data via application programming interfaces, and generating charts and visualisations programmatically;
- conduct analysis using methods such as DSGEs, VARs and local projections as well as asset pricing, factor and machine learning models;
- work closely with your Division’s economists on enhancing analytical, numerical and econometric tools;
- maintain and further develop the existing modelling infrastructure;
- contribute to quantitative analyses and analytical projects that feature in policy reports or working papers, both of which may be published externally.
The traineeship offers you excellent opportunities to enhance your quantitative skills, work on analytical tasks and collaborate with experienced central bank economists. You will gain hands-on experience, significantly improving your programming and data analysis skills by applying them in a real-world policy environment. The traineeship also provides a rare opportunity to gain insight into analysis and policy preparation within a central bank. 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, finance, econometrics, mathematics, statistics, data science, social sciences or a related field;
- in-depth practical experience of working with one or more of the following programming languages: MATLAB, Dynare, Python, R, Stata or SQL, as evidenced by an empirical or theoretical project;
- experience with one or more of the following types of economic data: macroeconomic data, financial market data, firm-level data, transaction-level data, high-frequency data, panel data, survey data, other microdata or large datasets;
- a sound understanding of the economic issues covered by at least one of the two Divisions described above;
- a good knowledge of Microsoft Office;
- experience of importing data, creating charts, analysing data and using pivot tables in Microsoft Excel;
- 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 or higher (completed or in the final stages of completion) in economics, finance, econometrics, mathematics, statistics, data science, social sciences or a related field;
- a solid background in econometrics (in particular time series and panel econometrics), statistics or data science (e.g. web scraping, text analysis or machine learning);
- practical experience of working with relational databases, using SQL and/or other big data analytic tools in Hadoop, Spark or similar big data frameworks;
- proven expertise in independently developing code and utilising diverse programming techniques in any of the following languages: MATLAB, Dynare, Python, R, Stata or SQL;
- basic experience with collaborative development and version control systems, such as Git;
- practical experience of using visualisation tools such as Power BI, Tableau or R Shiny;
- experience of assisting in research;
- experience in working with large language models (LLMs);
- experience of using market data services such as Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters/Refinitiv (Eikon and/or DataStream), iBoxx, Haver Analytics, SNL Financial, Bureau van Dijk Orbis Bank Focus (formerly Bankscope) or Orbis Europe.
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. Flexible starting dates, from spring 2027 onwards.
Other details on the conditions applicable to traineeships at the ECB can be found on our website.
Application and selection process
The recruitment process for this position will include an online interview.
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.
