Traineeship in the External Developments Division

Organization: ECB - European Central Bank
Location:
Grade: Internship - Traineeship - Only Open to EU Nationals
Occupational Groups:
Closing Date: 2025-10-31

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 31.10.2025

Your team

You will be part of the External Developments Division within the Directorate General International and European Relations. The Division comprises approximately 20 staff members and is responsible for monitoring and forecasting for major economies outside the euro area, including the United States, China and the United Kingdom. It also examines global macroeconomic developments from both a cyclical and structural perspective, evaluating the effects of factors such as tariffs, trade policy uncertainty and geopolitical shocks. Additionally, the Division performs simulation and scenario analyses of the euro area’s external environment and oversees the international environment part of the ECB/Eurosystem staff macroeconomic projections.

As a trainee, you will join a thematic team and work alongside experienced staff members. Your role will involve supporting the team as it prepares its input for Governing Council meetings and conducting empirical analyses of policy-relevant issues, either from a cross-country perspective or with a focus on specific major economies.

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, consolidate and transform datasets, including macroeconomic and microeconomic data, and maintain and develop databases;
support the team in collecting, processing and visualising data for regular internal and external reports and presentations in liaison with other business areas within the ECB;
programme and maintain the statistical and econometric procedures needed to support the Division’s input into policy discussions and research projects and to develop analytical tools used in policy processes;
maintain and further develop the existing modelling infrastructure;
help design and run simulation and scenario analyses of the euro area’s external environment using the ECB-Global model;
contribute to quantitative analyses and analytical projects that inform policy processes, including the ECB and Eurosystem staff macroeconomic projections for the euro area and working papers that may be published externally.

The traineeship offers you an excellent opportunity to work closely with an experienced and highly motivated team of economists and managers in the field of international macroeconomics, with a focus on analytics, research support and model development.

The traineeship is aimed at students or recent graduates with solid quantitative skills and an interest in policy-related applied research. You will have the chance to improve your programming and data-analysis skills and gain insights into analyses and policy preparations within a central bank, while also gaining exposure to new ideas and experiences that will serve you well in your future career.

You will work in 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, statistics, applied mathematics, data science or a related field;
a sound understanding of international macroeconomics;
practical experience with data-intensive projects and familiarity with the macroeconomic and financial statistics contained in international databases (e.g. the ECB Statistical Data Warehouse and IMF International Financial Statistics) or databases maintained by Eurostat, the OECD, Haver Analytics or Bloomberg;
a very sound knowledge of spreadsheet and visualisation tools such as MS Excel, MS PowerPoint or R;
strong programming skills and proven practical experience with, for example, one or more of the following software products: MATLAB, R, Julia, Stata and Python;
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 (completed or in the final stages of completion) in economics, finance, econometrics, statistics, applied mathematics, data science or a related field;
a completed project (e.g. research paper or thesis) demonstrating quantitative skills in one or more of the following areas: structural and semi-structural models, DGSE models, Bayesian vector autoregression (VAR) models, error correction models and panel regression techniques;
practical experience of working with complex code;
practical experience with data science techniques such as web scraping, textual analysis or machine learning. Practical experience of working with large language models;
experience of using version control software (e.g. Git);
practical experience of using visualisation tools such as Power BI, Tableau or Shiny.

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 February 2026 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.

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We do our best to provide you the most accurate info, but closing dates may be wrong on our site. Please check on the recruiting organization's page for the exact info. Candidates are responsible for complying with deadlines and are encouraged to submit applications well ahead.

Before applying, please make sure that you have read the requirements for the position and that you qualify.
Applications from non-qualifying applicants will most likely be discarded by the recruiting manager.

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