As a trainee in the Financial Reporting Section you will:

• contribute to the preparation of financial statements and reports of the ECB and the Eurosystem;
• support accounting for the ECB’s market operations and financial instruments (monetary policy, foreign exchange and investment portfolios), perform the related reconciliation process and follow up with the relevant business areas, in particular the Directorate General Market Operations;
• collect and analyse the NCBs’ balance sheets and other financial data;
• provide analytical and quantitative support to the Section and address financial reporting queries, extracting relevant data from the ECB’s financial information systems and producing analyses for various stakeholders;
• closely interact, cooperate and share knowledge with other ECB business areas and the NCBs on various financial accounting and reporting topics;
• support the administration and development of information systems used for ECB and Eurosystem financial reporting, and contribute to our digitalisation, automation and innovation plans.

As a trainee in the Accounting Section you will:

• contribute to regular accounting processes not related to monetary policy (such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, fixed assets and year-end procedures) that include working with ECB SAP components relevant to financial accounting;
• advise purchasing business areas, contractors (creditors or debtors) and other relevant stakeholders on accounting issues, and contribute to the development and implementation of accounting concepts for new business;
• support the analysis and presentation of accounting data to management for information and decision-making purposes;
• contribute to the optimisation and documentation of internal processes and procedures, such as the analysis and implementation of innovative business processes and solutions, including within the context of the ECB’s procure-to-pay process and the ECB’s accounting modules in SAP;
• support the training of new colleagues.

• A bachelor’s degree or higher in accounting, finance, business administration, risk management or another relevant field;
• knowledge of one or more of the following areas: accounting/financial reporting, financial markets, financial instruments, financial statement analysis, financial risk management and information technology for financial applications;
• a good knowledge of the MS Office package, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint;
• 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: 

• Knowledge of accounting principles and financial statements;
• an advanced knowledge of MS Excel and other tools for data management and analysis;
• a working knowledge of other software applications and data visualisation tools; 
• experience in data analysis and the ability to interpret data; 
• knowledge of enterprise resource planning systems (such as SAP).
• For Accounting Section: practical experience of accounting operations and control procedures related to the maintenance of accounts payable, administrative payments and/or accounts receivable, monitoring of customer accounts and debt collection, as well as related internal control procedures;
• For Accounting Section: knowledge of the procure-to-pay process.