IT Application Development Specialists

General Information

Type of contract

Fixed-term contract, which may be extended subject to individual performance and organisational needs

Who can apply? EU nationals

Salary

E/F (bracket 1 - step 1) full time monthly net salary: €4,982 plus benefits, for further information see what we offer.

Working time

Full time

Place of work

Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Closing date

Your team

You will be part of the Directorate General Information Systems. Our Directorate General provides innovative, flexible and secure IT solutions to enable ECB and Eurosystem/ESCB staff to carry out their daily tasks. In addition to running and maintaining more than 100 available services, it is also responsible for the ECB’s IT governance frameworks. Our Directorate General consists of approximately 350 professionals delivering secure, scalable and data-driven IT solutions that support central banking, banking supervision and shared services across the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB).

We are looking for Application Development Specialists to join the Directorate General Information Systems. As an IT Specialist, you will further develop the portfolio of products that we managed and work on major ECB initiatives such as the Digital Euro project, the Analytics and Data project and the Integrated Reporting Framework project. You will have the opportunity to contribute to the Common Data Management Programme, an ESCB/SSM project that will design a future-proof solution for a state-of-the-art data and analytics environment for the ESCB and the Single Supervisory Mechanism.

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

We are looking for IT Application Development Specialists for the following roles in the ECB’s Common Data Management Programme: Data Engineering, Software Engineering and Cloud Engineering. We are also looking for an IT Specialist to work on the ECB’s Digital Euro project.

As an IT Application Development Specialist, you will play a key role in the design, development and delivery of IT services, contributing to innovative solutions that support ECB’s objectives.

In these roles, and depending on your skills and assigned responsibilities, you will:

• design, develop and enhance IT services within the Directorate General Information Systems;
• develop and implement automated tests, builds, deployments and continuous integration pipelines to improve quality assurance and streamline delivery;
• collaborate with product owners and business stakeholders to refine user stories and prioritise tasks according to business value;
• actively participate in Agile ceremonies (sprint planning, daily stand-ups, reviews and retrospectives);
• work with experts in architecture, security, governance, cloud computing and data protection to ensure compliance and quality;
• contribute to product team activities, share insights and present results to stakeholders when required.

We actively support professional development for our staff. Besides learning opportunities such as training and mentoring, we encourage and support horizontal mobility after some years in the same position.

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 equivalent) in computer science, STEM, economics, finance, statistics or another relevant field (see How you can join us on our website for details on degree equivalences);
• in addition to the above, at least two years’ professional experience (including traineeships) in developing, maintaining, supporting and integrating activities within complex IT systems, such as Agile software development (particularly Scrum) or other product development/management methodologies;
• practical experience in Agile software development (e.g. SAFe, Scrum, Kanban);
• excellent analytical, drafting and presentation skills, with the ability to explain complex topics to diverse audiences;
• an advanced command of English (C1) 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 for the IT Specialist role in the Digital Euro project:

• experience in designing, developing and delivering distributed systems with demanding performance, security and reliability requirements utilising frameworks such as Spring Boot, Hibernate or Micronaut;
• experience in building scalable, secure and efficient RESTful APIs and microservices, including integration with databases (e.g. MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB) and third-party services;
• experience in implementing and managing DevOps practices in cloud platforms, including CI/CD pipeline creation, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using tools like Terraform and containerisation with Docker and Kubernetes;
• an ability to understand existing codebases and build effective solutions on top of code developed by others.

Desired for the Data Engineering profile in the Common Data Management Programme:

• proficiency in big data frameworks (e.g. Apache Spark, Flink, Kafka);
• strong experience with development and architecture ETL/ELT/reverse ETL pipelines and data workflow orchestration tools (e.g. Apache Airflow);
• solid knowledge of data modelling, data warehousing and modern storage solutions (e.g. Apache Iceberg, Iceberg REST Catalog, Trino, Impala, Hive, object storage);
• a sound understanding of connecting to data (e.g. ADBC, Iceberg REST Catalog, traditional ODBC/JDBC);
• experience designing, building, securing and optimising data lakes, data warehouses and data lakehouses.

Desired for the Software Engineering profile in the Common Data Management Programme:

• proficiency in multiple programming languages (e.g. Java, Python, JavaScript, Go, Rust);
• experience building complex applications using languages and frameworks such as Java, Spring, JavaScript/TypeScript, Angular, Python, FastAPI;
• experience with infrastructure-as-code (e.g. Terraform), ideally on sovereign EU cloud providers;
• a strong knowledge of SQL and NoSQL databases (e.g. document, key-value, column-family, graph).

Desired for the Cloud Engineering role in the Common Data Management Programme:

• experience in architecting secure large-scale cloud applications addressing the operational, security, reliability, performance, cost and sustainability dimensions;
• strong experience in cloud provider managed solutions, e.g. managed databases, managed function as a service, managed containers;
• proficiency in designing and deploying Kubernetes-based applications.

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

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

Further information

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.

For additional information on this specific vacancy, you can speak to the hiring manager, Antonio Morlupi, on between 09:00 and 10:00 on Monday, 21, Wednesday, 23, Monday, 28 or Wednesday, 30 September.

Application and selection process

The recruitment process for this position will be conducted remotely. It will include a written exercise, a presentation and interviews.

If you are not selected for this position but are still considered suitable, you will be placed on a reserve list (see step 4 of How we hire), from which you might be considered for similar positions within the ECB.

Find out how to apply for a position at the ECB.