ESA Graduate Trainee in Transformation and Digitalisation of Finance and Controlling Processes

Our team and mission

Working within the DIrectorate of Internal Services, the Budget Service team is responsible for assessing, monitoring and controlling the overall resources for ESA activities. Oo an Agency-wide basis, the team is responsible for preparing the annual budgets and for coordinating the end-to-end processes of the Corporate Business Planning and Control framework. Our team has an important contribution to ESA as we:

• Assess the in-year and multi-year resource plans, including cost, cash, income, workforce/workload, procurement and schedule, and related risks and analysing deviations from planning;
• Determine, in consultation with the directorates, measures to correct deviations from planning;
• Analyse the pace of implementation of programmes to help devise financial programmatic corridors and targets for activity domains;
• Provide inputs for periodic reporting to the Executive Board and to Member States on the overall planning status and achievements of ESA programmes and activities;
• Prepare and submits to Council for adoption the Agency’s annual budgets;
• Support the preparation of Council meetings at ministerial level and bilateral discussions with Member States as required by reviewing programme proposals and legal basis and preparing simulations in support of each Delegation’s preparation of the Ministerial at national level;
• Support the preparation of financial documents issued to the Administrative and Finance Committee and/or Council, which are of strategic importance for Member States when assessing their internal resource planning;
• Lead the end-to-end controlling process within the Agency by coordinating, consolidating and preparing projections, also used as an input to other controlling processes, to support decision-making;
• Contribute to the Finance Department’s digitalisation initiatives by providing requirements for specific processes to be digitalised, liaising with directorates as required, and supporting the associated change management;
• Support the definition and development of Agency-wide corporate planning tools and the enhancement of related processes aimed at establishing a common, single ESA data set.

You are encouraged to visit the ESA website: http://www.esa.int

Field(s) of activity/research for the traineeship

As an ESA Graduate Trainee in our team, you will have the opportunity to support the on-going transformation and digitalisation of finance and controlling processes to increase efficiency, flexibility and reliability of ESA's budget. Key areas of focus in delivering this objective during your traineeship will be:

• Preparation
  • Auditing existing tools and processes to identify bottlenecks;
  • Proposing and implementing upgrades or integrations with existing AI and state-of-the-art IT systems;
• Definition of requirements
  • Jointly with the process responsible, defining requirements for IT solutions;
  • Preparing mock-ups;
  • Formalising expected outcome;
• Follow-up of development
  • Coordinate with the various contributors;
  • Liaise with IT provider;
  • Organising the working sessions jointly with the IT provider;
  • Organising the project & securing the proper execution supporting the section heads;
• Validation
  • Organising the testing phase of the solutions;
  • Securing proper validation of all IT evolutions (incl. dashboards);
• Process improvements
  • Capturing opportunities for process improvements;
  • Proposing adjustment of the processes;
  • Securing alignment of process contributors;
• Reporting
  • Designing and building dashboards with Power BI;
  • Leveraging new data architecture to propose new KPIs or dashboards;
  • Investigating opportunity for AI-driven analytics to provide real-time, actionable insights;

As a result of the above, you will contribute to the follow deliverables:

• Reporting outlining inefficiencies in current IT tools and proposed improvements;
• New IT solutions in place properly tested and validated;
• Documentation of processes, including workflows, methodologies, and key findings.

This EGT position will provide you with an experience that will develop a comprehensive skill set of process optimisation, IT tool development, and financial analysis, offering both practical and strategic insights to improve efficiency in finance departments.

Technical competencies

Behavioural competencies

Result Orientation

Operational Efficiency

Fostering Cooperation

Relationship Management

Continuous Improvement

Forward Thinking

For more information, please refer to the ESA Core Behavioural Competencies guidebook

Education

You should have just completed, or be in the final year of your master’s degree in engineering, economics or business administration.

Additional requirements

You should have good interpersonal and communication skills and should be able to work in a multicultural environment, both independently and as part of a team. Previous experience of working in international teams can be considered an asset. Your motivation, overall professional perspective and career goals will also be explored during the later stages of the selection process. 

You should also have:

• Strong analytical and critical-thinking skills to address inefficiencies;
• An ability to explain technical solutions to non-technical stakeholders effectively.