Selection procedure reference: EMA/TR/10681 

Deadline for applications: 30 September 2024 23:59 CET 

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is a decentralised agency of the European Union (EU), located in Amsterdam. It began operating in 1995. It is responsible for the scientific evaluation, supervision and safety monitoring of medicines in the EU.

This traineeship opportunity is now open for applications until 30 September 2024 23:59 CET, with an intake on 1 March 2025.

About the traineeship programme

The Agency is looking for motivated, qualified recent graduates or students on an Erasmus+ or other programme or PhD students or Master's students (who posses a previous degree), who are interested in gaining experience and contribute to the Agency’s work for every patient in Europe. The purpose of a traineeship at the Agency is to perform tasks that are predominantly in the interest of the trainee’s training and principally serve to increase the trainee’s knowledge and to gain relevant experience.

Placement description

We are looking for a trainee in the Digital Business Transformation Task Force.

Specific objectives and projects

During this traineeship, you will be involved in different projects of the Analytics Centre of Excellence (ACE) team within the Digital Business Transformation Task Force, supporting automation and digital innovation and EMA, while working closely with other colleagues from the Task Force, such as the Digital Innovation Lab (DigiLab). 

The type of projects that ACE is working on can range from developing an application to writing an application programming interface (API). Examples of the projects where you can expect to be involved are: adaptation of Eureka project into the Veterinary Medicines division, Knowledge Mining initiative or Name Review Group (NRG*) database revamp​.  In order to deliver these projects, you will need to integrate data from different databases, write code to automatically analyse documents, scrape public information from the internet, write software to manage business process, etc. You will be also involved in the implementation of new AI technologies such as large language models (LLMs).

You will be involved from the automation pipeline of projects and the knowledge mining projects space. As one of the main projects already mentioned above, you will be involved in the adaptation of Eureka project into the Veterinary Medicines division where you will learn how to use natural language processing techniques to extract key information from product information documents.  

As part of this opportunity, you will also collaborate with other EMA colleagues with different technical background in order to understand their business needs, translate these into concrete solutions, and report on the results in a clear manner.

* The Name Review Group (NRG) was established to review the acceptability of proposed (invented) names for human medicinal products processed through the centralised procedure

Learning outcomes

Through this traineeship, you will

• Work closely with other data experts and data scientists to deliver results.
• Take complex business analyses and projects from concept to completion, and make the relevant results accessible to business users at all levels.
• Communicate with business users to understand their requirements and to present results in a clear and structured manner.
• Prepare reports and presentations with possible recommendations/trends/scenarios to support business reviews in a visual and clear manner.
• Use statistical software and programming languages used in analytics such as Python, R, SQL, etc.
• Understand, clean, and integrate massive disparate data sets and demonstrate familiarity with the data modelling workflow.
• Employ advanced analytics techniques in building Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) models and solutions for data-driven decision-making, process improvement, and process automation.
• Use cognitive service from Azure.
• Implement Large Language Models.

Eligibility criteria

To be eligible for consideration for this placement, you are required to:

1. enjoy full rights as a citizen of a European Union Member State or Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway;
2. possess a university degree in Mathematics, statistics, physics, computer science or related field (minimum of three years or more) that must have been obtained between 30 September 2023 and 30 September 2024 or be a university student on an Erasmus + or a similar programme or a PhD student or a Master's student with a previous fully finished degree in the areas mentioned before.
3. a thorough knowledge of English (at least level C1) and good knowledge of other official EU language (at least B2) of the Common European Framework for Languages

For criteria 1 and 2, you will be required to provide proof in the application form and at the interview stage. Failing to present these documents may result in the disqualification from the procedure.

Additional skills

In addition to the eligibility criteria, you will have:

• Knowledge of statistical concepts and analytical functions, and how to use them on data sets.
• Understanding of statistical analysis and experimental design.
• Numeracy, organisational, analytical and problem-solving skills and attention to detail.
• A flexible and pro-active approach to work.
• Intellectual and analytical curiosity – initiative to dig into the “why” of various results.
• Analytical rigor and the ability to identify actionable insights.
• Knowledge of statistics software and programming languages such R, python, and SQL.

Behavioural Competencies

You will demonstrate the following behavioural competencies:

• Communication skills
• Interpersonal skills
• Working with others
• Adaptability
• Research and analytical skills
• Learning and development

Expected selection timelines

Conditions of traineeship

The traineeship is offered for 10 months (1 March 2025 – 31 December 2025) and takes place at the Agency’s premises in Amsterdam with possibility for teleworking up to 40% of working time from The Netherlands and occasional teleworking from outside The Netherlands. Traineeships are offered for either full-time or part-time (80% or 50%) if combined with university studies.

The Agency pays a monthly stipend of €1,858.31 for a full-time traineeship (reduced accordingly for 80% or 50%) and a travel contribution upon joining the Agency.

Each trainee will have a mentor at the Agency who will guide the trainee through the programme.

The conditions of employment are stated in the Executive Decision on rules governing the traineeship programme at the EMA available here.

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Domenico Scarlattilaan 6 - 1083 HS Amsterdam - The Netherlands

Telephone +31 (0)88 781 6000 - Email recruitment@ema.europa.eu

© European Medicines Agency, 2024. Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.