Trainee (Data Scientist in the Analytics Centre of Excellence)

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 Analytics Centre of Excellence team within the Digital Business Transformation Task Force.

Specific objectives and projects

During your traineeship you will be involved in different projects (such as adaptation of Eureka project into the Vets division, Knowledge Mining initiative or databases revamp​ project) of the Analytics Centre of Excellence (ACE), supporting automation and digital innovation at the Agency, working closely with other teams of the Digital Business Transformation Task Force (like the Digital Innovation Lab (DigiLab)). 

The type of projects that ACE is working on can range from developing an application to writing an application programme interface (API).  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 (LLM).

You will be involved in different projects 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.  

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.

Learning outcomes

You will have the opportunity to :

• 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.
• Use data visualization and application tools such as Power BI, Shiny, 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 within the last 12 months (graduated between 20 May 2023 and 20 May 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 October 2024 – 31 July 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.