Julia

Data & Technology trainee

Social aspect

Data Scientists are in high demand, so recruiters were beating down my door while I was still studying. After finishing my Master’s I was able to start immediately in a junior position at a commercial bank. The pay was pretty good and I had plenty of scope for development – an excellent first job. My aim was to stay there for at least a year and a half. But during the onboarding course, I was told about the role of DNB and the ECB in the financial system, and then something resonated right away. Especially the social aspect appealed to me. And when I heard about the Data & Tech Traineeship a month later, I was like: why not give it a try? That's how I ended up at DNB, unplanned.

Presenting in Paris

My first placement as a trainee was at the Chief Innovation Office Supervision. There, I worked as a kind of independent consultant for supervisors on digitalisation. They would come up to me with a problem they had or something they felt could be done more efficiently, and then I would look at how to automate it, especially with tools from the Microsoft Power Platform. But I also did a whole technical course there on Python. That summer, I got to go to Paris with a colleague to give a presentation on Natural Language Processing and Supervision. At that conference, you could just bump into Elon Musk and others, that's a pretty cool experience. And then I went to the team that developed ChatDNB. We won a Central Banking Award for that application.

It feels like university here, but paid.

Deep learning

Besides quite a few hard skills, I also learnt a lot in terms of time and expectation management. Working on different projects and use cases in an agile environment can be pretty hectic. I often underestimated the time I would need for assignments, Thinking: “I can wrap this up in a week.” But then you find out you need to wait for feedback or you run into a rights issue, so then things take longer after all. Now I work as a Business Intelligence Developer at Financial Markets, and I also sit on the board of JongDNB. This year, I supervised two committees: one for activities and one for the Summer School. That’s great, and it helps you build your network, but I must also remember to block time for deep learning. Because I want to keep developing.

Relaxed atmosphere

By sharing my stories about DNB, I have also got others excited. The atmosphere here is relaxed and people are friendly. The four-day working week is very nice because it gives you a three-day weekend. And the traineeship is well paid, which is by no means the case everywhere. Having JongDNB, lectures and so many young people makes the transition from studying to working life a lot smoother. You are not just thrown into the deep end with a bunch of dull, pin-stripe types and expected to swim. Actually, it feels like university here, but paid. And all this in a marvellous building smack in the middle of Amsterdam. It can't get any better, right?

Stories of our employees

Kevin - Data & Technology trainee

Read the story about Kevin - Data & Technology trainee

Huyen - Data Scientist

I test banks’ resilience to cybercrime

Read the story about Huyen - Data Scientist

Related vacancies

All vacancies
Waarmerk drempelvrij.nl