How has your academic background in IT and engineering shaped your experience at Eurex?

My studies in computer science relate very much to my experiences at Eurex as it has its background in IT as well. The more challenging aspect is to understand the financial part – but I am working on that! In fact, I would like to turn this question around because my experience at Eurex has shaped my knowledge in IT as well: the structure of financial IT services is at least ten times as complex as what I have learned at university. Take the database for example: the dimensions of the databases we use at university have at most the dimension of one table in StatistiX! So, working at Eurex has provided much added value to my studies.

What is the most exciting and challenging part of your internship?

During my internship, I implement and write my bachelor thesis in the team Market Functionality in the Market Design & Delivery department. Therefore, the most exciting part right now is that, for the first time, I work on a project which will actually be used in business in the end. During my studies, I was involved in several software engineering projects, but they weren’t put to use eventually – if anyone is interested in a computer game called “Rudi on Rails”, feel free to approach me. But now I am very happy to create something which hopefully will facilitate the work of my team.

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"Working on a project which will actually be used in business in the end, I am very happy to create something which will facilitate the work of my team."

What does your job entail? What does your particular working day look like?

Analysis to analysis to analysis. Sounds boring? I can assure you it is not! If analysed correctly, data can provide useful insights which can help us to further improve our products and services. That’s what makes data science so exciting. Typical questions I have to answer are: “How many contracts were traded in product X on day Y?” or “How many Orders from agency account were executed against how many Quotes from market maker account?”. I run some SQL queries and analyse the result. Apart from this, I focus on my bachelor thesis which means researching, extracting data and, in the end, programming an anomaly detector for financial data.

How has the internship contributed to your professional/ personal development?

To be honest, a few years ago I wasn’t expecting to end up in the financial industry. You can ask my family and friends about this – they weren’t expecting that either. But the more I learn the more I’m interested: on the one hand, of course, in the technology behind it and on the other hand, in the trading. And I am very happy to be able to work in such a great team which explains me the whole background with the patience of a saint.

Please describe the working environment in your department and at Deutsche Börse Group in general.

Since I started as an intern at Deutsche Börse Group I have been impressed by the working atmosphere here: great colleagues who help you with every issue you might struggle with, exciting tasks you can delve into – and a bistro full of Rittersport and coffee. Working at Eurex in the Market Design & Delivery department has confirmed my expectations – maybe even surpassed. My team and all the colleagues gave me a warm welcome and are fully supportive.

Text by Franziska Schenk