Traineeship

We are continuously on the lookout for Legal Trainees who can help support us in our work on GDPR litigation and enforcement. As one of our three to four Trainees, you will work closely with the rest of our pan-European team, and will take on your own projects which will have a direct impact on organizations and data subjects across the EU and EEA.

• Find all details in the fact sheet here
• Information on how we process your personal data in the course of the application process can be found here.
• Due to legal reasons, we cannot provide work visas to applicants. You must already have a legal ground to live in the EU/EEA to apply.
• Our next openings are available from January 2025 onward and from May 2025 onward. Starting earlier is not possible.

To give you a rough idea about what it’s like to be a member of the noyb team, here’s a short video with one of our previous trainees Anna:

Your qualifications

We’re looking for individuals with a law degree obtained at an EEA university who have a proven passion for EU data protection and privacy law. Whether you’ve studied data protection law at university, or have written articles on it in-between, it’s important that you can demonstrate your interest and familiarity with the subject matter. You will be working with the GDPR on a daily basis. Therefore, you must have a robust understanding of its provisions and the commentary surrounding it, and should also have knowledge of EU law on a broader scale.

Your English must be excellent: Our internal working language is English. You will be asked to draft legal submissions and reports in English, read and summarize complex court and data protection authority decisions, and conduct research on a variety of topics. You should also have excellent command of an additional EEA language besides English. Additional language skills are huge plus when you want to become a Trainee with noyb, as we try to continuously cover most EU languages.

It’s also important that you’re a motivated individual who can bring new ideas to the table, self-manage your time, and work with people of different backgrounds and cultures. Despite being a small NGO, noyb’s work is dynamic and fast-paced, and there are always multiple projects going on. We therefore look for people who can effectively multi-task.

The work you’ll do

As a trainee, you’ll get to work with the whole legal team at noyb. We strongly encourage that you work on your own projects or put previous academic work into practice. You may also contribute to the projects our permanent staff are working on, according to what is topical and what your interests are.

In addition to this, there are some tasks you will be expected to contribute to consistently: For instance, you will be expected to assist with managing our GDPR decision repository, the GDPRhub, which means monitoring the websites of the different data protection authorities for new decisions, engaging with our Country Reporters to distribute these decisions, and summarizing decisions yourself from time to time. You will also be expected to author commentaries on the different articles of the GDPR every couple of weeks. It will also be expected that you help provide our members with advice on their GDPR queries – therefore it helps if you are a people-oriented individual.

While you will contribute to such tasks for the duration of your traineeship, there is no uniform ‘Trainee experience’ in the sense that it will very much be up to you to express your interest for projects that you would like to work on.

Living in Vienna as a trainee

At noyb, it’s important for us that you feel welcome and included. Typically, you will embark on your traineeship experience alongside two or three other trainees at noyb. This means that there will always be multiple trainees who are also new to Vienna and looking to explore the city and its surroundings. Trainees and other noyb staff members often spend time together outside of work, and may organize things such as dinners or weekend-trips to explore Austria. Usually (COVID restrictions permitting), you will also be able explore all that Vienna has to offer from typical Viennese things (like classical music and vineyards right in the city) to the usual offerings of a larger city (like a vibrant party life, museums and parks). If you’re into sports, there’s plenty of opportunity for that too – whether it’s through joining a rowing team or going bouldering!

Applying to noyb

We try to make applications with us meaningful and easy. We are usually somewhat flexible on timing and other practical elements. As a European organization we also try to cater to national rules on education (e.g. required practice certificates), as far as possible. You can send us an informal request or a full application at any time and we are happy to get back to you on timing and other details.

For all further details, please read through our one-pager here.

Please take a short questionnaire to see if you fulfill the formal requirements for a noyb traineeship and to contact Marco Blocher, in charge of the trainee applications.

Selection process

Once we think you may fit well with our team, we will send you a link to an online test that we kindly ask you to complete within two weeks. Here we will test your knowledge of the GDPR and your linguistic skills. If your profile fits well (which is usually a mix of elements like timing, current language mix in the office and legal skills), you may be asked to demonstrate your skills during a final video interview.