Senior AI Scientist Knowledge Base - CDAIO

IT STARTS HERE

Santander (www.santander.com) is evolving from a high-impact global brand to a technology-driven organization, and our people are at the heart of this journey. Together, we are driving a customer-centric transformation that values bold thinking, innovation, and the courage to challenge what's possible.

This is more than a strategic shift. It's an opportunity for motivated professionals to grow, learn, and make a real difference.

Our mission is to help people and businesses thrive. As part of the global AI Transformation team, you'll lead and manage strategic AI initiatives that drive impact across global companies and key functions. We are looking for someone who connects business, AI, and technology, ensuring that AI solutions create measurable value.

THE DIFFERENCE YOU MAKE

Santander’s Data & AI Science (DAISci) team is the scientific engine of the bank’s AI transformation. DAISci develops, tests, validates, and translates emerging AI methods and models into products and platforms that redefine how the bank learns, decides, and operates at global scale.

DAISci ensures learning systems and agents scale and remain reliable over time, and translates frontier AI research into trusted, large-scale decision systems that reshape how the bank learns, decides, and operates.

This role offers a rare opportunity to apply frontier AI to reshape financial systems.

Main Responsibilities:

The Senior AI Scientist provides scientific and technical leadership for the local implementation and evolution of Santander’s AI Knowledge Base, with a focus on knowledge representation, graph systems, and agent-ready data structures. The role is designed for a strong individual contributor capable of translating global architectural standards into reliable, high-impact local intelligent systems operating on scale.

The Senior AI Scientist is responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining local instances of the KNOWLEDGE BASE, ensuring structured and unstructured data are connected, semantically described, and accessible to AI agents. The role applies principles of knowledge representation, graph modeling, and semantic indexing to support conversational systems, retrieval pipelines, and autonomous agents within the local market.

Working hands-on with data, engineering, and product teams, the Senior AI Scientist shapes graph schemas, entity resolution strategies, metadata structures, and retrieval pipelines, ensuring alignment with global standards while adapting to local regulatory, linguistic, and business constraints. This role contributes to evaluation frameworks, monitoring practices, and continuous improvement of Knowledge Base components.

The position includes close collaboration with global Knowledge Base leadership, sharing learnings, contributing to reusable components, and helping propagate successful local patterns across markets. The role emphasizes scientific rigor, execution, and cross-functional coordination, rather than broad organizational leadership.

WHAT YOU'LL BRING TO THE TABLE

• 5–10 years of experience in AI, data science, or machine learning systems in production environments.
• Strong expertise in knowledge representation, graph modeling, semantic data structures, or information retrieval systems.
• Demonstrated experience designing and operating data pipelines or AI systems with requirements in high scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
• Practical background in machine learning and modern AI architectures, particularly where they intersect with structured knowledge and retrieval.
• Strong Python programming skills and familiarity with data processing and graph technologies.
• Experience collaborating across engineering, product, and business teams to deploy AI-enabled systems.
• Ability to translate architectural guidance into practical, working local solutions aligned with global platforms.
• Comfort operating as a strong individual contributor with ownership and responsability within a distributed, multi-country AI organization.

WE VALUE YOUR IMPACT

Your contribution matters, and it's recognized. You can expect a fair and competitive rewards package that reflects the impact you create and the value you offer. But we know that rewards go beyond numbers.

• We enable our teams to go further through global opportunities and broad career paths.
• Flexibility that works. Enjoy hybrid work models—some days remote, some days in-person with your team—along with flexible schedules.
• Learning for life. Access hundreds of courses on our platforms, including exclusive access to our global learning space: Santander Open Academy (www.santanderopenacademy.com)
• Competitive rewards. Receive a very competitive salary with performance-based bonuses, which motivates you to continue growing up with us.
• Economic advantages. Take advantage of preferential banking terms, special interest rates on loans, life insurance, and more.
• Your health is our priority. Through BeHealthy, our global wellness program, we promote holistic wellness.
• We know that family is everything. That's why we offer childcare support and family programs tailored to every stage of life.
• Always by your side. Access Santander Contigo, our program for employees and their families that offers legal, emotional and administrative advice services.
• Extra benefits. Gym/WellHub membership, medical centers in some of our facilities, meal allowance, parking, shuttle service from various points in Madrid, as well as discounts and exclusive offers for Santander employees. And that's just the beginning—we'll tell you more when you join!

We're here to keep you motivated, help you reach your goals, and celebrate your progress every step of the way.

LOCAL COMPLIANCE

Santander is proud to be an organization where there are equal opportunities regardless of age, gender, disability, marital status, race, religion or sexual orientation. We are committed to providing an inclusive and accessible application process for all candidates.

WHAT TO DO NEXT?

If this sounds like a position you're interested in, apply.

READY TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP ON YOUR JOURNEY?

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