Strategic AI Transformation Manager – AI Transformation

THE DIFFERENCE YOU MAKE

We are seeking a Strategic AI Transformation Manager to join Santander’s AI Transformation team. The mission of this role is to lead the end-to-end strategic portfolio management of AI initiatives across the Group, ensuring that AI investments are prioritized, governed, and executed to maximize measurable business value, while balancing risk, capacity, and long-term strategic objectives.

This role acts as the central orchestrator across AI, business, and technology domains, converting AI demand into an executable, transparent, and value-driven portfolio roadmap aligned with Santander’s strategic priorities.

Main Responsibilities:

Portfolio Strategy & Value Realization

• Lead the structuring and consolidation of AI use cases across businesses, functions, and geographies into a unified strategic portfolio.
• Translate business needs into high-level AI initiatives, defining scope, objectives, and expected outcomes.
• Analyze and forecast the long-term value impact of AI initiatives, ensuring alignment with Group strategic goals and value creation targets.
• Drive a balanced portfolio across optimizing short- and long-term returns.
• Ensure all AI investments are deliberate, prioritized, and aligned with enterprise value creation ambitions.

Use Case Intake, Prioritization & Governance

• Define and apply prioritization criteria based on business impact, implementation effort, risk, and scalability.
• Lead cross-functional prioritization forums, enabling transparent and consistent decision-making across products, disciplines, and regions.
• Orchestrate capacity allocation and trade-offs across AI teams, ensuring optimal resource utilization and strategic alignment.
• Ensure governance of Responsible AI requirements, including early-stage risk assessments and compliance checkpoints.

Business Case & Performance Management

• Oversee the development of robust business cases for AI initiatives, including:
  • Value drivers (revenue, efficiency, CX, capability building)
  • Adoption effort and implementation complexity
  • Risks and organizational dependencies
• Define and monitor KPIs / OKRs to track:
  • Value realization and ROI
  • Adoption and scalability
  • Delivery performance (e.g., time-to-deploy, cycle time, production deployments)
• Ensure continuous tracking of benefits realization and trigger corrective actions, including stop/re-scope decisions when needed.

Portfolio Orchestration & Execution Oversight

• Act as the strategic orchestrator between AI teams, Product Owners, and Business Units to ensure coordinated execution of multi-product and cross-functional initiatives.
• Provide end-to-end visibility of the AI portfolio lifecycle (from ideation to deployment and monitoring).
• Ensure dependencies, risks, and issues are actively managed to guarantee delivery predictability.
• Facilitate alignment across AI teams, especially for complex, multi-domain initiatives.

Stakeholder Management & Strategic Steering

• Provide senior leadership with a clear, data-driven view of the AI portfolio, including progress, risks, and value delivered.
• Support strategic decision-making through portfolio insights, scenario analysis, and trade-off recommendations.
• Establish governance cadences and forums to steer strategic portfolio evolution and ensure continuous alignment with business priorities.
• Act as a key advisor to senior stakeholders on AI investment strategy and prioritization.

Role Positioning

This role is not focused on building AI solutions directly, but on maximizing their strategic impact ensuring that Santander’s AI efforts are:

• Prioritized effectively
• Executed with discipline
• Measured rigorously
• Aligned with enterprise value creation

It represents a shift from individual use case delivery to enterprise-wide AI portfolio optimization and value realization.

WHAT YOU'LL BRING TO THE TABLE

Our people are our greatest strength. Each individual brings unique perspectives that make us stronger as a team and as an organization. We're enabling teams to go above and beyond by valuing who they are and empowering what they bring to the table.

Professional experience

• 8+ years of experience in AI/ML with at least 2 years in Generative AI/Agentic AI (LLMs, vector DBs, RAG), proven experience in Cloud Architectures (AWS) and in MLOps designing and implementing AI ecosystems ideally in banking, or financial services (Required)
• Experience deploying AI solutions in production environments under strict governance and data protection standards (Preferred)
• Translate business challenges into technical problem statements and build impactful AI solutions that deliver business impact (Required).
• Strong track record in project delivery, and global and local squads (AI / Data Engineers, MLOps Engineers, and Business Stakeholders) management in an agile environment able to foster an AI-first culture and promote transformation across diverse teams and geographies (Required)
• Excellent communication and influencing skills to engage both Business and Technical teams (Required)
• Experience managing multiple cross-functional projects in a fast-paced growth and creative environment with a pragmatic approach to make things happen (Required)
• Contribute to AI best practices, model governance, and responsible AI (Required)

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Data Science, or related field. (Required)
• Master’s degree or complementary certifications in Business Administration (Preferred)

Languages

• Very high proficiency in English and Spanish. (Required)

Soft skills

• Excellent communication and influencing skills to engage both Business and Technical teams (Required).
  

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 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 child care 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?