Santander AI Lab - Frontier Agentic AI Engineer

santander; Santa Bàrbara; Presencial; EUR 90.000 - 140.000; Jornada completa

Descripción de la vacante

Santander AI Lab is seeking an experienced Frontier Agentic AI Engineer based in Madrid, Spain. You will design and deploy production-grade, memory-enabled multi-agent AI systems, and refine LLMs for banking use cases, coordinating with researchers and business stakeholders to generate tangible bank value.

You will prototype in two-week sprints and integrate new tools into the lab workflow, ensuring end-to-end code quality and readiness for production scaling.

Formación

• 4-8 years of software engineering or AI engineering experience with 2+ years building and maintaining LLM-powered systems in production.

Responsabilidades

• Design and deploy production-grade agentic AI systems with memory, planning, tool use and error recovery.
• Develop and fine-tune small and medium language models (SLMs) for regulated banking use cases.
• Architect MCP servers, A2A protocols, and federated API layers for multi-country infrastructure.
• Prototype ideas in two-week sprints with architecture, code and demos.
• Collaborate with researchers, data scientists and stakeholders to translate tech concepts into bank value.
• Monitor emerging research and integrate new tools into the lab workflow.
• Produce clean, tested, observable code and hand off to AI Science for production scaling.

Conocimientos

Multi-agent systems

REST APIs

Production-grade code

Memory management

AI engineering

Educación

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/SE

Advanced AI qualification (Masters)

Herramientas

LoRA

SFT

RLHF

Descripción del empleo

Santander AI Lab - Frontier Agentic AI Engineer

Country: Spain

IT STARTS HERE

Santander (www.santander.com) is evolving from a global, high-impact brand into 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 a chance for driven professionals to grow, learn, and make a real difference. Our mission is to contribute to help more people and businesses prosper. We embrace a strong risk culture and all our professionals at all levels are expected to take a proactive and responsible approach toward risk management.

Our Chief Data & Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAIO) division is building a world-class AI & Data team to make a difference in the lives of over 170 million people worldwide, through one of the largest banks in the world.

We are undergoing one of the biggest transformations in our history and technology is at the heart of our strategy. Join our team to play a part in one of the most important technological projects for the financial sector in the world.

THE DIFFERENCE YOU MAKE

Santander AI Lab (CDAIO) is looking for an Frontier Agentic AI Engineer based out of Madrid, Spain.

The AI Lab is the applied innovation engine of one of the world's largest banks. We detect emerging opportunities, build working prototypes, validate them with real data, and transfer them to scale. We work with Anthropic, Sakana AI, AWS, ICMAT, CMU, INRIA and other world-class partners. Our published research (arXiv:2602.14606, arXiv:2602.02170) sets the formal foundation for everything we build.

We're shaping the way we work through innovation, cutting-edge technology, collaboration and the freedom to explore new ideas. To succeed in this role, you will be responsible for:

• Designing, building and deploying production-grade agentic AI systems - multi-agent orchestration with real memory, planning, tool use and error recovery. Not demos. Systems that work.
• Developing and fine-tuning small and medium language models (SLMs) for regulated banking use cases, including custom evaluation frameworks and domain-specific benchmarks.
• Architecting and implementing MCP servers, A2A protocols, and federated API layers that allow AI agents to operate across the group's multi-country infrastructure.
• Prototyping new ideas in two-week sprints: hypothesis, architecture, code, functional demo, one-pager. This is the lab's operating rhythm - you need to thrive in it.
• Collaborating with researchers, data scientists and business stakeholders to translate complex technical concepts into tangible bank value - Alchemy-style transformations of legacy assets.
• Keeping the lab at the frontier: monitoring emerging research, evaluating new tools (Harness Engineering, Kiro, Windsurf, Devin), and integrating them into the lab's workflow when they add real value.
• Producing clean, tested, observable code that can be handed off to the AI Science team for production scaling. You own your code end-to-end.

WHAT YOU'LL BRING

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

The following requirements represent the knowledge, skills, and abilities essential for success in this role. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Professional Experience

• 4-8 years of software engineering or AI engineering experience , with at least 2 years building and maintaining LLM-powered systems in production environments - not in notebooks. (Required)
• Demonstrated hands‑on experience designing and deploying multi‑agent AI systems with real‑world complexity : memory management, stateful orchestration, tool use, multi‑step planning, and graceful failure recovery. (Required)
• Experience fine‑tuning or adapting language models (SFT, LoRA, RLHF) for domain‑specific tasks, including dataset curation and evaluation design. (Required)
• Track record of delivering complete systems independently within tight timelines - from architecture decision to production‑ready code. Portfolio of real systems, not just demos. (Required)
• Experience building and consuming REST APIs and integrating AI systems with enterprise data sources, cloud services and third‑party platforms . (Required)
• Prior experience in banking, fintech, or other regulated industries. (Preferred)
• Exposure to Harness Engineering methodologies: spec‑driven development, AI‑assisted software creation at scale. (Preferred)

Education

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, or equivalent technical field. (Required)
• Master's degree or equivalent advanced qualification in AI, Machine Learning or related discipline