Knowledge Base Scientist Senior - CDAIO

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

Professional Experience:

• 5–10 years of experience in AI, data science, or machine learning systems in production environments. (Required)

• Demonstrated experience designing and operating data pipelines or AI systems with requirements in high scalability, reliability, and maintainability. (Required)

• Experience collaborating across engineering, product, and business teams to deploy AI-enabled systems. (Required)

• Ability to translate architectural guidance into practical, working local solutions aligned with global platforms. (Required)

• Comfort operating as a strong individual contributor with ownership and responsability within a distributed, multi-country AI organization. (Required)

Hard Skills:

• Strong expertise in knowledge representation, graph modeling, semantic data structures, or information retrieval systems. (Required)

• Practical background in machine learning and modern AI architectures, particularly where they intersect with structured knowledge and retrieval. (Required)

• Strong Python programming skills and familiarity with data processing and graph technologies. (Required)

• Ability to translate architectural guidance into practical, working local solutions aligned with global platforms. (Required)

• Comfort operating as a strong individual contributor with ownership and responsability within a distributed, multi-country AI organization. (Required)

WE VALUE YOUR IMPACT

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

• We’re enable our teams to go beyond through global opportunities and broad career paths.

• Flexibility that works. Enjoy a hybrid working models—some days remote, some days onsite with your team—along with flexible hours.

• 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 highly competitive salary with performance-based bonuses, motivating you to keep growing with us.

• Financial advantages. Benefit from preferential banking terms, special interest rates on loans, life insurance, and more.

• Your health is our priority. Through BeHealthy, our global wellness programme, we promote Holistic wellbeing.

• We know family is everything. That’s why we offer childcare support and family-friendly programmes tailored to each life stage.

• Always by your side. Get access to Santander Contigo, our program for employees and their families offering legal, emotional, and administrative advisory services.

• Extra benefits. Gym/WellHub membership, medical centers in some of our facilities, meal subsidy, parking, shuttle service from various points in Madrid, as well as exclusive discounts and offers for Santander employees. And that’s only 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 of being an organization where there are equal opportunities regardless of age, gender, disability, civil 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 role you are interested in, then please apply.
 

READY TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP IN YOUR JOURNEY?

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