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 help people and businesses prosper. As part of the global AI Transformation team, you will lead and manage strategic artificial intelligence initiatives driving impact on global businesses and core functions. We are looking for someone who connects Business, AI and technology, ensuring AI solutions create measurable value.
THE DIFFERENCE YOU MAKE
Santander is seeking an AI Product Owner based in Madrid. The AI Product Owner shapes how Santander builds, scales, and governs next-generation AI across the Group. The role sits at the intersection of strategy, engineering, data science, and business value creation, owning end-to-end outcomes for AI products in a highly regulated, data-rich environment.
You will steer product direction in areas such as enterprise knowledge systems, agentic workflows, internal copilots, ML-powered intelligence layers, and data feedback loops that strengthen AI behavior and decisioning.
We are transforming how we work through innovation, modern technology, collaboration, and the freedom to explore new ideas. To succeed in this role, you will be responsible for:
Key Responsibilities
Product Strategy and Vision
Define and own the product vision for AI systems that support enterprise knowledge, automated reasoning, intelligent workflows, and decisioning.
Translate AI strategy into actionable roadmaps, PRDs, and iterative delivery plans with measurable outcomes.
Identify opportunities where agentic patterns, retrieval systems, foundation models, and ML can transform internal processes and customer experiences.
Shape Santander’s AI ecosystem by aligning data architecture, model orchestration, evaluation pipelines, and human feedback loops.
Execution and Delivery
Write high-quality PRDs with functional and non-functional requirements including safety, latency, explainability, resilience, and integration needs.
Design and implement continuous improvement mechanisms using human feedback, telemetry, evaluations, and automated regressions.
Partner with engineering to ensure scalable data architectures for embeddings, retrieval, and knowledge centralization.
Work with scientists to define experiments, benchmark models, build eval suites, and track performance against KPIs.
Ensure production systems meet strict requirements for privacy, data residency, encryption, safety controls, and model governance.
Cross-Functional Leadership
Act as a translator between technical and non-technical teams to clarify requirements and accelerate decisions.
Build strong relationships with security, legal, compliance, and risk teams to meet Responsible AI standards.
Drive adoption and education across business units to promote safe and effective use of AI products.
Balance near-term delivery with long-term architectural clarity.
Technical Depth and AI Craftsmanship
Demonstrate fluency in embeddings, vector stores, transformers, RAG, agent orchestration, and model alignment.
Understand the ML lifecycle including data pipelines, model development, deployment, monitoring, and drift detection.
Work with architects to design scalable AI systems that integrate securely with Santander’s platforms.
Ensure strong evaluation frameworks for performance, security, hallucination mitigation, fairness, and output quality.
Banking Context and Risk Awareness
Apply domain knowledge to ensure AI meets regulatory needs, operational standards, customer trust, and data protection obligations.
Champion ethical, explainable, and auditable AI that complies with global and local regulations.
Navigate the complexity of a global organization and align stakeholders around shared goals.
Key Success Metrics
Adoption and measurable business value generated by AI products.
Performance and reliability of evaluation pipelines.
Reduction of manual effort and operational friction through automation and agentic workflows.
Quality and scalability of enterprise knowledge and retrieval systems.
Productivity gains from AI copilots and intelligence layers.
Compliance with privacy, Responsible AI, and model governance requirements.
Stakeholder satisfaction and alignment across engineering, data, and business teams.
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
5+ years in AI or ML product management, data product ownership, advanced analytics, or technical product roles (Required).
Proven experience taking AI or ML products from concept to production in complex enterprise environments (Required).
Experience in financial services, regulated industries, or large-scale distributed systems (Preferred).
Education:
Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, AI, Data Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical field (Required).
Languages:
Fluent English (Required).
Spanish proficiency or native. (Required).
Hard Skills
Ability to understand embeddings, transformers, vector databases, and agent workflows. (Required).
Experience with ML pipelines, data architecture, and evaluation frameworks. (Required).
Strong understanding of data governance, privacy, security, and ethical AI. (Required).
Ability to write PRDs, define KPIs, run discovery, and drive delivery. (Required).
Familiarity with experimentation frameworks, A/B testing, and model monitoring. (Required).
Soft Skills
Comfortable with ambiguity and rapidly evolving problem spaces. (Required).
Excellent communicator who can simplify complex topics. (Required).
Strong leadership without formal authority. (Required).
Bias toward action, ownership, and delivering measurable impact. (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 progresss, 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?