Tech Lead AI Conversational Agents

Description

Tech Lead AI Conversational Agents Country: Spain **START 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 is possible. This is more than a strategic shift. **It is an opportunity for motivated professionals to grow, learn, and make a real difference**. Our mission is to help more **people and businesses thrive**. We embrace a strong risk culture, and all our professionals at every level are expected to adopt a proactive and responsible approach to risk management. **THE DIFFERENCE YOU MAKE** **Santander Spain** is seeking a **Tech Lead AI Conversational Agents** for its Data & AI area, based in **Madrid (Luca de Tena Building)**. We are **shaping how 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: * **Technically leading the implementation and evolution of conversational agents** (chat/voice) in production, following architecture, security, and quality standards. * Providing **guidance to engineers** and squads by defining design patterns, cookbooks, and **engineering best practices**. * **Managing technical debt** for products under your scope, providing input to Product Owners and **actively influencing its resolution**. * **Collaborating closely with architects**, acting as a key input for the evolution, improvement, and productization of technical architecture components. * **Defining and overseeing standards**, rules, guidelines, reference architectures, and cookbooks aimed at reducing the cognitive load of engineering teams. * **Industrializing** the use of AI agents via common capabilities for **harnessing**, ensuring scalability, resilience, observability, and secure operations in enterprise environments. * **Configuring and optimizing** intents, entities, slots, context, flows, disambiguation, fallback, and handoff to human agents. * Preparing and maintaining **conversational datasets**: cleaning, labeling, versioning, and quality control. * **Defining and executing technical evaluation**: intent precision/recall, confusion, coverage, and LLM evaluation (rubrics, human eval, safety checks). * **Integrating the agent** with internal systems via MCPs, APIs, or enterprise knowledge bases. * **Implementing security and compliance controls**: PII redaction, access control, logging/auditing, retention, and internal policies. **WHAT YOU BRING** Our people are our greatest strength. Each individual brings unique perspectives that make us stronger as a team and as an organization. We are **empowering teams to go beyond** by valuing who they are and amplifying what they contribute. The following requirements represent the essential knowledge, skills, and competencies needed for success in this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions. **Professional Experience** * **Minimum 5 years of software development experience and participation in technology projects in production environments**, including design, implementation, integration, maintenance, and evolution of business-oriented solutions. * **Experience leading technology solutions, guiding engineering teams, and applying agile methodologies**. * Solid Python programming language expertise is mandatory. * Experience in **applied AI**, NLP, software engineering, data, or automation in production environments. * Hands-on experience building and maintaining **chatbots/voicebots** in production (web/app/WhatsApp/IVR). * Experience with **LLMs in real-world scenarios**: prompting, RAG/semantic search, quality evaluation, guardrails, and hallucination mitigation. * **Experience in analytics and monitoring**: event instrumentation, logs, dashboards, and metrics. * Experience integrating with MCPs, REST/webhook APIs, and corporate systems. * Experience with conversational platforms (at least one): Dialogflow, Azure Bot Framework, Amazon Lex, IBM Watson Assistant, Genesys, LivePerson, Kore.ai, Cognigy (desirable). * Knowledge of MLOps/LLMOps practices (desirable): versioning, deployments, monitoring, rollback. * Experience in regulated environments / sensitivity to security and privacy (PII, GDPR) (desirable). **Education** * Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering/Telecommunications, Mathematics/Statistics, Data Science, Physics, or related field. * Master’s/postgraduate degree in AI, Data Science, NLP, or Software Engineering (desirable). * Certifications (desirable): + Cloud Fundamentals (AWS/Azure/GCP) + NLP/Conversational AI (any recognized vendor) + Scrum/Agile (PSM/CSM) + Responsible AI / Security (valuable) **Languages** * Spanish: **native or equivalent**. (Mandatory) * English: **C1** (technical documentation, meetings with vendors, international coordination). (Preferred) **Hard Skills** * NLP: intent classification, entity extraction, slot filling, rule-based + ML dialogue. * LLM: prompting, RAG, embeddings, response evaluation, guardrails, safety filters. * Programming: Python and/or JavaScript/TypeScript (valuable), Git, basic testing. * Integration: MCPs, REST APIs, OAuth/SSO (concepts), webhooks, Postman. * Data: basic/intermediate SQL, data preparation, labeling, versioning. * Knowledge management: KB, taxonomies, content versioning, semantic search. * Quality: conversational test cases, regression, UAT, edge-case validation. * Tools: Jira/Confluence, CI/CD (desirable) **Soft Skills** * Analytical thinking and problem-solving (root-cause-oriented debugging). * Technical leadership capabilities. * Clear communication with both technical and business stakeholders; well-organized documentation. * Quality and customer-experience orientation; attention to detail. * Autonomy and ownership; ability to influence backlog prioritization. * Teamwork and cross-functional collaboration (AI, IT, CX, operations, compliance). * Adaptability and rapid learning in emerging technologies. **WE VALUE YOUR IMPACT** **Your contribution matters** and is recognized. You can expect a fair and competitive rewards package reflecting **the impact you create** and the value you deliver. But we know rewards go beyond numbers. * We empower **our teams to go beyond**, offering global opportunities and broad professional pathways. * Flexibility that works. Enjoy **hybrid work models**, some remote days and others on-site with your team, alongside flexible hours. * **Lifelong learning**. 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 benefits. Benefit from **preferential banking conditions, special interest rates** on loans, life insurance, and more. * Your health is our priority. Through **BeHealthy**, our global wellbeing program, we promote **holistic wellbeing**. * We know **family comes first**. That’s why we offer childcare support and family programs tailored to every life stage. * **Always by your side**. Access **Santander Contigo**, our employee and family support program offering legal, emotional, and administrative advisory services. * **Additional benefits**. Gym/WellHub membership, medical centers at some of our facilities, meal subsidies, parking, transportation service from various points across Madrid, plus exclusive discounts and 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 achieve your goals, and celebrate your progress at every step of the way. **LOCAL COMPLIANCE** Santander takes pride in being an organization where equal opportunity exists 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 role that interests you, please submit your application. **READY TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP IN YOUR JOURNEY?** \#LI\-FB1