Santander Seek to Employ 500 Tech Workers

Santander, the Spanish bank, is on an employment drive to boost its technological transformation with the creation of 500 jobs in Spain, Brazil, Poland and Mexico.

The demand for digital transformation in financial institutions calls for a growing need for technically specialized workers. Most Spanish banks have already undergone a process of digitization before the pandemic, but this was accelerated during the COVID-19 crisis with everything going online. Nowadays, half of the transactions for banking products contracted by customers are done through digital channels and electronic payments. Banks have invested significantly in developing apps that have now become the mainstream way of banking, while many physical branches have shuttered nationwide.

Santander is currently seeking 500 employees from the technology sector, as announced by Ana Botín, the Executive Chairwoman, on July 12, with 484 posts for technology workers, of which 165 would be software engineers, 59 workers for infrastructure and systems, and another 35 workers for technology project management.

These new positions would join the 349 new employees hired in the first six months of 2023 in the company’s Software Engineering, Cybersecurity, Compliance, Product & IT Management departments. The bulk of these positions would be concentrated in Spain, followed by Poland, Mexico, the UK and Brazil.

Santander announced in 2019 that a total of 20 million euros would be dedicated to accelerating the bank’s digital and technological transformation, and in 2020, the programme “Be Tech!” was created to headhunt these highly-sought profiles. This led to the increase of banking sales to grow by 56 per through their digital channels, with over 50 million transactions performed via their website or mobile app.

Other Spanish banks will not be left behind, banking entities such as Kutxabank, BBVA and Openbank are also looking for IT professionals. BBVA has also invested heavily in digitization and attracted more than 500,000 new customers via digital channels in 2022.

However, attracting such talent is not an easy task, and Openbank, an online banking subsidiary of Santander has offered clients 1,000 euros per candidate that is employed by the banking entity in a bid to widen their employment pool. The campaign has worked very well, and they have received thousands of resumes via this initiative.