Santander has announced it will be hiring 3,000 IT workers this year as part of its ongoing digital transformation, despite the coronavirus causing many banks to implement a hiring freeze.
“Having the best technology does not just mean having the best infrastructure,” says Botín
The new hires follow a series of job cuts made by the bank almost exactly a year ago, which saw it slash 3,223 jobs in Spain, and 1,400 jobs in Poland.
The cuts were a result of the bank’s annual €1.2 billion cost cutting target, but it has also committed €20 billion to its digital transformation until 2022.
In April 2019, the Spanish bank said it was moving to a multi-cloud environment and integrating machine learning. It says these new hires will support “its commercial” and “technological”, as well as digital, transformation.
Group executive chairman Ana Botín says “having the best technology does not just mean having the best infrastructure, applications and processes”, adding that “it also means having the best, most innovative talent”.
The group head of technology and operations Dirk Marzluf says the bank is looking for candidates “with technology profiles who will bring new IT skills”. “They will be at the heart of our transformation,” says Marzluf.
The new hires will be in areas including platforms and application programming interfaces (APIs), cloud, data, network, as well as development, security and operations (DevSecOps), artificial intelligence (AI), software development, enterprise architecture and cybersecurity.
The bank’s current employee count stands at 195,000. It serves roughly 146 million customers.
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