Santander to hire 400 technology staff in Brazil

Financial services giant Santander has announced plans to hire 400 technology staff into its Brazilian business.

The plan is part of a $2 billion investment plan to drive digital transformation across the Spanish bank's operations globally. Brazil represents 30 percent of that budget, according to the company.

To achieve its digital ambitions, Santander is looking to boost the Brazilian team with Java developers, Android and iOS developers, artificial intelligence engineers, data engineers and other functions.

The positions available range from entry-level positions to management-level roles. Most jobs are based in São Paulo, at a campus named "Digital Generation", which was launched in 2018 as a central location for technology staff.

According to the bank, work carried out by the Brazilian team and its technology subsidiaries is being replicated across the globe, including the digital account by fintech Superdigital and business payments offerings by Getnet.

"We offer competitive pay, as well as professional development opportunities in a working environment that is dynamic, motivating and challenging," said Santander's technology executive director, Marino Aguiar.

Digital transformation, and particularly mobile, is a big topic in the banking industry in Brazil. A study on banking technology trends carried out by Deloitte on behalf of the Brazilian Banking Federation (FEBRABAN) suggests m-banking has seen an increase of 24 percent in 2018 in relation to the prior year.

The surge in new digital bank accounts is another highlight of the survey, with 2.5 million accounts opened via mobile channels in 2018 compared to 1.6 million in the previous year.

According to the report, digital communications have also grown considerably in banking, with web chat interactions up 364 percent and customer service requests handled by chatbots growing from 3 million in 2017 to 80.6 million in 2018.