Senior AI Applied Software Engineer at Backbase (Madrid, Spain)

Backbase· Madrid, Spain·1d ago

Role details

Level

Senior

Job description

The job in short

As a Senior Applied AI Software Engineer (Android), you will serve as a technical anchor for our mobile identity and banking suites—shaping SDK architectures that impact over 100 million users worldwide. You will lead the shift toward AI-native mobile development, combining deep Android architecture expertise with agentic AI tooling to set new productivity and quality benchmarks.

Meet the job

AI-Native Mobile Leadership: Champion the integration of LLM workflows, prompt engineering, and agentic AI tooling into the mobile engineering life cycle.
Core Mobile & SDK Architecture: Architect scalable, secure Android SDKs, libraries, and modular mobile components using Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, and Coroutines.
Full-Lifecycle Ownership: Own end-to-end mobile capabilities—from local data persistence and security layers to backend API integrations and CI/CD pipelines.
Quality & Testing Champion: Maintain an uncompromising focus on quality, enforcing automated test coverage targets (80%+ unit testing) and performance profiling.
Mentorship & Standard Setting: Mentor mobile developers, advocate best practices in mobile architecture, and establish shared engineering standards across the team.

How about you

Experience: 5 to 7+ years of professional software engineering experience with a heavy focus on native Android development.
Tech Mastery: Advanced mastery of Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Coroutines, Clean Architecture/MVVM, and building modular mobile SDKs used by external teams.
Proven AI Production Experience: Active, hands-on production use of AI-driven developer tooling, agentic workflows, or mobile build automation.
DevOps & Tooling: Deep understanding of mobile CI/CD automation tools (Bitrise, Jenkins, Gradle scripting) and non-functional requirements (mobile security, performance).
Leadership Skills: Proven capacity to mentor peers, evaluate complex trade-offs, and guide autonomous squads toward clear technical goals.

Why work at Backbase

Culture: Described as “ambition without ego,” “bias for action,” “you own what you ship,” and “the work is the standard.” Flat structure with no micromanagement.
Work model: Hybrid – “Where you do your best work is up to you.” Offices in 17 locations globally.
Perks: Annual learning budget, global exposure, wellness support, real ownership of projects from day one.
Engineering focus: 50% of the team in R&D; real AI running in production, not just pilots.

About Backbase

Company Overview

One-liner: Backbase builds the AI-native Banking OS that unifies digital channels, front office, and operations so banks can coordinate customers, employees, and AI agents from one platform.
Entity Type: Private (no public ticker; no funding rounds disclosed – appears organically grown)
Headquarters: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Founded: 2003
Founders: Not publicly available (described as “founder-led” but names not stated on the provided sources)

Core Business

Primary industry: Banking technology / financial services software
Target customers: B2B – large banking institutions (120+ banks globally, serving 75M+ daily users)
Mission/purpose: “We built something that didn't exist before – an AI-native Banking OS where humans and AI agents work side by side, at scale, inside real banks.”

Products & Services

AI-native Banking OS: A unified platform that sits above legacy cores, CRMs, and data platforms. It orchestrates customer engagement (digital banking, conversational banking, front-office workspaces) and banking operations (high-volume processes like disputes, payments, lending). Designed to be deployed incrementally without rip-and-replace. Includes native AI agents for governance, automation, and auditability.

Market Standing

Valuation: Not disclosed
Key Metric: 2,000+ employees globally, 50% of team in R&D, 120+ banks as customers, 75M+ active daily users across the platform
Notable Investors/Partners: Not publicly available
Growth Signals: Expanding globally with 16 offices across 5 continents; notable customer examples include I&M Bank (Africa) which grew onboarding from 2,000 to 21,000 new customers per month, and Techcombank (Vietnam) achieving 50% of savings and investments through digital. The company is actively hiring and describes itself as “in the middle of the biggest shift in banking’s history.”

Competitive Advantages

Unified Frontline architecture – breaks down fragmentation between digital channels, front office, and operations, enabling banks to move fast without sacrificing compliance or security
AI-native from the ground up – not a bolt-on; full governance and audit trails for every AI decision
Progressive modernization – works with existing cores, no big-bang migration required
18+ years of banking domain expertise (since 2003) with a singular focus on banking since 2012

Strategic Focus

Deepening AI integration into banking workflows (Elastic Operations – scaling throughput without scaling headcount)
Expanding global footprint (17 offices, including recent additions in Hyderabad, Riyadh, Mexico City, and Toronto)
Continuing to shift banks from legacy fragmentation to a unified, composable operating system

Sources

Job description

Why work at Backbase

Application questions