--- title: 'Staff AI Engineer - AI Labs at dLocal' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-ai-engineer-ai-labs-dlocal-madrid-dv0sd7qtk1a2' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-16' --- # Staff AI Engineer - AI Labs at dLocal - **Company:** dLocal - **Location:** Madrid, Spain - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-09-10 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-16 - **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/dlocal/e6c41d1a-c41b-4845-a40f-c75340874372 ## Job description Why Join dLocal?dLocal is the financial infrastructure powering global commerce in the world's fastest-growing markets. The biggest companies in the world trust us to unlock growth in 60+ countries across emerging markets—moving money where others see complexity. We don't just process payments; we are architects of payment ecosystems and partners in our customers' expansion. You'll work alongside 1,300+ teammates from 40+ nationalities and tackle global challenges from day one. What's the Opportunity? You will join the AI Lab, a team whose mission is to validate high-value emerging AI and automation technologies and de-risk their adoption across dLocal. This is a rare opportunity to work at the frontier of applied AI in fintech: running rigorous experiments on the latest models and tools, and turning results into decisions that shape how a global payments company adopts AI. This is a senior individual-contributor role. It does not require direct people management, but it carries significant technical influence within the Lab and across the teams that consume its work. As a Staff AI Engineer in the AI Lab, you own technology scouting, prototyping, and evaluation for dLocal. You will run instrumented spikes and benchmarking on emerging AI technologies, produce clear recommendations for stakeholders across engineering, business, legal and IT based on your prototypes, and coordinate hand-offs to the teams that take validated technologies into production. For promising technologies, you will help define the patterns, guardrails, and technical requirements needed for adoption and coordinate the hand-off to the engineering teams responsible for productionizing them. What will I be doing? Technology Scouting & Evaluation - Run short, instrumented spikes and benchmarking on new models, tools and frameworks: LLMs, agentic systems, vector databases, orchestration frameworks, copilots, assistants and more. - Compare vendor and open-source options, documenting trade-offs across quality, cost, latency, security and integration complexity. - Deliver concise decision memos with clear recommendations: adopt, watch, or avoid. Evaluation Harnesses & Sandboxes - Design and maintain evaluation environments (e.g. datasets, prompts, scenarios, telemetry) to test models under realistic constraints. - Build automation and tooling to measure quality, robustness, latency and cost, including regression tracking over time. - Ensure every evaluated technology has benchmark coverage and a documented risk and limitations view. Prototyping & Technical Validation - Build enough of a system to understand how a technology behaves under realistic conditions, not just in vendor demos or isolated examples. - Explore architecture, integration patterns, operational constraints, security boundaries, and failure modes through working prototypes. - Determine what must be true for a proof of concept to become a viable production capability. - Prefer focused prototypes that answer specific technical questions over prematurely building production systems. Recommendations, Readiness & Hand-offs - Translate technical findings into clear decision memos for both technical and non-technical stakeholders. - For validated technologies, produce readiness guidance covering recommended patterns, guardrails, known limitations, operational considerations, and integration requirements. - Coordinate hand-offs to the engineering teams responsible for productionization. - Support those teams during the transition when deep context from the evaluation is required, without becoming the permanent owner of the resulting system. - Track what happens after Lab recommendations and use those outcomes to improve future evaluation methods. Governance, Risk & Standards - Work with Security, Legal, Compliance and other AI teams to document risk assessments, mitigations and governance recommendations for each evaluated technology. - Maintain checklists, decision templates and lightweight standards reusable across evaluations and by partner teams. - Incorporate learnings from third-party AI tooling already in use, such as external copilots and the AWS AI suite, into adoption guidelines. Collaboration, Mentoring & Community - Partner with other AI teams and domain teams to ensure clear boundaries and smooth collaboration. - Participate in hiring as a technical evaluator and culture champion. - Mentor engineers in the Lab and adjacent teams on evaluation methods, benchmarking and experimental design. - Share knowledge through internal write-ups, tech talks and occasional external meetups and conferences. What skills do I need? Technical depth - 8+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience operating at senior or Staff-level scope. - Deep hands-on experience building and evaluating systems based on LLMs and modern AI tooling. - Strong software engineering fundamentals and the ability to rapidly build high-quality experimental systems. - Experience building agentic or multi-step AI systems involving tool use, orchestration, state, retrieval, or external integrations. - Strong knowledge of cloud infrastructure, preferably AWS, and the ability to run experimental workloads securely and cost-consciously. - Experience with observability, telemetry, testing, and benchmarking of complex systems. - Ability to reason about system architecture, reliability, scalability, asynchronous workflows, and distributed components where relevant. - Track record of designing experiments or benchmarks that influenced meaningful technical decisions. Benchmarking & evaluation - Track record designing and running benchmarks that compare AI models and tools under real constraints. - Experience constructing evaluation datasets: task selection, labelling, holdout discipline, and keeping a set useful as models improve. - Working knowledge of LLM-as-judge methods and their failure modes, alongside human evaluation, inter-annotator agreement, and a view on when each is appropriate. - Able to reason about statistical significance on small samples, and to state confidence honestly rather than over-reading a result. - Familiarity with regression tracking, telemetry and versioning, so that a result stays reproducible months later. Decision-making - Able to turn ambiguous "we should try this new thing" ideas into well-scoped evaluation plans with clear hypotheses and metrics. - Comfortable making trade-off calls across quality, latency, cost and vendor lock-in, and documenting them clearly. - Experience writing short, opinionated decision memos that help others move fast. Collaboration & communication - Can explain technical results to non-specialists in concrete, concise terms. - Experience working with platform, product and operations teams to align evaluations with real use cases. - Able to influence without authority, aligning teams around shared standards and guardrails. Mindset - Curious and biased toward experimentation, combined with disciplined measurement and risk awareness. - Comfortable in a small, high-leverage team without embedded PMs. You structure your own work and keep stakeholders informed. - Builder attitude: you prefer reusable tools, templates and playbooks over one-off work. What do we offer? Besides the tailored benefits we have for each country, dLocal will help you thrive and go that extra mile by offering you: - Flexibility in how you work: We focus on impact and productivity over fixed hours. This means our teams have flexible schedules and, depending on your role and location, you will combine self‑managed focus time with moments of in‑person connection in our collaboration hubs. - Fintech industry: work in a dynamic and ever-evolving environment, with plenty to build and boost your creativity. - Referral bonus program: our internal talents are the best recruiters - refer someone ideal for a role and get rewarded. - Work From Anywhere: Team members can work while traveling for up to 3 months every year. What happens after you apply? Our Talent Acquisition team is invested in creating the best candidate experience possible, so don’t worry, you will definitely hear from us. We will review your CV and keep you posted by email at every step of the process! Also, you can check out our webpage, Linkedin and Youtube for more about dLocal! ## About dLocal ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: dLocal provides a cross-border payment platform that enables global merchants to accept payments and disburse payouts in emerging markets through a single API. - **Entity Type**: Public (Nasdaq: DLO) - **Headquarters**: Montevideo, Uruguay - **Founded**: 2016 - **Founders**: Sebastián Kanovich (former CEO), Sergio Fogel, Andrés Bzurovski, and Federico Pfeifer ## Core Business - **Primary industry/industries**: Financial technology (Fintech), Payment Infrastructure - **Target customers**: B2B; global e-commerce merchants, digital platforms, marketplaces, and enterprises seeking to expand into emerging markets - **Mission or purpose statement**: To close the payments innovation gap between international businesses and emerging economies. ## Products & Services - **Payins**: Accept local payment methods (credit/debit cards, cash, bank transfers, digital wallets) across 60+ countries, with dynamic FX conversion, to boost conversion rates. - **Payouts**: Disburse funds to local bank accounts, digital wallets, and other methods in emerging markets. - **dLocal for Platforms**: A solution for global marketplaces to onboard users, accept, send, and split funds between multiple users across high-growth markets. - **Defense Suite**: A comprehensive fraud management solution designed to minimize financial loss and build merchant reputation. - **Direct Issuing**: Enables merchants to issue virtual and physical cards in local markets. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: As a public company, market cap fluctuates. As of early 2025, it was roughly in the $2-3 billion range (check latest figures). - **Key Metric**: Processed **$41 billion** in payment volume in 2025. Annual revenue is publicly reported in SEC filings (10-K/10-Q), with recent reports showing strong growth. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Key investors include Alkeon Capital, General Atlantic, and others. Major merchants include global giants like Uber, Amazon, and Spotify. - **Growth Signals**: Expanded to over 1,000 payment methods and operations in 44+ countries as of 2025; team has grown to over 1,200 employees; continues to expand into Africa, Asia, and Latin America. ## Competitive Advantages - **Deep Local Expertise**: Has "boots on the ground" in every region where they process payments, offering superior compliance, KYC, and local regulatory knowledge. - **Single API, Broad Coverage**: A single integration provides access to 1,000+ payment methods in 60+ countries, simplifying a highly complex landscape. - **AI-Powered Smart Routing**: Uses AI to optimize transaction routing for higher conversion rates, with robust fallback and redundancy. - **First-Mover Advantage**: Pioneer in the cross-border payments space for emerging markets, building a strong network effect with merchants and local partners. ## Strategic Focus - **Geographic Expansion**: Continuing to expand payment coverage in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. - **Product Innovation**: Enhancing the platform with AI-driven fraud prevention, smart routing, and new financial products like direct issuing. - **Platform Economics**: Deepening relationships with large global merchants and expanding the "dLocal for Platforms" offering to capture marketplace and platform payment flows. ## Why Work Here - **Culture ("dLocal Drive")**: The company seeks ambitious people who thrive in a fast-paced, high-adrenaline environment with a focus on making the "impossible happen." - **Remote/Hybrid Policy**: Offers flexible schedules and a "Work From Anywhere" policy allowing employees to work from anywhere for up to 3 months per year. Many roles are hybrid (Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Sao Paulo, Madrid, London, etc.). - **Global Team**: A diverse team of over 1,200 professionals from around the world, with a strong presence in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. - **Benefits**: Includes a referral bonus program, learning & development tools, a social budget for team connection, and a focus on global talent with local expertise. - **Growth Opportunity**: Working at a public company with a strong growth trajectory provides exposure to complex global challenges and career advancement in a high-impact fintech. ## Sources 1. [dlocal.com](https://www.dlocal.com/) 2. [dlocal.com - About Us](https://www.dlocal.com/company/about-us/) 3. [dlocal.com - Careers](https://www.dlocal.com/careers/) 4. [investor.dlocal.com](https://investor.dlocal.com/) 5. [jobs.lever.co/dlocal](https://jobs.lever.co/dlocal) ## Other roles at dLocal - [Legal Counsel - Contracts](https://feeny.ai/job/legal-counsel-contracts-dlocal-montevideo-5mxbf1fxdn3f) — Montevideo, Uruguay - [Business Continuity Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/business-continuity-specialist-dlocal-nairobi-307b0e2v3g1t) — Nairobi, Kenya - [Execution & Enablement Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/execution-enablement-specialist-dlocal-buenos-aires-95xcvmed049h) — Buenos Aires, Argentina - [Account Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/account-manager-dlocal-buenos-aires-63ysezm6mhpa) — Buenos Aires, Argentina - [Technical Lead - Java](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-lead-java-dlocal-barcelona-y30nh79a3mfd) — Barcelona, Spain - [Data Specialist for Compliance — Transaction Monitoring & Financial Crime](https://feeny.ai/job/data-specialist-for-compliance-transaction-monitoring-financial-crime-dlocal-az44q5w4386w) — Madrid, Spain - [Staff Engineer - Java](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-engineer-java-dlocal-barcelona-1zhq83mjpfjf) — Barcelona, Spain - [Staff Engineer - Payments Performance](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-engineer-payments-performance-dlocal-barcelona-hb1vds026cak) — Barcelona, Spain - [Legal Counsel - Corporate](https://feeny.ai/job/legal-counsel-corporate-dlocal-montevideo-mqgd3as8cqqk) — Montevideo, Uruguay - [Platform Architect](https://feeny.ai/job/platform-architect-dlocal-madrid-cdhxj8vhzf83) — Madrid, Spain