Top AI Companies Hiring in Spain in 2026: Startups, Multinationals, and Research Labs

Spain's AI sector is booming. Here are the top AI employers in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, and beyond — from Spanish unicorns to global tech giants — and what they pay in 2026.

Spain's AI Job Market in 2026 at a Glance

Spain has become one of Europe's most active AI hiring markets in 2026. The combination of EU funding under the Digital Europe Programme, Spain's national AI strategy (ENIA), the Startup Law's tax incentives, and aggressive expansion by US tech giants into Madrid and Barcelona has produced strong demand for AI engineers, ML researchers, data scientists, and AI product managers across the country.

The hard part is sorting signal from noise. Plenty of Spanish corporates "have an AI team" on paper that's really a relabelled BI department. This guide focuses on the employers actually hiring AI roles at scale in 2026: people who write production ML code, train models, ship inference at scale, and publish.

Spanish-Headquartered AI Champions

Sherpa.ai (Bilbao + Madrid)

Focus: Privacy-preserving AI, federated learning, and edge AI
Size: ~150 employees
Backers: Telefónica, Deutsche Telekom, Mundi Ventures

One of Spain's flagship AI companies, Sherpa.ai builds federated learning frameworks used by major telcos and financial institutions. Strong research culture with multiple peer-reviewed publications annually. Hires ML engineers, research scientists, and applied research engineers globally — English-first culture.

Multiverse Computing (San Sebastián)

Focus: Quantum-inspired AI for financial services, energy, and life sciences
Size: ~120 employees
Backers: JME Ventures, Quantonation

Pioneer in applying quantum computing techniques to AI problems. Heavy hiring of PhDs in quantum information, ML, and applied mathematics. Office in San Sebastián with remote-friendly policies for senior researchers.

Iris.ai (Madrid + Oslo)

Focus: Scientific knowledge graphs and AI for R&D
Size: ~70 employees

Norwegian-Spanish hybrid building AI tools for pharmaceutical, materials science, and engineering research. Strong NLP and knowledge representation focus. Distributed team across Madrid, Oslo, and London.

Spanish Tech Scale-ups With Major AI Teams

Glovo (Barcelona) — delivery platform with 80+ ML engineers across recommendations, ETA prediction, fraud detection, and dynamic pricing. Acquired by Delivery Hero but operates Barcelona AI team independently
Cabify (Madrid) — ride-hailing with significant ML investment in routing, surge pricing, and demand forecasting
Wallapop (Barcelona) — second-hand marketplace with strong ML team for search ranking, fraud detection, and image recognition
Factorial (Barcelona) — HR SaaS with growing AI features (recruitment matching, anomaly detection, generative AI for HR workflows)
Holded (Barcelona) — accounting/ERP SaaS with AI-driven invoicing and document understanding
Tiendanube/Nuvemshop (LATAM HQ Barcelona) — e-commerce platform with growing recommendation and search ML team
Sngular (Madrid) — tech consultancy with strong AI services practice

Multinationals: Where the Bulk of AI Hiring Happens

Microsoft Spain

Significantly expanded Madrid AI Cloud Solutions Architect and AI Specialist teams in 2024–2025. Hires across Azure AI, Copilot for industries, and customer engineering for AI deployments. Excellent compensation (FAANG-equivalent) and benefits.

Google Spain

Madrid Cloud AI office, applied research collaborations with BSC, customer engineering, and AI specialist sales. Smaller team than Microsoft Spain but consistently hiring senior engineers and PMs.

Amazon Spain (AWS + Alexa)

Madrid and Barcelona AI/ML hiring across AWS AI services (SageMaker, Bedrock), Alexa Spanish localisation, and Amazon retail ML. Significant volume; entry-level through staff levels.

Meta Barcelona

Long-standing Barcelona AI research and engineering presence. Strong reputation for applied AI research roles, particularly in computer vision and content understanding.

IBM Spain

Madrid Watson and AI consulting practice. Growing hiring for AI architects and data scientists in financial services and healthcare verticals.

Spanish Banks and Telcos: The Hidden AI Hiring Channel

The unsexy place to look. Spanish corporates have invested aggressively in AI capability and are some of the largest AI employers by headcount in the country. They rarely show up in startup-focused press but their teams are real:

BBVA AI Factory (Madrid + Mexico City) — 400+ AI/ML professionals across Spain and LATAM; strong on banking AI applications
Santander Tech / Openbank — significant AI hiring for fraud, customer service automation, and risk modelling
Telefónica Tech — large AI services arm; partnerships with Sherpa.ai and other Spanish AI startups
CaixaBank Tech — Barcelona-based AI team for retail banking applications
Repsol — energy-sector AI applications including geological exploration and asset management
Inditex (Zara parent) — A Coruña-based AI team for supply chain optimisation, demand forecasting, and computer vision in retail

Research Centres and Public-Sector AI Roles

Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS) — operates MareNostrum 5; significant ML research engineering hiring
IIIA-CSIC — Spanish national AI research institute
AESIA (Agencia Española de Supervisión de la IA) — Spain's AI supervisory agency, headquartered in A Coruña; hires AI policy and technical specialists
ELLIS Units (Alicante, Madrid, Barcelona) — European AI research network with active PhD and postdoc positions

What These Companies Pay in 2026

Typical 2026 AI engineering salaries by employer tier (gross annual, before Beckham regime):

FAANG Madrid (Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon): €70,000 – €180,000 base + significant equity
Spanish AI scale-ups (Sherpa, Multiverse, Glovo): €55,000 – €120,000 + equity
Spanish corporates (BBVA, Santander, Telefónica): €45,000 – €95,000 + bonus
Public research (BSC, IIIA-CSIC): €30,000 – €65,000 (lower cash, strong job security)
Consulting (Sngular, Accenture, Capgemini Spain): €40,000 – €85,000

Beckham regime (24% flat tax for first 6 years) significantly improves net for international hires earning above €60,000.

How to Get Hired: The Spanish AI Recruitment Process

CV format: Spanish recruiters increasingly accept Anglo-style 1-page CVs for tech roles. Photo less mandatory than France or Germany; B2B startups generally don't expect one.
Multi-stage interviews: Recruiter screen → technical interview(s) → take-home or live coding → final round. Typical timeline 4–6 weeks at scale-ups, 6–10 weeks at multinationals.
Salary negotiation: Expected and welcomed. Always ask about Beckham regime eligibility for international hires — many Spanish employers handle the application as part of relocation.
Visa sponsorship: HQP visa is the standard route. Most major employers have streamlined processes; expect 4–8 weeks from offer to permit issued.

The hidden play in Spanish AI is BBVA AI Factory. Not glamorous, often overlooked, but you'd be surprised how many ex-BBVA AI Factory engineers end up at Mistral, Hugging Face, or Stripe within five years. The training, exposure to large-scale production systems, and Beckham regime support make it a strong launchpad. If you're early in your AI career and choosing between a marquee Madrid tech name and BBVA AI Factory, the boring answer is often the better one.