Graduate AI software engineer (Madrid)

About Bending Spoons

Bending Spoons is striving to build one of the all-time great companies, serving a huge customer base, fostering team member potential, operating with unparalleled effectiveness and efficiency, creating extraordinary shareholder value, and upholding high ethical standards. We acquire and operate digital businesses for the long term, making deep transformations to speed up innovation, benefit customers, and strengthen business performance. Our teams are small, talent-dense, and operate with the ambition of a startup. We integrate AI deeply into our workflows, reinforcing human judgment with machine intelligence.

Your Opportunity

For a talented, driven, and collaborative individual, working at Bending Spoons is an opportunity to learn, make an impact, and progress their career at an exceptionally high rate. As one of the first hires in our new Madrid office, you will help shape the culture and energy of the place, setting the tone for how we work, collaborate, and raise the bar locally. You’ll be part of a fully integrated global team while contributing to an environment in Madrid that reflects our ambition and standards.

Responsibilities

• Build AI-powered product experiences: Work with product teams to identify high-impact opportunities where AI can transform user experiences for millions, and then build these transformative solutions. Drive the process from possibility to production, delivering robust, reproducible code built for scale.
• Amplify your impact with AI: Integrate powerful AI tools into your development workflow—design, implementation, testing, and documentation—to move faster while maintaining high standards for correctness, reliability, and maintainability.
• Master your toolkit: Work across diverse stacks with end-to-end ownership, choosing the right technologies for each challenge. Apply technologies like monoliths, microservices, gRPC, REST, Kubernetes, Docker, Python, and Rust thoughtfully, focusing on depth and purpose.
• Build software that matters: Take real ownership from idea to production, creating systems used by millions and evolving them into products at scale.
• Simplify relentlessly: Question complexity, improve architectures, pipelines, and codebases to build systems that are simpler, more scalable, and easier to maintain.

What We Look For

• Reasoning ability: Solve complex problems using first principles, structure ideas sharply, resist biases, and identify details that matter.
• Drive: Be extremely ambitious with initiative, effort, and tenacity. Feel deeply responsible for your work and hold yourself to a high, rising bar.
• Team spirit: Give generously, support the best idea, help your team, and be reliable, honest, and transparent.
• Proficiency in English: Read, write, and speak proficiently in English.

What We Offer

• Incredibly talented, entrepreneurial teams: Work in small, result-oriented, autonomous teams with bright minds.
• Exceptional growth opportunities: Spooners in their 20s lead products worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
• Competitive pay and equity: Attractive salaries with the option for company equity at a discount. Potential for compensation that extends beyond usual ranges for exceptional capability. Potential 50% tax cut if relocating to Italy.
• Comprehensive benefits: Flexible hours, remote working, unlimited learning and training support, top-tier health insurance, generous relocation, parental support, and yearly retreats.
• Flexible start date and part-time options: Apply before graduation, with flexible start dates and part-time options to transition to full-time.

Commitment & Contract

Permanent or fixed-term. Full-time.

Selection Process

We prioritize verifiable signals of excellence. Don't self-reject if you feel you lack experience. If you pass screening, you'll complete challenging tests that may take several hours. We set a high bar and may repost jobs or have them remain open for months.

Before You Apply

If you've applied before without an offer, wait at least one year. Bending Spoons is a demanding environment requiring significant commitment, but offers extraordinary learning and career growth. We recommend spending your first few months in our Milan office to rapidly absorb culture and build trust, with generous support for travel and accommodation. Long-term options include Milan, London, or remote from approved countries.

Key skills/competency

• AI Software Engineer
• Machine Learning
• Python
• Rust
• Software Development
• Product Development
• Problem Solving
• Scalability
• Kubernetes
• Data Structures