After the company announced a total of 10,000 layoffs worldwide, representing 5% of its workforce, Microsoft is now announcing the hiring of 100 new employees for its artificial intelligence (AI) center in Barcelona. This new wave of hiring, which contrasts with the economic recession and job cuts in the technology sector, adds to the 80 people who have joined the center in recent months.
That Microsoft hires 100 new employees for its AI center is not trivial, since since its opening in September 2021 its activity and productivity based on the development of models on artificial intelligence have not stopped growing. And it is that this space, attached to the division WebXT (Web Experiences Team), works to improve services such as Azure, Bing or Windows.
Microsoft seeks to strengthen its technology hub in Barcelona by attracting talent in new vacancies for specialists in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Software Development and Data Science.
With implementations in software engineering, data science, and machine learning, new AI models and innovative web experiences can be developed. The goal is to create a diverse work team in gender, culture and nationalities.
The president of Microsoft Spain, Alberto Granadoshas appeared during an event organized by the New Economy Forum and has stated that the employment adjustment plan will not affect the data center projects that exist in our country, although they will give priority to certain areas in order to face new challenges and projects .
However, he values the global layoffs as a conservative and positive lineafter having increased its workforce by more than 50% in recent years.
Granados has assured that the layoffs from Microsoft will neither reach Spain nor will they affect the construction of data centers in Madridas well as the launch of his cloud region. Similarly, it ensures that the data centers of Meco, Algete and San Sebastián de los Reyes will have a impact of 15,000 million euros in the national economy and will generate 50,000 jobs.
A clear commitment to AI
The AI center in Barcelona is the fourth that Microsoft has opened in Europe, after those in London, Paris and Munich, the eighth in the world and the first in Spain. It must be taken into account that AI does not stop growing and that, in addition to having been declared ‘the word of the year’ by the FundéuRAE, it is expected to that ends up being fully integrated into the business structure and assuming a brutal transformative effect on the economy.
Since Microsoft announced its investment in Open AI, its commitment to the integration of all technologies (such as ChatGPT) in its products is complete. Thus, it is sought that it can be applied in Azure or Power Point so that users could generate texts or images organically. The objective of the company in Spain, in the words of Granados himself, is to Mark new opportunities with various Ibex 35 companies.
The WebXT organization It works as a start-up environment where you work on challenges that allow you to improve the consumer experience through optimal products and services such as Bing, Edge and MS News.
Spain, core of digital talent
To speak of Spain is to do it one of the ten countries that most attract and retain digital talent, being the fourth country in Europe, after the United Kingdom, Germany and France, in number of professionals and developers in the cloud. All this represents 10% of professionals certified in advanced technologies in Europe.
With its new AI center in Barcelona, Microsoft seeks to make Spain and Catalonia a reference in the sector. His plan is to continue working in partnership with universities, research centers and technology companies to promote training in AI and Machine Learning technologies.
