Lufthansa Group to create 300 tech jobs in Barcelona with the opening of its first digital branch in Southern Europe

Lufthansa Group, Europe's largest airline group, has chosen Barcelona to open its first digital branch in Southern Europe, a project that will gradually create 300 jobs over the next years. The operations will start in the following months with the support of Catalan service company Quantion and it will develop new technological solutions in areas such as user experience on planes, reservations, or customer service.

The opening of this new digital hub in Barcelona has the support of ACCIÓ-Catalonia Trade & Investment, the Catalan Government’s agency for business competitiveness. The center will be part of the group’s digital unit, Lufthansa Group Digital Hangar, and it will work for some of their network airlines, including Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa, and Swiss International Air Lines.

This was announced to the media this Monday by the Minister for Business and Labour, Roger Torrent, after meeting with the Chief Technology Officer Digital Hangar, Christian Spannbauer, the Head of Engineering Digital Hangar, René Schmassmann, the Head of People Digital Hangar, Franziska Timmermann, the Chief Product Officer Digital Hangar, Sebastian Riedle, and the CEO of Quantion, Jordi Griful. The Secretary for Business and Competitiveness and CEO of ACCIÓ-Catalonia Trade & Investment, Albert Castellanos, and the Secretary of Digital Policies, Gina Tost, also participated in the meeting.

Minister Torrent said, "The new hub of the Lufthansa Group Digital Hangar in Barcelona is a great strategic project for the technological ecosystem of the whole country: it will mean the creation of 300 qualified jobs that will lead technological and digitalization projects in a sector both competitive and relevant like aeronautics". According to Torrent, Lufthansa Group’s Digital Hangar's decision to locate this center in Barcelona "reinforces our position as one of the great European epicenters in the field of technology and innovation: we are the territory that has best combined strong industrial development with the generation and recruitment of talent, the presence of a rich ecosystem of startups, technology centers, universities, and ICT companies."

Christian Spannbauer, Chief Technology Officer Digital Hangar, said: “Barcelona brings together many different cultures and attracts the highly qualified people we are looking for to drive the Lufthansa Groups’ digital ambitions and continuously grow.” “I am thrilled that, thanks to the collaboration with Quantion, we will welcome 300 new digital talents to the Digital Hangar ecosystem over the next years, strengthening the digital innovation power of our airlines in the delivery of digital products and creating real added value for our customers”, he added.

As for Jordi Griful, CEO of Quantion, he said: "We are very happy and proud to have the confidence of the Lufthansa Group Digital Hangar to carry out this challenge: it means a great opportunity for Quantion, but also for all the digital talent that, thanks to this new headquarters in Barcelona, will have the opportunity to be part of a unique and benchmark project in the field of new technologies."

Founded on 14 September 2022, Digital Hangar aims to create the world’s best-connected travel experience – physical, human, and digital – for all Lufthansa Group airline brands. Committed to driving digital transformation and becoming leaders and innovators in developing next-level digital solutions for the airline industry, the Digital Hangar ecosystem counts today more than 1,000 talents across its digital branches in Brussels, Frankfurt, Gdansk, Vienna, and Zurich.

The professionals joining the new digital hub will be Product Owners, Agile Coaches, Solution Architects, Scrum Masters, Business Analysts, Software Engineers, UI/UX Designers, and Data & Analytics Specialists. They will work on digitization projects in areas such as state-of-the-art reservation processes, multi-channel self-service tools, or creating digital portals on board that offer personalized information to each passenger.

The Catalan company operating the digital hub in Barcelona, Quantion, was founded in 2015. It has a workforce of more than 120 technology professionals to help companies that want to accelerate their digital transformation projects. It has a service model based on a Digital Factory to face end-to-end projects, from ideation and conceptualization to visual design, user experience, and application development.