Building a technical career at Bain
Building a technical career at Bain
An expert consultant in data science and AI shares how her engineering background shapes her work and why Bain is the right place to stay at the forefront of it
Claudia Cañete is an expert consultant specializing in data science and AI in Bain's Madrid office. As an industrial engineer and UC Berkeley alumna, she has built her career at the intersection of technical problem-solving and consulting. In this Q&A, she shares what drew her to Bain, what her day-to-day work looks like, and what she would tell anyone with a technical background who is considering a career in consulting.
Especially with AI moving so quickly, you have the resources and opportunities to keep learning and stay at the forefront of what's happening.
Claudia Cañete
Expert Consultant, Coro Data Sciences
What drew you to a technical career in consulting?
I'm an industrial engineer by background, and I've always been drawn to technical problems that really make you think, numbers have always been my favorite thing. What I enjoy most is taking something complex, breaking it down, and figuring out how to solve it. A technical career in consulting felt like the perfect way to combine that with the variety and fast pace of consulting.
What does your role at Bain look like day to day?
I'm an expert consultant specializing in data science and AI, so a lot of my work is about bringing a technical perspective to complex client problems. Day to day, that means taking problems that are currently being solved in an inefficient way and thinking about how data, algorithms, or AI could solve them better. What I enjoy most is that there often isn't an obvious answer, so there's a lot of creativity and problem-solving involved.
What has been the most interesting project you've worked on?
I'm part of a team within Coro, Bain's proprietary B2B go-to-market digital platform, that builds and maintains the companies dataset used across the majority of Coro projects, including private equity use cases. My work focuses on building company hierarchies: figuring out how entities relate to each other, from parents and subsidiaries to holding structures, from a very large, messy dataset.
Claudia co-leads the UC Berkeley Alumni Club, one of the many communities she stays connected to outside of work.
Hitting the slopes and looking forward to the Bain Madrid office ski trip as the perfect motivation to keep improving.
What makes it interesting is how open-ended it is. There isn't one obvious approach, so a big part of the work is thinking through the possible options, experimenting with them, and seeing what holds up. I'm combining traditional algorithms with agentic AI, using each where it works best. I've also been learning a lot about semantic matching, which is key to deciding when two records refer to the same entity or how they connect.
What I enjoy most is the potential reach. Because the dataset feeds so many cases, a better hierarchy improves the starting point for teams globally, so the work has impact well beyond a single project. It's also given me the chance to learn at the intersection of data engineering, data science, and software engineering, while working closely with business stakeholders.
How would you describe the culture at Bain?
One of the first things I noticed at Bain was the quality of the people, not only in terms of their backgrounds, but in how much they push and inspire each other to do better. There's a real culture of learning from the people around you and helping each other succeed. And outside of work, there are so many clubs, events, and activities that there's always something going on.
What would you say to someone with a technical background who is considering a career at Bain?
For me, it gives you the best of both worlds: you keep developing your technical skills while also building the broader consulting toolkit, from problem-solving and communication to working with clients. Especially with AI moving so quickly, you're in an environment where you have the resources and opportunities to keep learning and stay at the forefront of what's happening. And with the variety of problems, industries, and people you work with, you're very unlikely to get bored.
