Applied Researcher I (AI Foundations, LLM Core and Agentic AI)

About the role

The AI Foundations team at Capital One is central to bringing our vision for AI to life. Our work spans the entire research lifecycle, from academic partnerships to production systems. We collaborate with product, technology, and business leaders to apply the latest advancements in AI to our business needs.

Responsibilities

• Partner with a cross-functional team to deliver AI-powered products that enhance customer interactions.
• Leverage a diverse stack of technologies including Pytorch, AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, Lightning, and VectorDBs to uncover insights from vast datasets.
• Build AI foundation models throughout the development lifecycle, from design to training, evaluation, validation, and deployment.
• Engage in high-impact applied research to advance AI capabilities and drive innovation in customer experiences.
• Communicate complex AI concepts to stakeholders to align on business goals and objectives.

Requirements

• Currently pursuing or recently obtained a PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, AI, Mathematics, or related fields.
• Experience with open-source languages and cloud computing platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure.
• Deep understanding of AI methodologies, particularly in areas like training optimization, self-supervised learning, robustness, and explainability.
• Hands-on experience with large-scale deep learning model development, including model sparsification, quantization, and parallelization.
• Track record of delivering high-quality AI solutions and publications in top-tier conferences like NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, NAACL, EMNLP.
• Experience in optimizing training for large-scale models and deploying fine-tuned models in production environments.

Qualifications

• Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, AI, Mathematics, or related fields, with a focus on Natural Language Processing (NLP).
• At least 5 years of industrial NLP research experience, with multiple publications on NLP topics.
• Experience in training large language models (10B+ parameters, 500B+ tokens) and demonstrating expertise in model compression and optimization.
• Knowledge of transfer learning, model adaptation, and guided learning techniques.

Skills

• Strong programming skills in Python, R, or equivalent.
• Experience with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or Hugging Face Transformers.
• Understanding of natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision (CV).
• Ability to communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

Benefits

Capital One offers a comprehensive benefits package that includes:

• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Retirement savings plans
• Flexible spending accounts
• Employee assistance programs
• Professional development opportunities

Pay

Salaries for this role range from $218,700 to $272,300 annually, depending on location. Performance-based incentives may also be offered.

Schedule

This role is full-time and requires regular attendance and availability to meet project deadlines.