Lead AI Engineer (AI Foundations)

Overview

At Capital One, we are creating responsible and reliable AI systems, changing banking for good. For years, Capital One has been an industry leader in using machine learning to create real‑time, personalized customer experiences. Our investments in technology infrastructure and world‑class talent — along with our deep experience in machine learning — position us to be at the forefront of enterprises leveraging AI.

Team Description

The Intelligent Foundations and Experiences (IFX) team is at the center of bringing our vision for AI at Capital One to life. We work hand‑in‑hand with partners across the company to advance the state of the art in science and AI engineering, building and deploying proprietary solutions that are central to our business and deliver value to millions of customers. Our AI models and platforms empower teams across Capital One to enhance their products with the transformative power of AI, in responsible and scalable ways for the highest leverage impact.

Responsibilities

• Partner with a cross‑functional team of engineers, research scientists, technical program managers, and product managers to deliver AI‑powered products that change how our associates work and how our customers interact with Capital One.
• Design, develop, test, deploy, and support AI software components including foundation model training, large language model inference, similarity search, guardrails, model evaluation, experimentation, governance, and observability.
• Leverage a broad stack of open‑source and SaaS AI technologies such as AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, VectorDBs, Nemo Guardrails, PyTorch, and more.
• Invent and introduce state‑of‑the‑art LLM optimization techniques to improve performance — scalability, cost, latency, throughput — of large‑scale production AI systems.
• Contribute to the technical vision and the long‑term roadmap of foundational AI systems at Capital One.

Ideal Candidate

You love to build systems, take pride in the quality of your work, and share our passion to do the right thing. You thrive on solving big, undefined problems, stay abreast of the latest research, and can intuitively understand scientific publications and apply novel techniques in production. You are deeply technical, with a strong foundation in engineering and mathematics, and you can spot optimization opportunities that others miss. You are resilient, ask probing questions, and articulate findings clearly while having the courage to share unproven ideas.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields plus at least 4 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies, or a Master's degree in the same fields plus at least 2 years of relevant experience.
• At least 4 years of experience programming with Python, Go, Scala, or Java.

Preferred Qualifications

• 6 years of experience deploying scalable and responsible AI solutions on cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, or equivalent private cloud).
• Experience designing, developing, delivering, and supporting AI services.
• Experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies (e.g., LLM inference, similarity search and VectorDBs, guardrails, memory) using Python, C++, C#, Java, or Golang.
• Experience developing and applying state‑of‑the‑art techniques for optimizing training and inference software to improve hardware utilization, latency, throughput, and cost.
• Passion for staying abreast of the latest AI research and systems, and judiciously applying novel techniques in production.

Pay

Full‑time annual salary ranges (by location):

• Cambridge, MA: $197,300 – $225,100
• McLean, VA: $197,300 – $225,100
• New York, NY: $215,200 – $245,600
• San Jose, CA: $215,200 – $245,600

Candidates hired in other locations will receive the salary range associated with that location. This role is also eligible for performance‑based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonuses and/or long‑term incentives.

Benefits

Capital One offers a comprehensive, competitive, and inclusive set of health, financial, and other benefits that support total well‑being. Eligibility varies based on full‑ or part‑time status, exempt or non‑exempt status, and management level. Capital One will consider sponsoring a new qualified applicant for employment authorization for this position.