Staff Engineer (Global Payment Network)

About the role

As a Staff Engineer at Capital One, you will be a part of a community of technical experts working to define the future of banking in the cloud. The Global Payment Network (GPN) Technology organization designs, builds, and operates the mission-critical systems and infrastructure that seamlessly power complex money movement across domestic and international rails. We build and operate a high-volume, low-latency, and highly resilient distributed ecosystem that is simultaneously secure, performant, accurate, and nimble. This team operates with a startup mindset backed by enterprise scale. We are 100% cloud-native, deeply committed to engineering excellence, and aggressive in adopting cutting-edge AI tooling (including Claude Code, Windsurf, and custom AI agents) to dramatically accelerate our development lifecycle.

You’ll be working hands-on with Senior Lead Engineers that are building the resilient, ultra-low-latency backbone of future global commerce. You will work alongside our talented team of developers, machine learning experts, product managers and people leaders. Our Staff Engineers are leading experts in their domains, helping devise practical and reusable solutions to complex problems. You will drive innovation at multiple levels, helping optimize business outcomes while driving towards strong technology solutions.

At Capital One, we believe diversity of thought strengthens our ability to influence, collaborate and provide the most innovative solutions across organizational boundaries. You will promote a culture of engineering excellence, and strike the right balance between lending expertise and providing an inclusive environment where the ideas of others can be heard and championed. You will lead the way in creating next-generation talent for Capital One Tech, mentoring internal talent and actively recruiting to keep building our community.

Staff Engineers are expected to lead through technical contribution. You will operate as a trusted advisor for our key technologies, platforms and capability domains, creating clear and concise communications, code samples, blog posts and other material to share knowledge both inside and outside the organization. You will specialize in a particular subject area, but your input and impact will be sought and expected throughout the organization.

Responsibilities

• Articulate and evangelize a bold technical vision for your domain
• Decompose complex problems into practical and operational solutions
• Ensure the quality of technical design and implementation
• Serve as an authoritative expert on non-functional system characteristics, such as performance, scalability and operability
• Continue learning and injecting advanced technical knowledge into our community
• Handle several projects simultaneously, balancing your time to maximize impact
• Act as a role model and mentor within the tech community, helping to coach and strengthen the technical expertise and know-how of our engineering and product community

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree
• At least 7 years of experience in General software
• At least 7 years of experience in Software engineering and solution architecture

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's Degree in Computer Science or a related field
• 10+ years of professional experience coding in commonly used languages like Java, Python, Go, JavaScript/TypeScript, Swift, etc.
• 8+ years of professional experience in the full lifecycle of system development, from conception through architecture, implementation, testing, deployment and production support
• 3+ years of experience with public or private cloud technologies
• 8+ years of experience with Networking (BGP, Wi-Fi, SD-WAN, Cloud Networking and Data Center Networking)
• Experience leveraging interactive AI tooling to accelerate productivity, utilizing capabilities beyond basic code completion

Pay

Houston, TX: $244,700 – $279,200 for Distinguished Engineer

McLean, VA: $269,100 – $307,200 for Distinguished Engineer

Plano, TX: $244,700 – $279,200 for Distinguished Engineer

Riverwoods, IL: $244,700 – $279,200 for Distinguished Engineer

Candidates hired to work in other locations will be subject to the pay range associated with that location, and the actual annualized salary amount offered to any candidate at the time of hire will be reflected solely in the candidate’s offer letter.

This role is also eligible to earn performance based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonus(es) and/or long term incentives (LTI). Incentives could be discretionary or non discretionary depending on the plan.