Staff Engineer - Global Payments Network

About the role

As a Staff Engineer at Capital One, you will be 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 mission-critical systems and infrastructure that power complex money movement across domestic and international rails. You’ll build and operate a high-volume, low-latency, highly resilient distributed ecosystem that is secure, performant, accurate, and nimble. The team operates with a startup mindset backed by enterprise scale, is 100% cloud-native, and aggressively adopts cutting-edge AI tooling—including Claude Code, Windsurf, and custom AI agents—to accelerate the development lifecycle. You’ll work hands-on with Senior Lead Engineers building the resilient, ultra-low-latency backbone of future global commerce alongside developers, machine learning experts, product managers, and people leaders.

Staff Engineers are leading experts in their domains, devising practical and reusable solutions to complex problems. You will drive innovation at multiple levels, optimizing business outcomes while delivering strong technology solutions. We seek someone to help accelerate modernization of our Digital Payments platform and development of new capabilities in this space.

At Capital One, we believe diversity of thought strengthens our ability to influence, collaborate, and provide innovative solutions across organizational boundaries. You will promote a culture of engineering excellence, balancing technical leadership with an inclusive environment where others’ ideas are heard and championed. You will lead the way in creating next-generation talent for Capital One Tech, mentoring internal talent and actively recruiting to grow our community.

Staff Engineers are expected to lead through technical contribution. You will operate as a trusted advisor for key technologies, platforms, and capability domains, creating clear communications, code samples, blog posts, and other materials to share knowledge inside and outside the organization. You will specialize in a particular subject area, while your input and impact are 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, coaching and strengthening the technical expertise of our engineering and product teams

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
• Experience leveraging interactive AI tooling to accelerate productivity, utilizing capabilities beyond basic code completion

Capital One will consider sponsoring a new qualified applicant for employment authorization for this position.

Pay

The minimum and maximum full-time annual salaries for this role are listed below, by location. Salaries for part-time roles will be prorated based upon the agreed upon number of hours to be regularly worked.

• McLean, VA: $269,100 – $307,200 for Distinguished Engineer
• New York, NY: $293,600 – $335,100 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 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.