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, and 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, driving innovation, and optimizing business outcomes with strong technology solutions.

We are looking for someone to help accelerate both modernization of our Digital Payments platform to the cloud 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 engineering excellence, balance lending expertise with inclusivity, and champion others’ ideas. You will lead in creating next-generation talent for Capital One Tech by mentoring internal talent and actively recruiting to grow our community.

Staff Engineers are expected to lead through technical contribution, operating as trusted advisors for key technologies, platforms, and capability domains. You will create clear communications, code samples, blog posts, and other materials to share knowledge inside and outside the organization. While you will specialize in a particular subject area, 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 the community
• Handle several projects simultaneously, balancing time to maximize impact
• Act as a role model and mentor within the tech community, coaching and strengthening technical expertise across 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

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related field
• 10+ years of professional experience coding in commonly used languages such as Java, Python, Go, JavaScript/TypeScript, Swift, etc.
• 8+ years of professional experience across 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

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 on the agreed-upon hours. Incentives may include cash bonuses and/or long-term incentives, which could be discretionary or non-discretionary depending on the plan.

• McLean, VA: $269,100 – $307,200
• New York, NY: $293,600 – $335,100
• Plano, TX: $244,700 – $279,200
• Riverwoods, IL: $244,700 – $279,200

Candidates hired to work in other locations will be subject to the pay range associated with that location, and the actual annualized salary will be reflected in the offer letter.