Staff AI Engineer

About The Company

Capital One is building responsible, reliable AI systems that help change banking for good. With a history of applying machine learning to real-time, personalized customer experiences, the company combines substantial technology investments, experienced teams, and deep expertise in machine learning to advance the use of AI in financial services. Its AI capabilities help make banking more intuitive and straightforward, from identifying unusual charges to responding to customer questions.

The Intelligent Foundations and Experiences (IFX) team works with partners across Capital One to advance AI science and engineering. The team develops and deploys proprietary models and platforms that help business groups enhance products and services for millions of customers. Its work focuses on delivering meaningful impact through responsible, scalable AI systems.

About The Role

Capital One is seeking a Staff AI Engineer to shape foundational AI systems and deliver AI-powered experiences for customers and associates. In this senior technical role, you will collaborate with engineers, research scientists, technical program managers, and product managers to turn emerging AI capabilities into reliable products and production infrastructure.

You will influence enterprise-wide AI architecture, guide long-term technical direction, and help establish consistent standards for tooling, deployment, observability, and evaluation. The role calls for a hands-on technical leader who can work through ambiguous challenges, apply research thoughtfully, and balance innovation with responsible engineering.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field and at least eight years of experience developing AI or ML algorithms or technologies; or a relevant master’s degree and at least six years of such experience.
• At least eight years of programming experience with Python, Go, Scala, CUDA, Java, or comparable languages.
• Experience architecting, developing, integrating, deploying, and supporting complex AI systems, preferably on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, or private cloud platforms.
• Expertise in AI system tradeoffs involving cost, latency, throughput, accuracy, and hardware utilization.
• Experience with foundation models, LLM inference, vector databases, similarity search, guardrails, model evaluation, or agentic workflows.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts, mentor engineers, and influence cross-functional stakeholders.
• Knowledge of responsible AI, governance, observability, and evaluation practices. Experience with multi-cloud strategies and enterprise architecture standards is valued.
  
  

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, deploy, and support AI components, including foundation model training, LLM inference, agents, orchestration, similarity search, guardrails, experimentation, governance, and observability.
• Build and integrate model routing, caching, and orchestration systems for hybrid and multi-model workloads.
• Develop optimization approaches that improve scalability, cost efficiency, latency, throughput, and hardware utilization in production AI systems.
• Establish technical direction and contribute to the long-term roadmap for foundational AI capabilities and enterprise architecture.
• Promote responsible AI through transparent, reproducible, and fairness-conscious system design.
• Partner across disciplines, mentor engineers, and share standards and best practices through technical forums and learning communities.
  
  

Benefits

The listed annual salary ranges are $269,100–$307,200 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and McLean, Virginia, and $293,600–$335,100 in New York, New York; San Francisco, California; and San Jose, California. Pay for other locations varies. The position is also eligible for performance-based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonuses and/or long-term incentives. Capital One offers health, financial, and other benefits; eligibility varies by role and employment status. The company will consider sponsorship for a qualified applicant seeking new employment authorization.

Equal Opportunity

Capital One is an equal opportunity employer, including for individuals with disabilities and veterans, and is committed to complying with applicable federal, state, and local nondiscrimination laws. The company maintains a drug-free workplace and considers qualified applicants with criminal histories in accordance with applicable laws. Applicants who need an accommodation during the recruiting process may contact Capital One Recruiting to request reasonable assistance. Applications are expected to be accepted for at least five business days. No agencies, please.