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Sr. Staff AI Engineer

Capital One


Job Location:

McLean, MD - USA

Yearly Salary: USD 286200 - 326700
Posted: 24 September 2026 (5 hours ago)
Application Deadline: 22 December 2026
Vacancies: 1 Vacancy

Job Summary

Sr. Staff AI Engineer

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. From informing customers about unusual charges to answering their questions in real time our applications of AI & ML are bringing humanity and simplicity to banking. We are committed to continuing to build world-class applied science and engineering teams to deliver our industry leading capabilities with breakthrough product experiences and scalable high-performance AI infrastructure. At Capital One you will help bring the transformative power of emerging AI capabilities to reimagine how we serve our customers and businesses who have come to love the products and services we build.


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 our partners across the company to advance the state of the art in science and AI engineering and we build and deploy 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.


What Youll Do:

  • 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 agents and multi-agent workflows similarity search guardrails model evaluation experimentation governance and observability etc.
  • Leverage a broad stack of Open Source and SaaS AI technologies such as AWS Ultraclusters Huggingface VectorDBs PyTorch and more.
  • Invent and introduce state-of-the-art foundation model optimization techniques to improve the 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.
  • Define and steer the technical AI architecture vision integrating applied research breakthroughs into production ecosystems with reliability and scale
  • Lead the establishment of AI performance safety and transparency standards that guide all model development and deployment company-wide
  • Drive multi-year platform initiatives that unify data compute and model lifecycle management under and cohesive enterprise AI architecture
  • Mentor senior technical leaders across research data and engineering disciplines developing the next generation of Capital Ones AI technical leadership

Basic Qualifications:

  • Bachelors Degree in Computer Science AI Electrical Engineering Computer Engineering or related fields plus at least 10 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies or a Masters degree in Computer Science AI Electrical Engineering Computer Engineering or related fields plus at least 8 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies
  • At least 10 years of experience programming with Python Go Scala CUDA or Java

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Experience architecting AI platforms with tradeoff decisions around cost latency throughput and accuracy
  • 9 years of experience deploying scalable and responsible AI solutions on cloud platforms (e.g. AWS Google Cloud Azure or equivalent private cloud)
  • Experience architecting designing developing integrating delivering and supporting complex AI systems
  • Demonstrated ability to lead and mentor multiple engineering teams and influence cross-functional stakeholders up to the SVP level
  • Experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies (e.g. LLM Inference Similarity Search and VectorDBs Guardrails Memory) using Python C C# Java CUDA 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
  • Experience in building agentic AI systems and agentic workflows
  • Passion for staying abreast of the latest AI research and AI systems and judiciously apply novel techniques in production
  • Excellent communication and presentation skills with the ability to articulate complex AI concepts to peers
  • Recognized industry leader in applied AI or machine learning infrastructure through patents publications or open-source leadership
  • Demonstrated experience designing long-term AI infrastructure strategies - balancing cost scale ethics and regulatory compliance
  • Experience driving organization-wide adoption of AI safety alignment and governance standards collaborating with policy risk and legal teams
  • Proven ability to shape R&D investment strategy by identifying breakthrough AI capabilities with material business impact
  • Experience right-sizing models instance counts and hardware types given requirements (e.g. context length token inputs token outputs)

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


The minimum and maximum full-time annual salaries for this role are listed below by location. Please note that this salary information is solely for candidates hired to perform work within one of these locations and refers to the amount Capital One is willing to pay at the time of this posting. Salaries for part-time roles will be prorated based upon the agreed upon number of hours to be regularly worked.

Cambridge MA: $314800 - $359300 for Sr. Staff AI Engineer


McLean VA: $314800 - $359300 for Sr. Staff AI Engineer


New York NY: $343400 - $392000 for Sr. Staff AI Engineer


Richmond VA: $286200 - $326700 for Sr. Staff AI Engineer


San Francisco CA: $343400 - $392000 for Sr. Staff AI Engineer


San Jose CA: $343400 - $392000 for Sr. Staff AI 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 candidates 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.

Capital One offers a comprehensive competitive and inclusive set of health financial and other benefits that support your total well-being. Learn more at theCapital One Careers website. Eligibility varies based on full or part-time status exempt or non-exempt status and management level.

This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days.

No agencies please. Capital One is an equal opportunity employer (EOE including disability/vet) committed to non-discrimination in compliance with applicable federal state and local laws. Capital One promotes a drug-free workplace. Capital One will consider for employment qualified applicants with a criminal history in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable laws regarding criminal background inquiries including to the extent applicable Article 23-A of the New York Correction Law; San Francisco California Police Code Article 49 Sections 4901-4920; New York Citys Fair Chance Act; Philadelphias Fair Criminal Records Screening Act; and other applicable federal state and local laws and regulations regarding criminal background inquiries.

If you have visited our website in search of information on employment opportunities or to apply for a position and you require an accommodation please contact Capital One Recruiting at 1- or via email at . All information you provide will be kept confidential and will be used only to the extent required to provide needed reasonable accommodations.

For technical support or questions about Capital Ones recruiting process please send an email to

Capital One does not provide endorse nor guarantee and is not liable for third-party products services educational tools or other information available through this site.

Capital One Financial is made up of several different entities. Please note that any position posted in Canada is for Capital One Canada any position posted in the United Kingdom is for Capital One Europe and any position posted in the Philippines is for Capital One Philippines Service Corp. (COPSSC).


Required Experience:

Staff IC


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