Distinguished AI Engineer

Capital One is seeking a Distinguished AI Engineer in McLean, VA (onsite) to design and deliver responsible, scalable AI systems that improve both customer and associate experiences. This role supports end-to-end AI software development, with hands-on work across foundational AI and large language model (LLM) capabilities.

What you’ll do

• Work with a cross-functional group that includes engineers, research scientists, technical program managers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered products.
• Design, develop, test, deploy, and support AI components such as foundation model training, LLM inference, similarity search, guardrails, model evaluation, experimentation, governance, and observability.
• Apply a broad mix of open source and SaaS AI technologies, including AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, VectorDBs, Nemo Guardrails, and PyTorch.
• Introduce state-of-the-art LLM optimization techniques to improve production performance, including scalability, cost, latency, and throughput.
• Contribute to the technical vision and the long-term roadmap for foundational AI systems at Capital One.

Team context

The Intelligent Foundations and Experiences (IFX) team is central to realizing Capital One’s AI vision. The team collaborates across the company to advance science and AI engineering and builds and deploys proprietary solutions that support teams across Capital One with responsible, scalable AI for high-leverage impact.

Required qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field plus at least 8 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies, or a Master’s degree plus at least 6 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies.
• At least 8 years of programming experience with Python, Go, Scala, or Java.

Preferred qualifications

• 8 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 VP level.
• Experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies (e.g., LLM inference, similarity search and VectorDBs, guardrails, memory) using Python, C++, C#, Java, 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.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, including the ability to articulate complex AI concepts to peers.

Technologies and focus areas

• AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, VectorDBs, Nemo Guardrails, PyTorch
• Foundation model training, large language model inference, similarity search, guardrails, model evaluation, experimentation, governance, observability
• Open source and SaaS AI tooling

Compensation and benefits

For the McLean, VA location, the salary range is USD 269,100 - 307,200 per year.

• Health insurance and other financial benefits that support your total well-being.
• Performance-based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonus(es) and/or long-term incentives (LTI).