Lead AI Engineer

Capital One is building foundational and experience-driven AI systems that help associates work more effectively and support how customers interact with the bank. As part of the Intelligent Foundations and Experiences (IFX) team, you will help translate AI research and engineering into responsible, scalable production capabilities. This onsite role is based in New York, NY.

In this Lead AI Engineer position, you will design, develop, deploy, and optimize AI software components and production systems across foundational AI, LLM core capabilities, and agentic AI approaches. You will partner closely with engineers, research scientists, technical program managers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered products that provide high-leverage impact.

What you’ll do

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver AI-powered products that change how associates work and how customers interact with Capital One.
• Design, develop, test, deploy, and support AI software components such as foundation model training, large language model inference, similarity search, guardrails, model evaluation, experimentation, governance, and observability.
• Build using a broad stack 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 performance in large-scale production environments, focusing on scalability, cost, latency, and throughput.
• Contribute to the technical vision and long-term roadmap for foundational AI systems at Capital One.

What you bring

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields plus 4+ years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies, or a Master’s degree plus 2+ years of experience.
• 4+ years of programming experience with Python, Go, Scala, or Java.

Technologies you may work with

• AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, VectorDBs, Nemo Guardrails, PyTorch
• Python, Go, Scala, Java, C++, C#, Golang
• AWS, Google Cloud, Azure

Compensation and benefits

Salary: USD 215,200 - 245,600 per year.

• Eligible for performance-based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonus(es) and/or long term incentives (LTI).
• Comprehensive, competitive, and inclusive health, financial, and other benefits supporting total well-being.

Ideal candidate attributes

• Enjoys building systems, taking pride in quality, and applying a responsible mindset in engineering.
• Stays current with AI research and can interpret scientific publications to apply novel techniques in production.
• Can bring clarity to big, undefined problems and communicate findings concisely.
• Shares new ideas even when they are unproven.
• Is deeply technical with a strong foundation in engineering and mathematics, with expertise spanning hardware, software, and AI optimization.
• Shows resilience and the ability to forge new paths to meet business goals when the route is unknown.

Preferred qualifications

• 6+ years deploying scalable and responsible AI solutions on cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, or equivalent private cloud).
• Experience designing, developing, delivering, and supporting AI services.
• 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 applying state-of-the-art optimization techniques for training and inference software to improve hardware utilization, latency, throughput, and cost.
• Passion for staying abreast of AI research and AI systems, with the ability to judiciously apply novel techniques in production.