Lead AI Engineer (AI Foundations)

The Lead AI Engineer within Capital One’s Intelligent Foundations and Experiences (IFX) team will help build responsible and reliable foundational AI systems. The role focuses on designing, developing, deploying, and optimizing core components such as LLM training and inference, similarity search, guardrails, evaluation, governance, and observability, while supporting the long term technical roadmap.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with a cross-functional group of engineers, research scientists, technical program managers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered products that impact how associates work and how customers interact with Capital One.
• Design, develop, test, deploy, and support AI software components, including foundation model training, large language model inference, similarity search, guardrails, model evaluation, experimentation, governance, and observability.
• Build solutions using a broad stack of Open Source and SaaS AI technologies, including AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, VectorDBs, Nemo Guardrails, PyTorch, and additional tools.
• Introduce state-of-the-art LLM optimization techniques to improve production performance, including scalability, cost, latency, and throughput.
• Contribute to the technical vision and long term roadmap for foundational AI systems at Capital One.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields, plus at least 4 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies, or a Master’s degree in the same fields plus at least 2 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies.
• At least 4 years of experience programming with Python, Go, Scala, or Java.
• Interest in building systems with strong attention to quality, along with a commitment to doing the right thing.
• Passion for staying current with AI research and the ability to interpret scientific publications and apply novel approaches in production.
• Ability to quickly bring clarity to large, undefined problems.
• Strong technical foundation in engineering and mathematics, with the ability to identify and leverage optimization opportunities across hardware, software, and AI.
• Ability to operate as a resilient trail blazer when the path to business goals is not yet defined.

Technologies

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

Preferred Qualifications

• 6 years of experience deploying scalable and responsible AI solutions on cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, or an equivalent private cloud.
• Experience designing, developing, delivering, and supporting AI services.
• Experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies (for example, LLM Inference, Similarity Search and VectorDBs, Guardrails, Memory) using Python, C++, C#, Java, or Golang.
• Experience developing and applying state-of-the-art techniques to optimize training and inference software for improved hardware utilization, latency, throughput, and cost.
• Passion for staying abreast of the latest AI research and AI systems, and judiciously applying novel techniques in production.

Compensation and Location

Location: New York, NY (onsite).
Salary: USD 215,200 - 245,600 per year.

Benefits

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

Additional Information

• Capital One will consider sponsoring a new qualified applicant for employment authorization for this position.
• This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days.
• No agencies please.
• Capital One is an equal opportunity employer committed to non-discrimination (EOE, including disability/vet) in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.
• Capital One promotes a drug-free workplace.
• Capital One will consider qualified applicants with a criminal history consistent with applicable laws and regulations regarding criminal background inquiries.
• For technical support or questions about Capital One’s recruiting process, email [email protected].
• Capital One does not provide, endorse, or guarantee third-party products, services, educational tools, or other information available through this site.
• Capital One Financial includes multiple entities; location-specific postings may correspond to Capital One Canada, Capital One Europe, or Capital One Philippines Service Corp (COPSSC).
• Eligibility varies based on full or part-time status, exempt or non-exempt status, and management level.