Lead AI Engineer (GenAI Platform, AI Foundations, LLM Core and Agentic AI)

Capital One offers a mission-driven, collaboration-forward environment where responsible AI is built at scale. On-site in McLean, VA, you’ll join the Intelligent Foundations and Experiences team to shape AI systems that empower associates and customers alike. Expect a culture that prioritizes rigorous engineering, governance, and measurable outcomes, with opportunities to work across GenAI Platform, AI Foundations, LLM Core and Agentic AI. Compensation ranges from USD 197,300 – 225,100 per year, plus comprehensive health and financial benefits and incentive programs.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with a cross-functional group of engineers, research scientists, technical program managers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered products that transform internal workflows and customer interactions.
• Design, build, test, deploy, and support AI software components, including foundation model training, large language model inference, similarity search, guardrails, model evaluation, experimentation, governance, and observability.
• Utilize a broad stack of Open Source and SaaS AI technologies such as AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, VectorDBs, Nemo Guardrails, PyTorch, and more.
• Develop and apply state-of-the-art LLM optimization techniques to improve production system performance, including scalability, cost, latency, and throughput.
• Contribute to the technical vision and long-term roadmap of foundational AI systems at Capital One.

Requirements

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields with at least 2 years of AI/ML development experience, or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field with at least 4 years of relevant experience.
• At least 4 years of programming experience in Python, along with Go, Scala, or Java.

Technologies

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

Overview

Capital One is focused on building responsible and reliable AI systems that drive banking for good. The company has a track record of using machine learning to deliver real-time, personalized experiences and continues to invest in technology infrastructure and top ML talent to lead enterprise AI adoption.

Team description

The Intelligent Foundations and Experiences (IFX) team sits at the center of Capital One's AI strategy. We partner with teams across the company to advance AI research and engineering, deploying proprietary solutions that deliver value to millions of customers and empower products with AI capabilities.

The ideal candidate

• Enjoys building robust systems, taking pride in code quality, and shares a commitment to doing the right thing to improve banking for good.
• Keeps pace with the latest AI research and can translate scientific findings into production-ready approaches.
• Thrives in ambiguity, asks clarifying questions, and communicates findings clearly; comfortable proposing new ideas even when unproven.
• Strong technical foundation in engineering and mathematics, with cross-domain expertise in hardware, software, and AI to spot optimization opportunities others may miss.
• Resilient and proactive, capable of charting new paths to meet business goals when the route is uncertain.