Sr. Lead AI Engineer

Build responsible, high-impact AI systems with Capital One’s Intelligent Foundations and Experiences (IFX) team. In this onsite role in McLean, VA, you’ll help design, develop, deploy, and continuously improve foundational AI and LLM software components that support how associates work and how customers interact with Capital One.

What you’ll do

• Partner with cross-functional leaders across engineering, research science, technical program management, and product management to deliver AI-powered capabilities.
• 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.
• Work with a broad mix of Open Source and SaaS AI technologies, including AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, VectorDBs, Nemo Guardrails, PyTorch, and more.
• Introduce and refine LLM optimization techniques to improve scalability, cost, latency, and throughput for large-scale production AI systems.
• Help shape the team’s technical vision and contribute to the long-term roadmap for foundational AI systems.

What you bring

• Education + experience: a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields plus 6+ years developing AI/ML algorithms or technologies, or a Master’s degree plus 4+ years.
• Programming: at least 6 years with Python, Go, Scala, or Java.
• Cloud deployment: 7+ years deploying scalable and responsible AI solutions on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, or equivalent private cloud.
• Experience designing, developing, integrating, delivering, and supporting complex AI systems.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and mentor an engineering team and influence cross-functional stakeholders.
• Experience developing AI/ML algorithms (for example: LLM inference, similarity search, VectorDBs, guardrails, memory) using Python, C++, C#, Java, or Golang.
• Hands-on experience applying state-of-the-art optimization techniques for training and inference to improve hardware utilization, latency, throughput, and cost.
• Strong communication skills to explain complex AI concepts clearly to peers.

Tools and technologies

AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, VectorDBs, Nemo Guardrails, PyTorch, AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Python, Go, Scala, Java, C++, C#, Golang, foundation model training, large language model inference, similarity search, guardrails, model evaluation, experimentation, governance, observability.

Compensation and benefits

Salary (McLean, VA, onsite): USD 229,900 - 262,400 per year.

Sales territory: USD 209,000 - 238,500 for Sr. Lead AI Engineer.

Other locations: New York, NY (USD 250,800 - 286,200), San Jose, CA (USD 250,800 - 286,200).

• 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.

About the team

The Intelligent Foundations and Experiences (IFX) team is central to bringing Capital One’s AI vision to life. The team partners across the company to advance the state of the art in science and AI engineering, building and deploying proprietary solutions that deliver value to millions of customers. AI models and platforms from IFX help teams enhance products with responsible, scalable AI for high leverage impact.

For accommodation requests related to employment information or application needs: all information provided will be kept confidential and used only as required to provide reasonable accommodations.