Capital One
Principal Associate, Data Scientist - Alternative Data Strategy
$162K–$201K
McLean, VA +1 · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 20, 2026
- Location
- McLean, VA
New York, NY - Experience
- 5 years with a quantitative bachelor's degree; 3 years with a quantitative master's degree or quantitatively concentrated MBA; no years specified for a quantitative PhD.
- Education
- Bachelor's, master's, or PhD in a quantitative field; alternatively, an MBA with a quantitative concentration for the master's-degree pathway.
- Visa sponsorship
- Capital One will consider sponsoring a new qualified applicant for employment authorization for this position.
About the job
Evaluates alternative data for US Card credit decisioning, develops features and scalable data systems, and builds and governs machine-learning models.
What you'll do
- Evaluate emerging data vendors and products; engineer features and build scalable processing and monitoring systems.
- Develop, validate, implement, and monitor models using new data, including challenger models for credit decisioning.
- Partner across functions and advise users on dataset applications and risk governance.
What they ask for
- Quantitative bachelor's degree plus 5 years of data analytics experience; or quantitative master's degree or quantitatively concentrated MBA plus 3 years; or quantitative PhD.
- Degree must be held or expected by the scheduled start date.
- Experience building, validating, and backtesting statistical or machine-learning models is described in the candidate profile.
Nice to have
- At least 1 year working with AWS.
- At least 3 years’ experience in Python, Scala, or R; machine learning; or SQL.
Pay
$161,800 - $184,600 USD base salary (McLean, VA); $176,500 - $201,400 USD base salary (New York, NY)
Tools
Python, Conda, AWS, H2O, Spark
AI focus
Build and validate machine-learning and challenger models using alternative data for credit decisioning; evaluate vendor models and navigate risk governance.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative