Capital One
Sr. Staff AI Engineer
$286K–$392K
McLean, VA +5 · Senior Staff · Full-time · Posted Oct 6, 2026
- Location
- McLean, VA
San Francisco, CA
Cambridge, MA
San Jose, CA
Richmond, VA
New York, NY - Experience
- At least 10 years developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies with a bachelor's degree, or at least 8 years with a master's degree; at least 10 years programming.
- Education
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields; master's degree in those fields is an alternative.
- Visa sponsorship
- Capital One will consider sponsoring a new qualified applicant for employment authorization for this position.
About the job
Leads the design and delivery of foundational AI systems and platforms, advancing production AI performance, safety, scalability, and technical strategy.
What you'll do
- Design, build, deploy, and support AI components including foundation model training, LLM inference, agents, similarity search, guardrails, evaluation, governance, and observability.
- Develop optimization techniques and technical architecture to improve production AI system performance, reliability, and scale.
- Set AI standards and long-term platform direction, lead initiatives, and mentor senior technical leaders.
What they ask for
- Bachelor's degree in a listed or related field plus at least 10 years developing AI/ML algorithms or technologies, or a master's degree in a listed or related field plus at least 8 years.
- At least 10 years programming with Python, Go, Scala, CUDA, or Java.
Nice to have
- Experience architecting AI platforms and complex AI systems, including cloud deployment and optimization of training and inference.
- Experience leading and mentoring teams, building agentic AI systems, and driving AI safety, governance, and infrastructure strategy.
Pay
$314,800 - $359,300 USD base salary (Cambridge, MA); $314,800 - $359,300 USD base salary (McLean, VA); $343,400 - $392,000 USD base salary (New York, NY); $286,200 - $326,700 USD base salary (Richmond, VA); $343,400 - $392,000 USD base salary (San Francisco, CA); $343,400 - $392,000 USD base salary (San Jose, CA)
Tools
Python, Go, Scala, CUDA, Java, AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, PyTorch
AI focus
Builds and optimizes foundational AI platforms and production systems, including foundation model training, LLM inference, agents and multi-agent workflows, similarity search, guardrails, evaluation, governance, safety, and observability.
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