Capital One
Sr. Staff Applied Researcher
$350K–$436K
McLean, VA +4 · Senior Staff · Full-time · Posted Oct 5, 2026
- Location
- McLean, VA
San Francisco, CA
Cambridge, MA
San Jose, CA
New York, NY - Experience
- 6 years with a PhD or 8 years with an M.S. in Applied Research; preferred qualifications also specify 5+ years in certain optimization topics.
- Education
- PhD or M.S. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, AI, Mathematics, or related fields.
- Visa sponsorship
- Capital One will consider sponsoring a new qualified applicant for employment authorization for this position.
About the job
Leads applied AI research and development of foundation models, translating emerging research into scalable AI products and setting the company’s long-term research agenda.
What you'll do
- Collaborate with science, engineering, and product teams to deliver AI-powered customer products and build foundation models from design through implementation.
- Conduct applied research and guide the research agenda, identifying scientific opportunities and steering foundational AI investments.
- Mentor applied scientists and managers, represent Capital One in the research community, and communicate research outcomes as business goals.
What they ask for
- PhD in a related field plus 6 years of Applied Research experience, or M.S. in a related field plus 8 years of Applied Research experience.
- Hands-on experience developing AI foundation models and solutions using open-source tools and cloud computing platforms.
- Deep understanding of AI methodologies and experience building large deep learning models, with expertise in at least one listed area such as training optimization, self-supervised learning, robustness, explainability, or RLHF.
- Track record delivering models at scale and delivering libraries, platform-level code, or solution-level code to products.
Nice to have
- Research contributions demonstrated through high-quality ideas, publications, or projects; ability to own and pursue a research agenda.
- Specialized experience in areas such as LLMs, behavioral models, training and inference optimization, finetuning, or data preparation.
Pay
USD $350,000 - $399,500 base salary (Cambridge, MA); USD $350,000 - $399,500 base salary (McLean, VA); USD $381,800 - $435,700 base salary (New York, NY); USD $381,800 - $435,700 base salary (San Francisco, CA); USD $381,800 - $435,700 base salary (San Jose, CA)
Tools
Pytorch, AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, Lightning, deep speed, nemo, pytorch-geometric, DGL
AI focus
Applied AI research and development of foundation models, including large language and behavioral models, and deployment of scalable AI products.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative