Distinguished Machine Learning Engineer - Bank Tech

Overview: As a Capital One Machine Learning Engineer, you'll be providing technical leadership to engineering teams dedicated to productionizing machine learning applications and systems at scale. You’ll participate in the detailed technical design, development, and implementation of machine learning applications using existing and emerging technology platforms. You’ll serve as a technical domain expert in machine learning, guiding machine learning architectural design decisions, developing and reviewing model and application code, and ensuring high availability and performance of our machine learning applications. You'll have the opportunity to continuously learn and apply the latest innovations and best practices in machine learning engineering. You’ll also mentor other engineers and further develop your technical knowledge and skills to keep Capital One at the cutting edge of technology.

Team Description We are seeking a Distinguished Machine Learning Engineer to partner with fraud, risk, data, and platform teams to advance the bank’s proactive fraud prevention strategy, leveraging generative AI technologies to anticipate emerging threats, accelerate insight generation, and enhance decisioning at scale. This role will help shape how GenAI capabilities are responsibly applied across the organization to move from reactive detection to proactive, intelligence-driven fraud prevention.

What you’ll do in the role:

• Deliver ML models and software components that solve challenging business problems in the financial services industry, working in collaboration with the Product, Architecture, Engineering, and Data Science teams
• Provide guidance on the evaluation and adoption of generative AI techniques and tools, including LangChain, LangGraph, LLMs, RAG, MCP, embeddings, vector stores, and model orchestration frameworks.
• Drive the creation and evolution of ML models and software that enable state-of-the-art intelligent systems
• Lead large-scale ML initiatives with the customer in mind
• Drive adoption of proven generative AI patterns across teams by influencing platform design, standards, and technical direction.
• Leverage cloud-based architectures and technologies to deliver optimized ML models at scale
• Optimize data pipelines to feed ML models
• Use programming languages like Python, Scala, C/C++
• Leverage compute technologies such as Dask and RAPIDS
• Evangelize best practices in all aspects of the engineering and modeling lifecycles
• Help recruit, nurture, and retain top engineering talent

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree
• At least 10 years of experience designing and building data-intensive solutions using distributed computing
• At least 6 years of experience programming in C, C++, Python, or Scala
• At least 3 years of experience with the full ML development lifecycle using modern technology in a business critical setting

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's Degree
• 3+ years of experience designing, implementing, and scaling production-ready data pipelines that feed ML models
• 2+ years of experience using Dask, RAPIDS, or in High Performance Computing
• 2+ years of experience with the PyData ecosystem (NumPy, Pandas, and Scikit-learn)
• Experience with one or multiple areas of AI technology stack including prompt engineering, guardrails, vector databases/knowledge bases, LLM fine-tuning, LLM Evaluation.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to a variety of audiences
• ML industry impact through conference presentations, papers, blog posts, or open source contributions
• Ability to attract and develop high-performing software engineers with an inspiring leadership style

Capital One will consider sponsoring a new qualified applicant for employment authorization for this position. The minimum and maximum full-time annual salaries for this role are listed below, by location. Please note that this salary information is solely for candidates hired to perform work within one of these locations, and refers to the amount Capital One is willing to pay at the time of this posting. Salaries for part-time roles will be prorated based upon the agreed upon number of hours to be regularly worked.

McLean, VA: $269,100 - $307,200 for Distinguished Machine Learning Engineer

Wilmington, DE: $244,700 - $279,200 for Distinguished Machine Learning Engineer

Candidates hired to work in other locations will be subject to the pay range associated with that location, and the actual annualized salary amount offered to any candidate at the time of hire will be reflected solely in the candidate’s offer letter.

This role is also eligible to earn performance based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonus(es) and/or long term incentives (LTI). Incentives could be discretionary or non discretionary depending on the plan.

Capital One offers a comprehensive, competitive, and inclusive set of health, financial and other benefits that support your total well-being. Learn more at the Capital One Careers website. Eligibility varies based on full or part-time status, exempt or non-exempt status, and management level.

This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days.

No agencies please. Capital One is an equal opportunity employer (EOE, including disability/vet) committed to non-discrimination in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. Capital One promotes a drug-free workplace. Capital One will consider for employment qualified applicants with a criminal history in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable laws regarding criminal background inquiries, including, to the extent applicable, Article 23-A of the New York Correction Law; San Francisco, California Police Code Article 49, Sections 4901-4920; New York City’s Fair Chance Act; Philadelphia’s Fair Criminal Records Screening Act; and other applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations regarding criminal background inquiries.

If you have visited our website in search of information on employment opportunities or to apply for a position, and you require an accommodation, please contact Capital One Recruiting at 1-800-304-9102 or via email at RecruitingAccommodation@capitalone.com. All information you provide will be kept confidential and will be used only to the extent required to provide needed reasonable accommodations.

For technical support or questions about Capital One's recruiting process, please send an email to Careers@capitalone.com

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Capital One Financial is made up of several different entities. Please note that any position posted in Canada is for Capital One Canada, any position posted in the United Kingdom is for Capital One Europe and any position posted in the Philippines is for Capital One Philippines Service Corp. (COPSSC).