Lead AI Engineer

Capital One Capital One · Banking · San Jose, CA +3

Lead AI Engineer role focused on building and deploying AI-powered products and foundational AI systems within a fintech company. Responsibilities include designing, developing, testing, deploying, and supporting AI software components such as foundation model training, LLM inference, similarity search, guardrails, model evaluation, and observability. The role emphasizes optimizing LLM performance (scalability, cost, latency, throughput) and contributing to the technical vision and roadmap for AI systems. Requires experience with AI/ML algorithms, programming languages like Python, and cloud platforms, with a focus on deploying scalable and responsible AI solutions.

What you'd actually do

  1. Partner with a cross-functional team of engineers, research scientists, technical program managers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered products that change how our associates work and how our customers interact with Capital One.
  2. Design, develop, test, deploy, and support AI software components including foundation model training, large language model inference, similarity search, guardrails, model evaluation, experimentation, governance, and observability, etc.
  3. Leverage a broad stack of Open Source and SaaS AI technologies such as AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, VectorDBs, Nemo Guardrails, PyTorch, and more.
  4. Invent and introduce state-of-the-art LLM optimization techniques to improve the performance — scalability, cost, latency, throughput — of large scale production AI systems.
  5. Contribute to the technical vision and the long term roadmap of foundational AI systems at Capital One.

Skills

Required

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields plus at least 4 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies, or a Master's degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields plus at least 2 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies
  • At least 4 years of experience programming with Python, Go, Scala, or Java

Nice to have

  • 6 years of experience deploying scalable and responsible AI solutions on cloud platforms (e.g. AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, or equivalent private cloud)
  • Experience designing, developing, delivering, and supporting AI services
  • Experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies (e.g. LLM Inference, Similarity Search and VectorDBs, Guardrails, Memory) using Python, C++, C#, Java, or Golang
  • Experience developing and applying state-of-the-art techniques for optimizing training and inference software to improve hardware utilization, latency, throughput, and cost
  • Passion for staying abreast of the latest AI research and AI systems, and judiciously apply novel techniques in production

What the JD emphasized

  • responsible and reliable AI systems
  • responsible and scalable ways
  • responsible AI solutions

Other signals

  • building and deploying proprietary solutions
  • advance the state of the art in science and AI engineering
  • build and deploy proprietary solutions that are central to our business
  • empower teams across Capital One to enhance their products with the transformative power of AI
  • deliver AI-powered products that change how our associates work and how our customers interact with Capital One
  • foundation model training
  • large language model inference
  • similarity search
  • guardrails
  • model evaluation
  • experimentation
  • governance
  • observability
  • Invent and introduce state-of-the-art LLM optimization techniques
  • improve the performance — scalability, cost, latency, throughput — of large scale production AI systems
  • Contribute to the technical vision and the long term roadmap of foundational AI systems