Lead Machine Learning Engineer (Manager IC)

Capital One Risk Tech is seeking a Lead Machine Learning Engineer who will design, deploy, and maintain AI components and infrastructure that power risk management and AI-enabled products. This onsite role in Richmond, VA blends hands-on engineering leadership with strategic vision to advance Capital One's AI systems and risk controls.

Location

Richmond, VA (onsite)

Compensation

USD 179,400 - 204,700 per year

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with a cross-functional team of engineers, data scientists, product managers, and designers to deliver AI-powered products that transform how associates work and provide value to customers.
• Design, develop, test, deploy, and support AI software components using machine learning models, including model evaluation and experimentation, large language model inference, similarity search, guardrails, governance, observability, and agentic AI.
• Fine-tune, develop, and evaluate machine learning and foundation models.
• Work within an Agile, cross-functional team to create and enhance software that leverages state-of-the-art AI and ML capabilities.
• Provide thought leadership and technical vision for the long-term roadmap of pioneering AI systems at Capital One.
• Utilize a broad stack of Open Source and SaaS AI technologies.
• Guide ML infrastructure decisions based on an understanding of ML modeling techniques and related issues.
• Retrain, maintain, and monitor models in production.
• Build optimized data pipelines to feed ML models.
• Ensure code is well-managed to reduce vulnerabilities, keep models well-governed from a risk perspective, and follow responsible and explainable AI practices.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree
• Minimum of six years designing and building data-intensive solutions on distributed computing platforms (internships excluded)
• Minimum of four years programming in Python, Scala, or Java
• Minimum of two years building, scaling, and optimizing ML systems

Technologies

• Python
• Scala
• Java
• scikit-learn
• PyTorch
• Dask
• Spark
• TensorFlow
• AWS Bedrock
• Google Cloud
• Azure

Benefits

• Health, financial and other benefits that support your total well-being
• Performance-based incentive compensation (cash bonuses and/or long term incentives)

The ideal candidate

• You love to build systems, take pride in the quality of your work, and aim to contribute to banking improvements that matter.
• You are a strong communicator who can explain complex technical concepts to non-technical partners across the business, including presentations to large audiences.
• You stay current with AI research and can interpret scientific publications to judiciously apply novel techniques in production.
• You adapt quickly and bring clarity to big, undefined problems, asking probing questions and articulating findings concisely, with the courage to propose new ideas even if unproven.
• You are deeply technical, with a solid foundation in engineering and mathematics, and an ability to see and exploit optimization opportunities across hardware, software, and AI.
• You are a resilient trailblazer who can forge new paths to achieve business goals when the route is uncertain.
• You maintain a passion for the latest AI research and systems, applying novel techniques in production with careful consideration.