Lead Machine Learning Engineer at Capital One

Center 3 (19075), United States of America, McLean, Virginia

Lead Machine Learning Engineer

As a Capital One Machine Learning Engineer (MLE), you'll be part of an Agile team 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 focus on machine learning architectural design, develop and review model and application code, and ensure 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. 

Team Description

Our team is on the cutting edge of GenAI and at the center of bringing our vision for AI at Capital One to life. The work of the AI Training Team touches every aspect of the model development life cycle and our deployed models in production drive business impact with visibility from our C-Suite.

• Our team creates unprecedented amounts of high quality data for training and testing GenAI models; we care about how it’s created, what’s in those datasets, and the impact they have

• We are invested in building capabilities for evaluating and monitoring generative models; these methods must be state of the art, easy to use, and trusted by our users and contributors

• Horizontal capabilities enable vertical use case work; the team builds search, summarization, RAG, and agentic workflows for integration in production applications across the company

We learn from our colleagues, attend conferences, publish papers, and maintain strong connections to the research community. Everyone on this team has a role in realizing GenAI capabilities at Capital One, and we’re excited to find experienced talent to join us.

What you’ll do in the role: 

• The MLE role overlaps with many disciplines, such as Ops, Modeling, and Data Engineering. In this role, you'll be expected to perform many ML engineering activities, including one or more of the following:

• Design, build, and/or deliver ML models and components that solve real-world business problems, while working in collaboration with the Product and Data Science teams. 

• Inform your ML infrastructure decisions using your understanding of ML modeling techniques and issues, including choice of model, data, and feature selection, model training, hyperparameter tuning, dimensionality, bias/variance, and validation).

• Solve complex problems by writing and testing application code, developing and validating ML models, and automating tests and deployment. 

• Collaborate as part of a cross-functional Agile team to create and enhance software that enables state-of-the-art big data and ML applications. 

• Retrain, maintain, and monitor models in production.

• Leverage or build cloud-based architectures, technologies, and/or platforms to deliver optimized ML models at scale.

• Construct optimized data pipelines to feed ML models. 

• Leverage continuous integration and continuous deployment best practices, including test automation and monitoring, to ensure successful deployment of ML models and application code. 

• Ensure all code is well-managed to reduce vulnerabilities, models are well-governed from a risk perspective, and the ML follows best practices in Responsible and Explainable AI. 

• Use programming languages like Python, Scala, or Java. 

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree 

• At least 6 years of experience designing and building data-intensive solutions using distributed computing (Internship experience does not apply)

• At least 4 years of experience programming with Python, Scala, or Java

• At least 2 years of experience building, scaling, and optimizing ML systems

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's or doctoral degree in computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics, or a similar field

• 3+ years of experience building production-ready data pipelines that feed ML models 

• 3+ years of on-the-job experience with an industry recognized ML framework such as scikit-learn, PyTorch, Dask, Spark, or TensorFlow 

• 2+ years of experience developing performant, resilient, and maintainable code

• 2+ years of experience with data gathering and preparation for ML models

• 2+ years of people leader experience

• 1+ years of experience leading teams developing ML solutions using industry best practices, patterns, and automation 

• Experience developing and deploying ML solutions in a public cloud such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform

• Experience designing, implementing, and scaling complex data pipelines for ML models and evaluating their performance 

• ML industry impact through conference presentations, papers, blog posts, open source contributions, or patents 

At this time, Capital One will not sponsor a new applicant for employment authorization, or offer any immigration related support for this position (i.e. H1B, F-1 OPT, F-1 STEM OPT, F-1 CPT, J-1, TN, or another type of work authorization).

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.

New York City (Hybrid On-Site): $201,400 - $229,900 for Lead 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.

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

No agencies please. Capital One is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex (including pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions), race, color, age, national origin, religion, disability, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender reassignment, citizenship, immigration status, protected veteran status, or any other basis prohibited under applicable federal, state or local law. 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).