Sr. Director, Machine Learning Engineering (Remote-Eligible)

At Capital One, we are creating responsible and reliable AI systems, changing banking for good. For years, Capital One has been an industry leader in using machine learning to create real-time, personalized customer experiences. Our investments in technology infrastructure and world-class talent - along with our deep experience in machine learning - position us to be at the forefront of enterprises leveraging AI. From informing customers about unusual charges to answering their questions in real time, our applications of AI & ML are bringing humanity and simplicity to banking. We are committed to continuing to build world-class applied science and engineering teams to deliver our industry leading capabilities with breakthrough product experiences and scalable, high-performance AI infrastructure. At Capital One, you will help bring the transformative power of emerging AI capabilities to reimagine how we serve our customers and businesses who have come to love the products and services we build.

Team Description:

The Consumer Engagement Platform organization at Capital One empowers rapid financial product innovation at scale and delivers developer joy, for all Capital One’s consumer products and organizations, by providing well-managed, self-service, experimentation-driven, and personalized product development vehicles. Hyper Personalization org is building the intelligence and infrastructure that will enable Capital One to deliver truly individualized, real-time customer experiences at scale - turning every channel into a context-aware decisioning surface, from home feeds to marketing and servicing messages. The org’s mission is to move Capital One to deliver always-on, cohort-of-one personalization, powered by resilient data foundations, production-grade ML and GenAI systems, and low-latency application platforms that make it easy for teams across the company to experiment, innovate, and serve the right experience to every customer at the right moment.

What you’ll do in the role:

• Lead and scale a high-performing engineering organization responsible for the Personalization Platform that powers real-time, personalized product experiences and multi-channel targeted user messaging across Capital One products and services.
• Define the technical strategy, delivery roadmap, and operating model for a portfolio spanning recommendation systems, ranking, decisioning, GenAI infrastructure, MLOps, and low-latency application-serving systems
• Build, develop, and manage engineers and engineering leaders; set a high bar for hiring, performance, talent density, coaching, and succession planning across the organization
• Partner cross-functionally with Product, Data Science, Cloud Infrastructure, and Machine Learning Platform teams to align strategy, prioritize investments, and co-develop advanced recommendation systems and algorithms serving Capital One users
• Drive the design, buildout, and operation of robust ML infrastructure and pipelines supporting feature extraction, model training, testing, guardrails, evaluation, deployment, and both real-time and batch inference with strong reliability, scalability, and operational rigor
• Architect low-latency, event-driven systems for real-time personalization and decisioning based on streaming data, user behavior, and contextual signals
• Drive the evolution of MLOps practices through automated, metrics-backed deployment workflows, validation and testing systems, model lifecycle governance, and scalable observability
• Guide the adoption of state-of-the-art AI and LLM optimization techniques to improve scalability, cost, latency, throughput, and reliability of large-scale production AI systems
• Provide organizational technical and people leadership by influencing architecture, engineering standards, delivery excellence, incident management, and cross-team strategy while mentoring managers, tech leads, and senior engineers.
• Make high judgment build-vs-buy decisions across a broad stack of Open Source and SaaS AI technologies such as AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, VectorDBs, Nemo Guardrails, PyTorch, and more.
• Attract and retain top talent in the AI industry and nurture personal and professional development for your team. Foster a culture of learning and staying abreast of the state-of-the-art in AI.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or AI plus at least 10 years of experience developing or leading AI and ML algorithms or technologies, or Master’s degree plus at least 8 years of experience developing or leading AI and ML algorithms or technologies
• At least 5 years of people leadership experience, * 7 years of experience managing and leading an engineering team
• 8+ years of experience deploying scalable, responsible AI solutions on major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)
• Master’s or PhD in Computer Science or a relevant technical fieldProven expertise designing, implementing, and scaling personalization platforms and recommendation systems across feed personalization, ads ranking, or targeted marketing messaging
• Proficiency in Python, Java, C++, or Golang; hands-on experience with ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow) and orchestration tools (Databricks, Airflow, Kubeflow)
• Experience optimizing large-scale training and inference systems for hardware utilization, latency, throughput, and cost
• Deep expertise in cloud-native engineering, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and automated CI/CD deploymentDeep experience with MLOps, model observability, and production ML lifecycle management
• Strong track record building organizations, developing managers and senior engineers, and leading through scale and ambiguityExcellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and articulate complex AI concepts clearly
• Proven leadership in driving platform strategy, cross-functional execution, and technical direction across a large organization
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to articulate complex AI concepts to peers

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.

Remote (Regardless of Location): $286,200 - $326,700 for Sr. Dir, Machine Learning Engineering

McLean, VA: $314,800 - $359,300 for Sr. Dir, Machine Learning Engineering

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 (https://www.capitalonecareers.com/benefits) . Eligibility varies based on full or part-time status, exempt or non-exempt status, and management level., 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).