Staff Software Engineer - Machine Learning

Capital One; Birmingham; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Job summary

Capital One in London looks for an experienced ML/AI leader to own the technical strategy for UK use cases, guiding multi‑team collaboration and setting the direction for AI adoption across the business.

You will mentor engineers, define scalable MLOps, align with enterprise platforms, advocate for responsible AI, and represent Capital One in external technical forums to deliver customer‑facing AI initiatives.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in Python and ML engineering is required.
• Experience designing ML/AI systems and MLOps across teams.
• Strong cloud platform experience (AWS, Azure, GCP) and ML frameworks.
• Proven leadership of multi-team ML/AI initiatives and technical vision.
• Experience with responsible AI practices and building scalable, low-latency AI solutions.

Responsibilities

• Own and drive the ML/AI technical strategy for UK use cases across multiple teams.
• Lead and coordinate ML engineering efforts ensuring alignment with business goals and platform capabilities.
• Provide technical consultancy on architecture, solution design, and use of enterprise ML/AI platforms.
• Proactively identify patterns, evangelise best practices, and establish reusable approaches across the organisation.
• Drive MLOps standards including CI/CD for models, automated testing, monitoring, and deployment pipelines.
• Collaborate with data science and enterprise platform teams to deliver use cases at scale.
• Build relationships with stakeholders and represent Capital One in external ML/AI forums.
• Mentor engineers to foster a culture of continuous learning and technical excellence.

Skills

Python

ML engineering

ML/AI systems design

MLOps

Cloud platforms

Gen AI frameworks

Responsible AI

Low-latency architectures

Model serving

Leadership

Tools

AWS

Azure

GCP

PyTorch

TensorFlow

scikit-learn

LangGraph

LangChain

VectorDBs

RAG

Job description

We're on a mission to transform the way we use data and AI to service our customers and drive efficiency across the business. Do you love shaping the technical landscape and driving innovation across the organisation? Are you passionate about solving complex ML and AI challenges and supporting multiple teams toward a shared technical vision? At Capital One, you'll be part of a community of technical leaders who drive engineering excellence, foster innovation, and deliver impactful ML/AI and Gen AI solutions that meet real customer needs.

What You'll Do

• Own and drive the ML/AI technical strategy for UK use cases, spanning multiple teams and influencing the overall technical direction for AI adoption
• Lead and coordinate ML engineering efforts across multiple teams, ensuring alignment with broader business objectives, enterprise platform capabilities, and technology strategy
• Provide technical consultancy to teams delivering AI use cases, guiding architectural decisions, solution design, and effective use of enterprise ML/AI platforms and capabilities
• Proactively identify emerging ML/AI patterns, define and evangelise best practices, and establish reusable approaches that enhance delivery of AI use cases across the business
• Drive MLOps standards and practices across teams, including CI/CD for models, automated testing, monitoring, and deployment pipelines
• Collaborate with enterprise platform and data science teams, contributing to platform capabilities where appropriate and partnering on use case delivery
• Build and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders, including senior leadership, product owners, data science teams, and enterprise platform partners
• Represent Capital One in external ML/AI technical forums, contributing to industry discussions
• Develop and advocate for strategies to proactively manage technical debt across ML/AI systems
• Actively mentor and develop engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning

Requirements

• Deep expertise in Python and ML engineering
• Deep expertise in ML/AI systems design, MLOps, and cloud-native architectures
• Track record of leading ML/AI technical initiatives across multiple teams
• Strong experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Experience with ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn) and Gen AI/Agentic frameworks (LangGraph, LangChain, VectorDBs, RAG)
• Understanding of responsible AI practices, including guardrails, hallucination mitigation, and output quality management for AI systems
• Experience designing and scaling low-latency, customer-facing ML/AI architectures
• Proven experience setting a multi-team ML/AI technical vision and strategy
• Strong track record of technical leadership and influence without authority
• Experience driving ML engineering standards and best practices across organisations
• Deep understanding of the full ML/AI development lifecycle, including model serving, data pipelines, and Gen AI systems
• Experience leveraging enterprise platforms to deliver business use cases at scale
• Experience of steering Communities of Practice or technical forums
• Strong business acumen and ability to translate ML/AI concepts for various audiences

This is a permanent position based in our London office. We have a hybrid working model which gives you flexibility to work from our office and from home. We're big on collaboration and connection, so you'll be based in our London office 3 days a week on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

What's in it for you

• Bring us all this - and you'll be well rewarded with a role contributing to the roadmap of an organisation committed to transformation
• We offer high performers strong and diverse career progression, investing heavily in developing great people through our Capital One University training programmes (and appropriate externa