Manager, Data Scientist -Advanced Recommenders and Personalization Systems (Transformers, LLMs & Reinforcement Learning)

Capital One; McLean (VA); On-site; USD 197,000 - 225,000; Full time

Job summary

Capital One is seeking a Data Scientist in McLean, VA to help design and implement large-scale recommender systems. You will use transformers, LLMs, and reinforcement learning on billions of transactions and interactions to improve personalized experiences across digital products.

You will collaborate with engineering and product teams to deploy scalable, low-latency systems, evaluate campaigns, and push the boundaries of generative recommendations and cross-domain personalization.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a quantitative field with several years of data analytics experience.
• Master’s or MBA with quantitative concentration plus several years of analytics experience.
• PhD in a quantitative field with at least one year of analytics experience.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop state-of-the-art recommender systems using transformers, large language models (LLMs), and reinforcement learning.
• Advance personalization through sequence modeling, multimodal learning, and contextual decision-making.
• Build and fine-tune foundation models trained on large-scale customer interaction data.
• Apply reinforcement learning to optimize long-term user engagement and business outcomes.
• Build evaluation frameworks to measure the efficacy of campaigns and recommendations.
• Collaborate with engineering and product teams to deploy scalable, low-latency systems.
• Drive innovation in areas such as generative recommendations and cross-domain personalization.

Skills

Transformers

LLMs

Reinforcement learning

Python

PyTorch

Distributed training

SQL

AWS

Data science workflows

Experimentation

Education

Bachelor's + 6 yrs analytics

Master's or MBA quantitative +4 yrs

PhD +1 yr

Tools

Python

PyTorch

TensorFlow

SQL

AWS

Job description

Data is at the center of everything we do. As a startup, we disrupted the credit card industry by individually personalizing every credit card offer using statistical modeling and the relational database, cutting edge technology in 1988! Fast-forward a few years, and this little innovation and our passion for data has skyrocketed us to a Fortune 200 company and a leader in the world of data-driven decision-making.

As a Data Scientist at Capital One, you’ll be part of a team that’s leading the next wave of disruption at a whole new scale, using the latest in computing and machine learning technologies and operating across billions of customer records to unlock the big opportunities that help everyday people save money, time and agony in their financial lives.

Team Description-

We are building the next generation of large-scale reinforcement learning based recommender systems and arbitration engines that will power personalized experiences across marketing, customer servicing, and digital products. This is a high-impact initiative central to our platform, leveraging rich credit and customer behavioral data from tens of millions of customers to deliver intelligent, real-time experiences across our digital experiences, including Mobile, Web, and Email.

Why this role:

You’ll help shape a foundational system that reaches a vast portion of the U.S. population, influencing how millions of people discover, decide, and engage across financial and lifestyle experiences.

Role Description-

In this role, you will:

• Design and develop state-of-the-art recommender systems using transformers, large language models (LLMs), and reinforcement learning.
• Advance personalization through sequence modeling, multi-modal learning, and contextual decision-making (e.g., contextual Multi-Armed Bandits).
• Build and fine-tune foundation models trained on large-scale customer interaction data.
• Apply reinforcement learning to optimize long-term user engagement and business outcomes.
• Build state-of-the‑art evaluation frameworks to measure the efficacy of our campaigns and recommendation systems.
• Collaborate with engineering and product teams to deploy scalable, production‑grade, low‑latency systems.
• Drive innovation in emerging areas such as generative recommendations, conversational systems, and cross‑domain personalization (e.g., travel, shopping).

The Ideal Candidate is:

• Customer first. You love the process of analyzing and creating, but also share our passion to do the right thing. You know at the end of the day it’s about making the right decision for our customers.
• Innovative. You continually research and evaluate emerging technologies. You stay current on published state-of-the‑art methods, technologies, and applications and seek out opportunities to apply them.
• Creative. You thrive on bringing definition to big, undefined problems. You love asking questions and pushing hard to find answers. You’re not afraid to share a new idea.
• A leader. You challenge conventional thinking and work with stakeholders to identify and improve the status quo. You’re passionate about talent development for your own team and beyond.
• Technical. You’re comfortable with open‑source languages and are passionate about developing further. You have hands‑on experience developing data science solutions using open‑source tools and cloud computing platforms.
• Statistically‑minded. You’ve built models, validated them, and backtested them. You know how to interpret a confusion matrix or a ROC curve. You have experience with clustering, classification, sentiment analysis, time series, and deep learning.
• A data guru. “Big data” doesn’t faze you. You have the skills to retrieve, combine, and analyze data from a variety of sources and structures. You know understanding the data is often the key to great data science.
• Strong background in machine learning, deep learning, and recommender systems.
• Hands‑on experience with transformers, LLMs, or reinforcement learning.
• Experience working with large‑scale datasets and distributed training.
• Solid programming skills in Python and modern ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Ability to translate research into impactful, real‑world systems.

Basic Qualifications:

• Currently has, or is in the process of obtaining one of the following with an expectation that the required degree will be obtained on or before the scheduled start date:
  • A Bachelor's Degree in a quantitative field (Statistics, Economics, Operations Research, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related quantitative field) plus 6 years of experience performing data analytics
  • A Master's Degree in a quantitative field (Statistics, Economics, Operations Research, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related quantitative field) or an MBA with a quantitative concentration plus 4 years of experience performing data analytics
  • A PhD in a quantitative field (Statistics, Economics, Operations Research, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related quantitative field) plus 1 year of experience performing data analytics
• At least 1 year of experience leveraging open source programming languages for large scale data analysis
• At least 1 year of experience working with machine learning
• At least 1 year of experience utilizing relational databases

Preferred Qualifications:

• PhD in “STEM” field (Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics) plus 3 years of experience in data analytics
• At least 1 year of experience working with AWS
• At least 4 years’ experience in Python, Scala, or R for large scale data analysis
• At least 4 years’ experience with machine learning
• At least 4 years’ experience with SQL

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.

Plano, TX: $179,400 - $204,700 for Mgr, Data Science

New York, NY: $215,200 - $245,600 for Mgr, Data Science

McLean, VA: $197,300 - $225,100 for Mgr, Data Science

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. Eligibility varies based on full or part‑time status, exempt or non‑exempt status, and management level.

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

No agencies please. Capital One is an equal opportunity employer (EOE, including disability/vet) committed to non‑discrimination in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. 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 [e-mail]. 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 [e-mail]

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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).