Sr. Manager, AI Engineer

Capital One; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 251,000 - 286,000; Full time

Job summary

Capital One is seeking an onsite Sr. Manager, AI Engineer in San Jose, CA to lead the operationalization of responsible, scalable AI systems powering production foundation models.

You will blend hands-on execution with cross‑functional leadership to deliver measurable AI‑powered outcomes for associates and customers. The role requires building and guiding AI components across the lifecycle, optimizing model performance for scale and cost, and shaping the long‑term roadmap for foundational AI

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS/AI/EE or related field with 6+ years in AI/ML, or Master’s with 4+ years.
• At least 1 year of people leadership experience.
• Ability to translate enterprise AI goals into actionable roadmaps and measurable outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Lead cross‑functional teams to deliver AI-powered products that improve how associates work and how customers interact with Capital One.
• Oversee AI software lifecycle from design to deployment and support, including model training, inference, evaluation, and governance.
• Make high‑judgment build-versus-buy decisions across Open Source and SaaS AI technologies such as AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, VectorDBs, PyTorch.
• Drive state‑of‑the‑art foundation model optimization for scalability, cost, latency, and throughput.
• Contribute to the technical vision and long‑term roadmap for foundation AI systems at Capital One.
• Translate enterprise AI goals into actionable roadmaps with measurable outcomes and regular readouts.
• Operationalize Responsible AI with review gates, documentation, and rollout/rollback standards.
• Collaborate with Research, Data, and Platform teams to accelerate the model lifecycle.
• Attract and retain top AI talent and foster learning and growth within the team.

Skills

AI/ML algorithms

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/AI/EE/CE or related field

Master’s degree in related field

Tools

AWS Ultraclusters

Huggingface

VectorDBs

PyTorch

Python

C++

C#

Java

CUDA

Golang

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

Lead the operationalization of responsible, scalable AI systems that power production foundation models and related capabilities at Capital One. This onsite Sr. Manager, AI Engineer role in San Jose, CA blends hands‑on technical execution with cross‑functional leadership to deliver measurable, AI‑powered outcomes for associates and customers.

What you’ll do

• Work with a cross‑functional team of engineers, research scientists, technical program managers, and product managers to deliver AI‑powered products that improve how associates work and how customers interact with Capital One.
• Oversee AI software components across the lifecycle, from design and development to testing, deployment, and support, including foundation model training, large language model inference, similarity search, guardrails, model evaluation, experimentation, governance, and observability.
• Make high‑judgment build‑versus‑buy decisions across Open Source and SaaS AI technologies such as AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, VectorDBs, PyTorch, and more.
• Drive state‑of‑the‑art foundation model optimization techniques to improve performance across scalability, cost, latency, and throughput for large‑scale production AI systems.
• Contribute to the technical vision and long‑term roadmap for foundational AI systems at Capital One.
• Translate enterprise AI goals into actionable team roadmaps with measurable outcomes and regular readouts.
• Operationalize Responsible AI by establishing review gates, documentation and evaluation requirements, and rollout and rollback standards for production AI systems.
• Build collaboration interfaces with Research, Data, and Platform teams to accelerate the model lifecycle.
• Attract and retain top AI talent, nurture personal and professional growth, and foster a culture of learning and staying current with the state of the art.

Required qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields plus at least 6 years developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies, or a Master’s degree plus at least 4 years developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies.
• At least 1 year of people leadership experience.

Technologies you may work with

AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, VectorDBs, PyTorch, Python, C++, C#, Java, CUDA, Golang, AWS, Google Cloud, Azure.

How you’ll fit in

• You enjoy building systems with a strong focus on quality and doing the right thing, bringing AI to problems that help change banking.
• You stay close to the latest research and can interpret scientific work and apply novel techniques thoughtfully in production.
• You find fulfillment in enabling others through mentoring and coaching, stepping in hands‑on when needed, and leading by example.
• You can bring clarity to ambiguous problems, dig into root causes, and communicate findings clearly while sharing new ideas even when they are unproven.
• You are deeply technical with strong foundations in engineering and mathematics, using expertise across hardware, software, and AI to identify optimization opportunities.
• You are resilient and able to forge new paths when the route to the goal is not defined.

Compensation: USD 250,800 - 286,200 per year.

Location: San Jose, CA (onsite).