Staff Engineer — AI-Driven Cloud & CI/CD Leader

Capital One National Association; McLean (VA); On-site; USD 269,000 - 307,000; Full time

Job summary

Capital One is seeking a Staff Engineer in McLean, VA, to lead modern DevOps and AI-augmented development initiatives. You will drive the strategy for CI/CD pipelines, cloud infra, and secure tooling, partnering with executives to align technology with business goals.

You will mentor senior engineers, guide architecture decisions, and promote an inclusive engineering culture while delivering high-impact, compliant solutions across regulated environments.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree.
• At least 7 years of experience in software engineering, cloud architecture, or infrastructure engineering.
• At least 5 years of experience designing and implementing CI/CD pipelines and DevOps toolchains.
• At least 4 years of experience with containerization and microservices orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker) in a cloud-native environment (AWS, GCP, or Azure).

Responsibilities

• Vision & Strategy: Architect the long-term enterprise roadmap for modern DevOps practices, intent-driven cloud infrastructure, and next-generation CI/CD frameworks.
• AI Tooling & Integration: Spearhead the evaluation, customization, and deployment of secure AI-assisted software development tools (e.g., automated code generation, smart test-suites, AI Hub extensions, and automated vulnerability scanning).
• Executive Influence & Collaboration: Act as a trusted advisor to technical executives and Line of Business leaders. Effectively articulate technical strategies, ROI, and risk-mitigation frameworks to non-technical stakeholders to secure funding and drive behavioral change across organizations.
• Inner sourcing & Governance: Design and govern multi-tenant core-skills repositories and enterprise marketplaces, enabling local domain teams to safely configure and contribute extensions while maintaining rigorous security standards.
• Microservices & Resiliency: Oversee the scalability, performance, and security of highly distributed microservices environments operating within strict regulatory and cybersecurity boundaries.
• Culture & Mentorship: Foster an inclusive engineering culture centered on a "fail-fast but securely" mentality. Mentor principal and senior engineers, raising the bar for technical excellence across the enterprise.

Skills

DevOps

CI/CD pipelines

Cloud architecture

Microservices

AI augmentation

Leadership

Security & compliance awareness

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Master’s degree in CS/IS or related

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Terraform

Crossplane

Job description

Capital One is seeking a Staff Engineer in McLean, VA, to lead modern DevOps and AI-augmented development initiatives. You will drive the strategy for CI/CD pipelines, cloud infra, and secure tooling, partnering with executives to align technology with business goals.

You will mentor senior engineers, guide architecture decisions, and promote an inclusive engineering culture while delivering high-impact, compliant solutions across regulated environments.