Staff Engineer - Software Engineering

Capital One; Cambridge (MA); On-site; USD 269,000 - 307,000; Full time

Job summary

Capital One in Cambridge, MA is seeking a Staff Engineer to lead technical strategy across cloud-native platforms, collaborating with ML experts and product teams to deliver real-time, AI-powered finance workflows.

The role emphasizes mentorship, scalable design, and innovation, with compensation aligned to senior leadership and potential performance incentives.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree required.
• 7+ years of software engineering and solution architecture experience.
• Cloud computing and data architecture experience.

Responsibilities

• Articulate and evangelize a bold technical vision for your domain.
• Decompose complex problems into practical and operational solutions.
• Ensure the quality of technical design and implementation.
• Serve as an authoritative expert on non-functional system characteristics (performance, scalability, operability).
• Continue learning and injecting advanced technical knowledge into our community.
• Handle several projects simultaneously with maximum impact.
• Be hands-on with multi-tenancy, real-time insights, anomaly detection and finance orchestration patterns.
• Mentor senior engineers and foster a culture of technical excellence and innovation.

Skills

Software engineering

Solution architecture

Cloud computing

Data architecture

AI/ML frameworks

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Java

Python

Go

JavaScript/TypeScript

Swift

Job description

As a Staff Engineer at Capital One, you will be a part of a community of technical experts working to define the future of banking in the cloud.

You will work alongside our talented team of developers, machine learning experts, product managers and people leaders. Our Distinguished Engineers are leading experts in their domains, helping devise practical and reusable solutions to complex problems. You will drive innovation at multiple levels, helping optimize business outcomes while driving towards strong technology solutions.

At Capital One, we believe diversity of thought strengthens our ability to influence, collaborate and provide the most innovative solutions across organizational boundaries. You will promote a culture of engineering excellence, and strike the right balance between lending expertise and providing an inclusive environment where the ideas of others can be heard and championed. You will lead the way in creating next-generation talent for Capital One Tech, mentoring internal talent and actively recruiting to keep building our community.

Distinguished Engineers are expected to lead through technical contribution. You will operate as a trusted advisor for our key technologies, platforms and capability domains, creating clear and concise communications, code samples, blog posts and other material to share knowledge both inside and outside the organization. You will specialize in a particular subject area, but your input and impact will be sought and expected throughout the organization.

In this role you will work with teams across the company to create real-time and intelligent finance through an AI-powered platform for end-to-end business process automation, offering transparent, real-time workflow observability with natural language data interactions. You won't just execute a roadmap, you will be a strategist defining which modern technologies will solve problems our stakeholders haven’t even imagined yet.

If you are ready to provide thought leadership and build engineering excellence across Capital One's engineering teams, come join us in our mission to change banking for good.

Key responsibilities:

• Articulate and evangelize a bold technical vision for your domain
• Decompose complex problems into practical and operational solutions
• Ensure the quality of technical design and implementation
• Serve as an authoritative expert on non-functional system characteristics, such as performance, scalability and operability
• Continue learning and injecting advanced technical knowledge into our community
• Handle several projects simultaneously, balancing your time to maximize impact
• Be hands-on and at the forefront of high-order problems such as multi-tenancy, right-time insights, centralized anomaly detection and action, and agentic patterns for Finance business orchestration.
• Mentor and upskill the senior engineering talent within the organization, fostering a culture of technical excellence and innovation, and ensuring our innovation is not just fast, but scalable and resilient.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree
• At least 7 years of experience in
  • General software
    • Software engineering and solution architecture
    • Enterprise architecture and design patterns
  • Software specializations
    • Web technologies (Javascript, TypeScript and SPA frameworks)
    • Full ML development lifecycle using AI and ML frameworks
  • Other specializations
    • Cloud computing (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud)
    • Data architecture

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or Master's Degree in Computer Science or a related field.
• 10+ years of professional experience coding in commonly used languages like Java, Python, Go, JavaScript/TypeScript, Swift, etc.
• 8+ years of professional experience in the full lifecycle of system development, from conception through architecture, implementation, testing, deployment and production support.
• 3+ years of experience with public or private cloud technologies.Experience in implementing Artificial Intelligence or Artificial Intelligence-enabled solutions.

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.

Cambridge, MA: $269,100 - $307,200 for Distinguished Engineer

McLean, VA: $269,100 - $307,200 for Distinguished Engineer

New York, NY: $293,600 - $335,100 for Distinguished Engineer

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.

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.