Senior Staff Applied Researcher

Capital One

. Partner with data scientists, software engineers, machine-learning engineers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered products .

Posted 9/21/2026full-timeUnited StatesSenior💰 $350,000 - $435,700 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in building and deploying AI foundation models, with a strong focus on deep learning methodologies and applied research. Proven ability to translate complex technical concepts into actionable business strategies while mentoring and guiding teams in a collaborative environment.

Highest-signal resume keywords

PhD In AI-Related FieldsDeep Learning Model DevelopmentTraining Optimization ExpertiseHands-On Experience With PyTorchTrack Record Of High-Quality Machine-Learning Ideas

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Applied ResearchAI MethodologiesDeep LearningModel DeploymentSelf-Supervised LearningRobustnessExplainabilityReinforcement Learning From Human FeedbackLarge-Scale Data ProcessingModel Evaluation

Soft Skills

MentoringCollaborationStrategic Direction

Tools & Technologies

PyTorchAWS UltraclustersHugging FaceLightningOpen-Source ToolsCloud Computing Platforms

Industry Keywords

AI-Powered ProductsResearch CommunityEmergent Scientific OpportunitiesBehavioral ModelsGraph ModelsReal-Time EnvironmentsStreaming EnvironmentsKDDICMLNeurIPS

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSCloudPyTorch

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Partner with data scientists, software engineers, machine-learning engineers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered products
Use PyTorch, AWS Ultraclusters, Hugging Face, Lightning, and other technologies to analyze numeric and textual data
Build AI foundation models through design, training, evaluation, validation, and implementation
Conduct applied research to advance AI developments into customer experiences
Translate complex technical work into tangible business goals
Define and evolve Capital One’s long-term research agenda
Identify emergent scientific opportunities and steer foundational AI investments
Drive strategic direction across Applied Science, Engineering, and Product
Guide and mentor applied scientists and their managers without being a direct people leader
Represent Capital One externally in the research community and collaborate with prominent faculty

Requirements

What you’ll need

PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, AI, Mathematics, or related fields plus 6 years of experience in Applied Research, OR M.S. in those fields plus 8 years of experience in Applied Research
Deep understanding of the foundations of AI methodologies
Experience building large deep learning models for language, images, events, or graphs
Expertise in one or more of training optimization, self-supervised learning, robustness, explainability, or RLHF
Track record of delivering models at scale in training data and inference volumes
Experience delivering libraries, platform-level code, or solution-level code to existing products
Track record of high-quality machine-learning ideas, such as first-author publications or projects
Ability to own and pursue a research agenda and autonomously carry out long-running projects
Hands-on experience developing AI foundation models and solutions using open-source tools and cloud computing platforms
Preferred: PhD in specified AI-related fields
Preferred: behavioral models PhD focus on geometric deep learning
Preferred: model-deployment technical leadership for very large user-behavior models
Preferred: papers at KDD, ICML, NeurIPS, or ICLR
Preferred: scaling graph models to more than 50 million nodes
Preferred: large-scale deep-learning recommender systems
Preferred: production real-time and streaming environments
Preferred: contributions to PyTorch Geometric or DGL
Preferred: new inference or representation-learning methods on graphs or sequences
Preferred: datasets with more than 100 million users
Preferred: recognized authority in AI or ML research
Capital One will consider sponsoring a new qualified applicant for employment authorization

Benefits

Comp & perks

Performance based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonus(es) and/or long term incentives (LTI)
Comprehensive, competitive, and inclusive health, financial and other benefits supporting total well-being
Employment authorization sponsorship may be considered for a new qualified applicant
Reasonable accommodations for applicants who require them