Distinguished Engineer

Company: Capital One
Location: Washington
Posted on: January 20, 2026

Job Description:

Distinguished Engineer In Risk Tech, we provide the foundation for Capital One to thrive in an uncertain world. Our engaged, empowered, and intelligent people produce outstanding products, working toward the common goal of transforming risk management with technology. We build data-driven tools that use machine learning to prevent risks & automatically detect issues before they impact our business, our customers, or our communities. This is a unique opportunity to be the key technical force behind a CEO-visible initiative at the heart of Capital One's long-term risk management strategy. As the senior-most engineer reporting directly to the Senior Director, you will be the lead technical expert for Core Compliance. You will actively participate in and support a fundamental transformation: moving from traditional spot-checking to an "always-on," continuous monitoring ecosystem for our internal processes. You will partner closely with the engineering manager and team responsible for delivery, providing the deep technical guidance to solve their most complex challenges. Furthermore, you will be at the epicenter of our practical application of Generative AI. This team launched Capital One's first production-level GenAI use cases, and has many more in the pipeline. You will not just oversee these rollouts but actively accelerate our adoption, setting the pattern for how we apply these powerful new technologies to solve critical business problems. As a seriously great software engineer, you will contribute by leading from the front, focusing on hands-on technical execution to solve our most complex challenges. You will personally write code, build prototypes, and lead the design for our most critical systems, rotating between leading projects from inception to production and diving into areas of need to get them to the finish line. A core part of your role will be to partner with leadership to drive the technical strategy for our pioneering GenAI work, leading its hands-on implementation. You will use your deep expertise in AWS and our internal infrastructure to relentlessly push us to improve our tooling and delivery speed. In all of this, you will act as a role model and coach, investing deeply in mentoring other engineers and championing our culture. We're looking for a leader with a distinct bias for action and a deep sense of ownership. You are a hands-on technologist who thrives in the trenches and is a pragmatic problem-solver, with a proven ability to translate ambiguous, high-stakes business challenges into concrete, executable technical plans. This technical skill is matched by an obsession with customer and business results, always starting with the user and working backward to deliver measurable impact. Distinguished Engineers are: Deep technical experts and thought leaders that help accelerate adoption of the very best engineering practices, while maintaining knowledge on industry innovations, trends and practices Visionaries, collaborating on Capital One’s toughest issues, to deliver on business needs that directly impact the lives of our customers and associates. They set the architecture and technical strategy for the domain Role models and mentors, helping to coach and strengthen the technical expertise and know-how of our engineering and product community Evangelists, both internally and externally, helping to elevate the Distinguished Engineering community and establish themselves as a go-to resource on given technologies and technology-enabled capabilities Responsibilities: Build awareness, increase knowledge and drive adoption of modern technologies, sharing consumer and engineering benefits to gain buy-in Strike the right balance between lending expertise and providing an inclusive environment where others’ ideas can be heard and championed; leverage expertise to grow skills in the broader Capital One team Promote a culture of engineering excellence, using opportunities to reuse and innersource solutions where possible Effectively communicate with and influence key stakeholders across the enterprise, at all levels of the organization Operate as a trusted advisor for a specific technology, platform or capability domain, helping to shape use cases and implementation in an unified manner Lead the way in creating next-generation talent for Tech, mentoring internal talent and actively recruiting external talent to bolster Capital One’s Tech talent Basic Qualifications: Bachelor’s Degree At least 7 years of experience with application architecture and design patterns At least 5 years of experience with architectural patterns (SOA), building APIs, microservices, event streams, and high throughput systems Preferred Qualifications: Master’s Degree in Computer Science or a Master’s Degree in Software Engineering 10 years of experience of working with business leaders on the implications of architectural decisions 4 years building cloud native architectures, architecting enterprise applications on public cloud platforms and cloud ecosystems (AWS, GCP or Azure) 5 years experience with DevOps or DevSecOps and building CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, Artifactory, Chef, Ansible, AWS CloudFormation templates, GitHub, and Sonar 12 years of experience in software engineering, with focus on designing and implementing enterprise-level systems 10 years of experience with enterprise architecture, software architecture, and design patterns 3 years of experience with cloud computing (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud) Strong proficiency in modern programming languages and data processing frameworks 3 years of experience with Data strategy, AI and ML Technologies AWS Solution Architect - Professional or Associate ? 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.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 RecruitingAccommodation@capitalone.com . 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 Careers@capitalone.com Capital One does not provide, endorse nor guarantee and is not liable for third-party products, services, educational tools or other information available through this site. 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).

Keywords: Capital One, Charlottesville , Distinguished Engineer, IT / Software / Systems , Washington, Virginia