Senior Director, Applied Research

Capital One Financial

Actively hiring
San Francisco, CA · McLean, VA · Cambridge, MA · San Jose, CA · Richmond, VA Posted 26 days ago $318,100–$363,100 / year
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At a glance

AI generated

TL;DR

As a Senior Director of Applied Research at Capital One, you will lead and mentor a team of applied scientists to develop AI-powered platforms that revolutionize customer interactions. This role involves collaborating with cross-functional teams including machine learning engineers, software developers, and product managers to drive innovative solutions. You will also represent the company externally in the research community, engaging with leading faculty members and contributing to the advancement of AI technologies. Ideal candidates possess a PhD or equivalent experience in fields like Computer Science or Mathematics, along with extensive leadership experience. Preferred qualifications include expertise in areas such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), large language model training, geometric deep learning, and data preparation, requiring skills in frameworks like PyTorch Geometric, DGL, and optimization tools like DeepSpeed. This position demands a strong technical background and the ability to guide large-scale projects involving complex datasets and models.

Skills

Python PyTorch TensorFlow Kubernetes Docker CI/CD AWS NLP Graph Neural Networks Deep Learning Recommender Systems GPU Clusters Large Language Models Data Quality Tokenization Dataset Curation Gradient Checkpointing Model Compression Model Sparsification Quantization

What you'll do

  • Lead teams to develop AI-powered platforms and solutions that enhance customer interactions.
  • Guide and mentor a team of applied scientists in technical research and development.
  • Collaborate with engineering and product leaders to drive strategic direction for AI initiatives.
  • Represent Capital One externally by engaging with prominent faculty in the AI community.
  • Ensure large-scale model training teams are technically directed and optimized for performance.

What we're looking for

  • PhD in relevant field plus 6 years of experience or M.S. plus 8 years in Applied Research.
  • At least 5 years of people leadership experience.
  • Proven ability to guide technical direction of large-scale model training teams.
  • Experience working with large datasets and complex AI models (e.g., LLMs).
  • Strong publication record at top-tier conferences like ACL, NAACL, EMNLP, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR.
  • Expertise in data preparation, tokenization, dataset curation, and labeling.

Market check

Salary context

This $318,100–$363,100 range sits above 99% of similar postings on FindRole.

Peer median band

$160,900–$255,800

Median floor and ceiling across peers.

Typical midpoint (25–75%)

$165,000–$247,118

Middle half of comparable postings.

Based on 240 comparable postings.

* 240 is the maximum number of comparable postings sampled.

Employer

About Capital One Financial

Capital One Financial is a bank holding company specializing in credit cards, auto loans, banking, and savings products, known for its data-driven approach to consumer and commercial finance. Industry: Financial Services & Banking

Capital One Financial currently has 489 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $197,300–$225,100 across 483 roles with salary data.

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View all roles at Capital One Financial

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