Distinguished Engineer

Overview

Distinguished Engineer

As a Distinguished 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 lead through direct technical contribution: prototyping new features and systems, acting as a trusted advisor for key technologies, shaping our future architecture & evaluating what systems to build vs buy, and sharing knowledge internally and externally. Additionally, you will promote engineering excellence, foster an inclusive environment, and deeply mentor the next generation of technical talent.

In this role, you will lead the strategy, roadmap, and execution for next-generation CI/CD pipelines, microservices architectures, and AI-augmented developer tooling. You will champion the transition toward Intent-Driven Infrastructure—leveraging AI and automation to allow engineers to declare what they need, leaving the underlying platform to securely determine how to provision and optimize it.

This is a high-visibility, executive-influencing role. You will bridge the gap between deep technical implementation and business value, partnering closely with internal engineering communities, Cyber, Risk, and Executive Leadership to build a highly secure, developer-centric, and well-managed ecosystem that aggressively lowers Feature Lead Time.

Key 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.

Basic 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).

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related engineering discipline.

• 6+ years of experience designing Intent-Driven Infrastructure or declarative configuration platforms (e.g., advanced Terraform, Cross plane, or custom control planes) that decouple developer intent from infrastructure management.

• 3+ years of experience in a technical leadership role directly influencing VP/SVP/Executive stakeholders on multi-million dollar technology initiatives.

• 3+ years of  experience in AI Augmented Software Development using AI Coding Assistant Tools, Spec Driven Development 

• 5+ years of experience within compliance, data privacy, and cybersecurity constraints of a highly regulated environment. Experience co-authoring risk assessments alongside Cyber and Risk teams.

• 5+ years of experience in establishing inner-source strategy frameworks, governing shared Git repositories, and defining tight developer feedback loops (including defining rigid SLAs for platform blockers).

• 5+ years of experience using advanced engineering telemetry systems to correlate technical platform upgrades directly to business metrics like Feature Lead Time (FLT) and deployment frequency.

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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.

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

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

Richmond, VA: $244,700 - $279,200 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 theCapital 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).