Senior Director Software Engineering - CTO

Overview

Senior Director Software Engineering - CTO

Chief Technology Officer, Auto Refinance

Why we are taking a bet on us: Auto Refinance is one of our fastest-growing lending businesses within the Capital One Financial Services division. With our customer base holding over $1 trillion in auto debt at other institutions, there is a massive addressable opportunity within our existing footprint. 

Our competitive advantage stems from our software and decisioning infrastructure, which features cutting edge technology to empower every

Capital one customer to switch and save in 5 minutes and maintaining our market leadership requires continued innovation and architectural evolution. Auto Refinance offers unmatched end-to-end business ownership, where you will shape the technology stack across the complete lending lifecycle—from top-of-funnel marketing targeting to downstream lien perfection.

Who you are: You are a builder and a disrupter. You have a proven track record of shaping product and customer journey through technical innovation, unmatched end to end ownership, and leadership. You have the drive and passion to be at the forefront of tech innovations, experiment with new technologies, outside-of-the-box thinking, and collaboration. 

You have a proven track record of: 

• Designing and operating high-throughput, low-latency transaction and decisioning platforms in consumer finance or related high-scale distributed environments. Deep familiarity with decoupling shared monoliths into resilient, event-driven services.
• Integrating generative AI and automated developer tooling into the core PDLC to elevate code quality, automate test generation, and manage defect containment at high velocity.
• Build strong partnerships across Credit Strategy, Product Management, Legal/Compliance, and enterprise platform teams
• Influence decisions and roadmaps through practical understanding of consumer credit mechanics, real-time risk decisioning, cash-flow valuation models, and lending compliance frameworks (Reg B, FCRA, adverse action).
• Demonstrated building and developing strong engineering organization, establishing technical standards, developing engineering leaders, and fostering a culture of ownership, innovation, and customer impact. 

What you'll do:

• Own the technology stack across the complete lending lifecycle end-to-end: top-of-funnel marketing targeting, real-time credit underwriting and pricing, digital application and offer experiences, automated funding operations, customer contact strategy, and downstream lien perfection.
• Hold direct accountability for technology capital allocation, platform roadmaps, and engineering team across a $6.1 billion run-rate business.
• Lead, manage, and grow multiple teams of product-focused software engineers across Agile teams to design, develop, test, and implement technical solutions across full-stack development tools.
• Design and deliver our destination architecture by integrating real-time account-level valuations natively as our primary offers decisioning engine, ensuring full lifetime cash-flow projections return in seconds. 
• Scale our automated funding pipeline to achieve 90%+ zero-touch funding by architecting robust automated verification pipelines and exception-handling frameworks.
• Re-engineer cross-enterprise lien perfection systems by building an adaptable, rules-as-code title orchestration platform that integrates internal trackers with external data feeds to manage state-level regulatory shifts and fraud defenses.
• Modernize data architecture that ingest complex data directly into our marketing engine to enable pre-application Guaranteed Rate offers.
• Build event-driven integration layers to surface refinance offers contextually within adjacent customer touchpoints, including Auto Navigator trade-in flows and My Garage vehicle management.
• Transition teams to an AI-native engineering organization by deploying autonomous code-review agents, AI-generated synthetic test suites, and predictive telemetry to lower defect escape rates toward zero.
• Automate regulatory and compliance controls (such as Reg B adverse action validations) directly into CI/CD pipelines to sustain velocity while ensuring strict adherence to banking standards.
• Lead efforts to deploy new and existing applications into AWS environments, ensuring the craftsmanship, availability, resilience, and scalability of your solutions.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or a related field 
• At least 7 years of experience in people management
• At least 9 years of experience in software engineering and solution architecture
• At least 9 years of experience in enterprise architecture and design patterns
• At least 9 years of experience in cloud computing (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud)
• At least 9 years of experience in Data architecture

Preferred qualifications:

• Master’s Degree in Computer Science or a Master’s Degree in Software Engineering.
• 12+ years of experience in software engineering, solution architecture, enterprise architecture, and design patterns.
• 12+ years of professional experience coding in commonly used languages like Go, Java, Javascript/Typescript, Python, Rust, C#, or Scala.
• 12+ years of experience in web technologies (Javascript, TypeScript, and SPA frameworks).
• 12+ years of experience in designing and building distributed HPC and ML systems, alongside designing high-throughput, low-latency transaction and decisioning platforms in consumer finance.
• 12+ years of experience in cloud computing (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud), data architecture, and integration with third-party distributed systems via networking protocols.
• 12+ years of professional experience in the full lifecycle of system development, from conception through architecture, implementation, testing, deployment, and production support.
• 10+ years of experience with database and database management systems.
• 7+ years of experience with public cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), cloud-based productivity tools, or virtualization technologies.
• 7+ years of experience mentoring senior engineers, leading multi-pod engineering organizations, and driving professional development.
• 3+ years of experience leading cross-domain architectural reviews or establishing coding and design standards.
• Expertise in the strategic application of agentic AI coding tools and a clear operational playbook for integrating generative AI into the core product development lifecycle to elevate code quality and automate test generation.

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.

Plano, TX: $286,200 - $326,700 for Sr. Director, Full-stack 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.

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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).