✦ Luna Orbit — AI & Machine Learning

Applied Researcher II (AI Foundations, LLM Core and Agentic AI)

at Capital One Financial

📍 5 Locations Onsite 💰 $262K – $299K USD / year Posted March 30, 2026
Salary $262K – $299K USD / year
Type Full-Time
Experience senior
Exp. Years 2+ years (PhD path) or 4+ years (MS path) in Applied Research
Education PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, AI, Mathematics, or related fields; or MS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, AI, Mathematics, or related fields plus 4 years of experience in Applied Research
Category AI & Machine Learning

Applied Researcher II focusing on AI Foundations, LLM Core and Agentic AI to build production-ready AI systems for Capital One. Collaborates with data scientists, software engineers, and product managers to translate state-of-the-art AI into customer-facing banking experiences.

  • Partner with cross-functional team to deliver AI-powered products
  • Build AI foundation models through design, training, evaluation, validation, and implementation
  • Engage in high-impact applied research to push AI into production customer experiences
  • Translate complexity of work into tangible business goals
  • Deliver libraries or platform-level code to existing products

Work involves building foundation models and large language models using PyTorch, AWS Ultraclusters, HuggingFace, and VectorDBs; emphasizes training, evaluation, validation, and deployment at scale with a focus on explainability and robustness.

The ideal candidate is a senior/mid-senior AI researcher with hands-on experience building and deploying foundation models and LLMs at scale, strong publication record, and ability to own a research agenda. Must translate research into production-impacting customer experiences and lead cross-functional collaboration.

PhD in Electrical EngineeringComputer EngineeringComputer ScienceAIMathematicsor related fields; or MS in Electrical EngineeringComputer EngineeringComputer ScienceAIMathematicsor related fields with requirement to obtain by start date + 2 years of experience in Applied Research or MS + 4 years of experience in Applied ResearchExperience building large deep learning models and one or more of: training optimizationself-supervised learningrobustnessexplainabilityRLHFAbility to own and pursue a research agenda with autonomous long-running projectsHands-on experience developing AI foundation models and solutions using open-source tools and cloud computing platforms
PhD in Computer ScienceMachine LearningComputer EngineeringApplied MathematicsElectrical Engineering or related fieldsLLMPhD focus on NLP or Masters with 5 years of industrial NLP research experiencePublications in ACL/NAACL/EMNLPNeurIPSICML or ICLRMultiple publications on pre-training of large language modelsExperience training a 10B+ parameter modelCompiler designFinetuning LLMs (supervised/instruction tuning)
PyTorchHuggingFaceLightningVectorDBsAmazon Web ServicesAWS Ultraclusters
PyTorchHuggingFaceVectorDBsFoundation modelsLarge language modelsPythonAmazon Web ServicesAWS UltraclustersRLHFSelf-supervised learningExplainabilityRobustnessTraining optimizationNLPLarge DL modelsOpen-source toolsCloud computing
PyTorchPythonAmazon Web ServicesAWS UltraclustersHuggingFaceVectorDBsFoundation modelsMachine LearningDeep LearningRLHFSelf-supervised learningExplainabilityRobustnessTraining optimizationLLMLarge language models
Interpersonal skillsCommunicationCollaborationProblem solvingAnalytical thinkingLeadership
Industry Banking
Job Function Lead research and engineering efforts to develop and deploy AI foundation models and LLM-based solutions at Capital One
Role Subtype AI Engineer
Tech Domains PyTorch, HuggingFace, Amazon Web Services, Foundation models, VectorDBs
Visa Sponsorship Yes
Applied Researcher IIAI FoundationsLLM CoreAgentic AIPyTorchAWS UltraclustersAmazon Web ServicesHuggingFaceHugging FaceLightningVectorDBsFoundation modelsMachine LearningDeep LearningRLHFSelf-supervised learningExplainabilityRobustnessTraining optimizationLLMLarge language modelsPublicationsACLNAACLEMNLPNeurIPSICMLICLRPhDMSLLM core

No PhD/MS with required applied research experience, No ability to obtain work authorization/start date sponsorship, No experience with large language models or foundation models

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