Principal Associate, Data Scientist - LLM Customization Team
Company: Capital One
Location: Mc Lean
Posted on: April 1, 2026
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Job Description:
Principal Associate, Data Scientist - LLM Customization Team
Data is at the center of everything we do. As a startup, we
disrupted the credit card industry by individually personalizing
every credit card offer using statistical modeling and the
relational database, cutting edge technology in 1988! Fast-forward
a few years, and this little innovation and our passion for data
has skyrocketed us to a Fortune 200 company and a leader in the
world of data-driven decision-making. As a Data Scientist at
Capital One, you’ll be part of a team that’s leading the next wave
of disruption at a whole new scale, using the latest in computing
and machine learning technologies and operating across billions of
customer records to unlock the big opportunities that help everyday
people save money, time and agony in their financial lives. Team
Description The LLM Customization team is on the cutting edge of
GenAI and at the center of bringing our vision for AI at Capital
One to life. The work of the AI Training Team touches every aspect
of the model development life cycle and our deployed models in
production drive business impact with visibility from our C-Suite.
Our team creates unprecedented amounts of high quality data for
training and testing GenAI models; we care about how it’s created,
what’s in those datasets, and the impact they have We are invested
in building capabilities for evaluating and monitoring generative
models; these methods must be state of the art, easy to use, and
trusted by our users and contributors Horizontal capabilities
enable vertical use case work; the team builds search,
summarization, RAG, and agentic workflows for integration in
production applications across the company We learn from our
colleagues, attend conferences, publish papers, and maintain strong
connections to the research community. In this role, you will:
Partner with a cross-functional team of data scientists, software
engineers, machine learning engineers and product managers to
deliver AI powered products that change how customers interact with
their money. Leverage a broad stack of technologies — Pytorch, AWS
Ultraclusters, Hugging Face, LangChain, Lightning, VectorDBs, and
more — to reveal the insights hidden within huge volumes of numeric
and textual data. Be the expert in Natural Language Processing
(NLP) to harness the power of Large Language Models (LLMs), adapt
and finetune them for customer facing applications and features.
Build machine learning and NLP models through all phases of
development, from design through training, evaluation, and
validation; partnering with engineering teams to operationalize
them in scalable and resilient production systems that serve 80
million customers. Flex your interpersonal skills to translate the
complexity of your work into tangible business goals. The Ideal
Candidate is: Customer first. You love the process of analyzing and
creating, but also share our passion to do the right thing. You
know at the end of the day it’s about making the right decision for
our customers. Innovative. You continually research and evaluate
emerging technologies. You stay current on published
state-of-the-art methods, technologies, and applications and seek
out opportunities to apply them. Creative. You thrive on bringing
definition to big, undefined problems. You love asking questions
and pushing hard to find answers. You’re not afraid to share a new
idea. A leader. You challenge conventional thinking and work with
stakeholders to identify and improve the status quo. You're
passionate about talent development for your own team and beyond.
Technical. You’re comfortable with advanced ML and DL technologies
including language models and are passionate about developing
further. You have hands-on experience working with LLMs and
solutions using open-source tools and cloud computing platforms.
Influential. You are passionate about AI/ML and can bring along a
cross functional team in breakthrough innovations. You communicate
clearly and effectively to share your findings with non-technical
audiences. You are experienced in training language models or large
computer vision models as well as have expertise in one or more key
subdomains such as: training optimization, self-supervised
learning, explainability, RLHF. You have an engineering mindset as
shown by a track record of delivering models at scale both in
training data and inference volumes. You have experience in
delivering libraries, platforms, or solution level code to existing
products. Basic Qualifications: Currently has, or is in the process
of obtaining one of the following with an expectation that the
required degree will be obtained on or before the scheduled start
date: A Bachelor's Degree in a quantitative field (Statistics,
Economics, Operations Research, Analytics, Mathematics, Computer
Science, or a related quantitative field) plus 5 years of
experience performing data analytics A Master's Degree in a
quantitative field (Statistics, Economics, Operations Research,
Analytics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related quantitative
field) or an MBA with a quantitative concentration plus 3 years of
experience performing data analytics A PhD in a quantitative field
(Statistics, Economics, Operations Research, Analytics,
Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related quantitative field)
Preferred Qualifications: Master’s Degree in “STEM” field (Science,
Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics) plus 3 years of experience
in data analytics, or PhD in “STEM” field (Science, Technology,
Engineering, or Mathematics) At least 1 year of experience working
with AWS At least 3 years’ experience in Python, Scala, or R At
least 3 years’ experience with machine learning At least 3 years’
experience with SQL 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: $161,800 - $184,600 for Princ Associate, Data
Science New York, NY: $176,500 - $201,400 for Princ Associate, Data
Science San Jose, CA: $176,500 - $201,400 for Princ Associate, Data
Science 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, Leesburg , Principal Associate, Data Scientist - LLM Customization Team, IT / Software / Systems , Mc Lean, Virginia
