Senior Director, Applied Research

Discover Financial
San Francisco, Cambridge, Richmond, New York, San Jose
Workplace: OnsiteFull timeUSD 381,800 - 435,700 annuallyFunction: Research & Scientific (R&D)Education: phdSkills: ["Leadership","Mentoring","Stakeholder collaboration","Communication","Research-driven decision-making"]

Lead teams in the AI Foundations group to drive strategic applied research and build AI foundation models end-to-end—designing, training, evaluating, validating, and deploying systems that improve how customers interact with their money. Partner across applied science, engineering, and product, represent the company in the research community, and leverage tooling such as PyTorch, Hugging Face, Lightning, AWS Ultraclusters, and VectorDBs to deliver scaled, high-performance AI.

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FursaFursa
Discover Financial
Discover Financial
3 weeks ago

Senior Director, Applied Research

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Last checked: 3 hours agoStatus: Live

Job Summary

Lead teams in the AI Foundations group to drive strategic applied research and build AI foundation models end-to-end—designing, training, evaluating, validating, and deploying systems that improve how customers interact with their money. Partner across applied science, engineering, and product, represent the company in the research community, and leverage tooling such as PyTorch, Hugging Face, Lightning, AWS Ultraclusters, and VectorDBs to deliver scaled, high-performance AI.
Location: San Francisco, Cambridge, Richmond, New York, San Jose
Workplace: Onsite
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Research & Scientific (R&D)
Seniority: Director level

Key Responsibilities

  • •Partner with cross-functional teams of scientists, machine learning engineers, software engineers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered platforms and solutions.
  • •Build AI foundation models through all phases of development, from design through training, evaluation, validation, and implementation.
  • •Engage in high-impact applied research to push latest AI developments into next-generation customer experiences.
  • •Leverage technologies including PyTorch, AWS Ultraclusters, Hugging Face, Lightning, and VectorDBs to extract insights from large volumes of numeric and textual data.
  • •Translate research complexity into tangible business goals and represent Capital One externally in the AI research community.

Pay and Benefits

Salary: USD 381,800 - 435,700 annually

Key Requirements

  • •PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, AI, Mathematics, or related fields plus 6 years of Applied Research experience, or M.S. plus 8 years of Applied Research experience.
  • •At least 5 years of people leadership experience.
  • •Hands-on experience developing AI foundation models and solutions using open-source tools and cloud computing platforms.
  • •Deep understanding of the foundations of AI methodologies.
  • •Experience building large deep learning models and expertise in areas such as training optimization, self-supervised learning, robustness, explainability, or RLHF.
Education:PhD / Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, AI, Mathematics (or related fields)
Skills:LeadershipMentoringStakeholder collaborationCommunicationResearch-driven decision-making
Tech Stack:PyTorchAWS UltraclustersHuggingfaceLightningVectorDBsDeep speedNemoPytorch-geometricDGL

Eligibility

Work Authorization:Sponsorship available.

Company Brief

Discover Financial
Provides consumer banking products, credit cards, personal loans, and payment services through the Discover brand. It operates a major U.S. financial network and serves individuals and merchants with lending and digital payment solutions.
Industry: Retail Banking
Company Size: Enterprise (1,001+ employees)
Revenue: USD 10M to 25M
Growth: Public Company
Valuation: Public Company (Market Cap in USD)
Funding: IPO / Publicly Listed
Headquarters: Riverwoods, United States
Founded: 1985
WebsiteLinkedIn