Sr Staff Applied Researcher

Discover Financial
Virginia, San Francisco, Cambridge, San Jose, New York
Full timeUSD 350,000 - 399,500 annuallyFunction: Research & Scientific (R&D)Experience: 6-8 yearsEducation: phdSkills: ["Interpersonal skills","Translating complexity","Innovative","Creative","Leadership","Mentoring"]

Drive applied AI research on the AI Foundations team, partnering with data scientists, software and machine learning engineers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered customer experiences. Build and evaluate foundation models across the full lifecycle—design, training, validation, and implementation—while pushing state-of-the-art methods into scalable production systems. Lead the long-term research agenda and represent Capital One in the research community.

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Discover Financial
Discover Financial
4 hours ago

Sr Staff Applied Researcher

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Last checked: 4 hours agoStatus: Live
Reposted: similar role first listed 2 months ago

Job Summary

Drive applied AI research on the AI Foundations team, partnering with data scientists, software and machine learning engineers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered customer experiences. Build and evaluate foundation models across the full lifecycle—design, training, validation, and implementation—while pushing state-of-the-art methods into scalable production systems. Lead the long-term research agenda and represent Capital One in the research community.
Location: Virginia, San Francisco, Cambridge, San Jose, New York
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Research & Scientific (R&D)
Seniority: Sr. Manager level

Key Responsibilities

  • •Partner with cross-functional teams to deliver AI-powered products that change how customers interact with their money.
  • •Use a broad technology stack to uncover insights from large volumes of numeric and textual data.
  • •Build AI foundation models across design, training, evaluation, validation, and implementation.
  • •Engage in high-impact applied research to advance new AI developments into next-generation customer experiences.
  • •Define and evolve the company’s long-term research agenda by identifying scientific opportunities and steering foundational investments in AI innovation.

Pay and Benefits

Salary: USD 350,000 - 399,500 annually

Key Requirements

  • •PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, AI, Mathematics, or related fields with 6 years of experience in Applied Research; or an M.S. with 8 years of experience in Applied Research.
  • •Hands-on experience developing AI foundation models and solutions using open-source tools and cloud computing platforms.
  • •Deep understanding of AI methodologies, including experience building large deep learning models and expertise in areas such as training optimization, self-supervised learning, robustness, explainability, or RLHF.
  • •An engineering mindset with a track record delivering models at scale across training data and inference volumes.
  • •Experience delivering libraries/platform-level or solution-level code to existing products, with accomplishments such as first-author publications or projects.
Experience:6-8 yearsApplied researchMachine learningDeep learningOpen source
Education:PhD / Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, AI, Mathematics (or related fields)
Skills:Interpersonal skillsTranslating complexityInnovativeCreativeLeadershipMentoring
Tech Stack:PyTorchAWS UltraclustersHuggingfaceLightningPytorch-geometricDGLOpen-source frameworksCloud computing platforms

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