Six Figure Work

Principal Associate, Data Scientist - LLM Customization Team

Capital One

Company websitecapitalone.com (Capital One, opens in new tab)

Base salary From $161,800

Employer-published annual base salary, USD. Advertised base range in United States

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  • LocationUnited States
  • WorkplaceWorkplace not stated
  • Status at last checkSource accepting applications when checked
  • Last checked (1 h ago) · observed since

About this job

Principal Associate, Data Scientist - LLM Customization Team

At Capital One, we think big and do big things. We are not just a nationally recognized credit card issuer, a top 10 bank by deposit,  but a high-tech company with  products that reach tens of millions of consumers and have been recognized by numerous prestigious awards for their customer-friendliness. Capital One was the first major bank to move to cloud computing and to publish APIs for the Open Banking future. AI is transforming every industry. At Capital One, you will help shape how it transforms financial services.

Team Description

AI Foundations LLM Customization team is at the center of bringing our vision for LLMs and GenAI at Capital One to life. Our work touches every aspect of the research life cycle, from research to building production systems. We work with product, technology and business leaders to apply the state of the art in AI to our business. You will be the driving force to experiment, innovate and create next generation experiences powered by the latest emerging generative AI technologies.

In this role, you will:

  • Partner with a cross-functional team of data scientists, applied researchers, 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, Hugging Face, AWS Ultraclusters, LangChain, 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 business specific applications and features.

  • Build 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.

  • Flex your interpersonal skills to translate the complexity of your work into tangible business goals.
     

The Ideal Candidate is:

  • 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.

  • 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

  • Experience with Large Language Models (LLM), Finetuning, and Deep Learning

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 ScienceNew York, NY: $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 [email protected]. 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 [email protected]

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).

Source: Capital One on Workday · View original posting (opens in new tab)

Pay in context

This role's base floor ($161,800) is above 34% of the 456 Data & ML roles in New York listed on this site; 2 others list the same floor. Their median floor is $176,200; the middle half runs from $150,000 to $200,000.

Only jobs on this site count, and each one publishes a base salary of $100,000 or more, so this compares six-figure jobs with each other, not with the whole market. Computed Nov 6, 2026.

This range next to 6 other live Capital One roles with the nearest advertised base floor
Chart as a table
This range next to 6 other live Capital One roles with the nearest advertised base floor
RolePublished base
Principal Associate, Data Scientist - LLM Customization Team (this listing)From $161,800
Principal Associate, Data Scientist - Card IntelligenceFrom $161,800
Principal Associate, Data Scientist - Emerging MLFrom $161,800
Principal Data Scientist - AI for Data and AssessmentFrom $161,800
Principal Associate, Data Scientist - Alternative Data StrategyFrom $161,800
Principal Data Scientist, AI FoundationsFrom $161,800
Principal Data Scientist - AI Foundations, Specialist ModelsFrom $161,800

Same $100K to $400K scale as every card. All Capital One roles · How to read the bar

Observed changes

  1. First observed on the employer's board
  2. Began meeting the published-salary criteria
Observed since
Employer-stated posting date
2026-06-09
Where this pay comes from

Location as the employer wrote it: US (regional bands)

McLean, VA: $161,800 - $184,600 for Princ Associate, Data Science

Method
Employer text, read with fixed rules and re-verified
Checked
Rule set
us-base-v2

The pay passage appears in the employer's own job text. Fixed, deterministic rules located it, and the passage below was checked against the stored copy of the posting.

What we verified

  • The pay figures come from the employer's own listing, quoted exactly above.
  • The pay is an annual base salary in US dollars with a minimum of at least $100,000.
  • The role was publicly listed on the employer's job board when last checked.

We do not verify what the employer will actually offer, whether the employer is still recruiting for the role, or anything beyond what the employer published. Full methodology.