According to Senior Lead Engineer Alexander, working at Capital One is different from what people might expect.
Rather than spend his days crunching numbers and analyzing market trends, Alexander stays busy “solving really cool puzzles with really smart people” as a senior lead software engineer — a role he considers a “tremendous privilege” to hold.
He said his day-to-day work revolves around maintaining the tools and infrastructure tied to one of the company’s enterprise AI/ML platforms, which serves as a foundation for wider tech initiatives.
“It lets our data scientists really hit the ground running and start delivering value at a much faster rate,” Alexander explained.
In a sense, the enterprise platform embodies an ongoing shift toward a more centralized approach to work. Senior Engineering Manager Ryan said that the latest iteration of the platform could be seen as “a conglomerate of a lot of efforts” geared toward seeking solutions that work for everyone, including the company’s customers.
“We take a lot of pride in developing a deep working relationship with our customers and understanding their problems,” Ryan said.
Defined by versatility, the platform has become a cornerstone for Capital One’s largest tech undertakings, keeping the organization at the forefront of the industry’s latest advancements.
“Taking an enterprise platform approach in this way has set us up to be prepared to build and deploy emerging AI capabilities, including in generative AI," Ryan noted. “It’s an extension of the foundation that we already built, so it works well in terms of its robustness and its ability to adapt to the company’s needs.”
This platform approach is simply one component of a tech culture that fosters a well-governed approach to exploration, offering technologists the space and resources to accomplish cutting-edge work that Alexander considers unique for a company like Capital One.
“People don’t always associate banks with the most cutting-edge technology, but we’re the opposite of that,” he said.
Strategic, Not Reactionary
According to Ryan, Capital One has a well-defined technological vision and strategy that remains open to exploring new tools and technologies as the landscape evolves.
“It's always about where technology is heading and how that applies to Capital One,” Ryan explained.
For Alexander, it feels as if he and his peers get to work on a startup-style product without the firefighting culture that comes with a smaller company. This allows for a longer product development runway and more thoughtful approach to decision-making. Leaning on this stability and strategy, Alexander and his peers get to keep up with the industry’s latest technologies.
“We’re continuously expanding,” he said. “Whenever there’s something new and exciting and cool that comes out, we look into how we and our end users can benefit from it.”
Open Source First Approach
According to Alexander, Capital One’s technologists embrace an open source approach to product and technology development.
“Because we have an open-source focus in general, we hit that middle ground where we can still modify and extend where needed, but we’re also contributing back to the community from which we got it,” he said.
“Because we have an open-source focus, we hit that middle ground where we can still modify and extend where needed, but we’re also contributing back to the community from which we got it.”
An open source approach allows technologists to leverage existing tools and build skills they can carry with them across the company and elsewhere.
These industry-standard tools include Kubeflow, which backs Vertex AI. Ryan said the company’s technologists also use Apache Spark, PyTorch and Argo, among other technologies.
But for Alexander, perhaps one of the most important aspects of Capital One’s tech strategy is that it’s all in on the public cloud. Capital One is one of the largest AWS users.
“AWS is such a foundational, high-impact architectural choice that I think really sets the stage for everything that we do here,” he said. “All of these benefits that we’ve talked about wouldn’t be possible nearly to the same extent if we had our own data centers.”
Ryan added that Capital One’s open source approach grants technologists greater freedom to focus on other projects.
“There’s a lot of room for innovation when you take away that management of infrastructure,” he said. “I wouldn’t be here today if I wasn’t using AWS.”
Innovation From Every Corner
Capital One strives to strike a balance between offering its associates an exciting tech culture as well as compelling professional development opportunities.
“I don’t know anywhere else where you have personal flexibility and limited compromises when it comes to the tech stack,” Alexander said. “When I’m trying to convince people to come here, that’s what I tell them.”
“I don’t know anywhere else where you have personal flexibility and limited compromises when it comes to the tech stack.”
Capital One invests in its associates at every stage of their careers. From onsite learning to mentorship opportunities, the company maintains a strong commitment to their associates’ career growth and development. This includes access to learning platforms, an internal tech college, career mobility programs, and more.
Alexander considers himself a part-time recruiter, fueled by his faith in Capital One’s culture; a passion that even compelled his wife to join the company a few years ago.
“We argue over who has better swag,” he joked.
All jokes aside, it’s not just cool T-shirts that have made Alexander’s time at the company worthwhile; it’s the fact that he gets to spend more time with his three children and his Zoom-loving cat, Max. And he said his managers do the same, prioritizing family time and vacations.
This “tremendous respect for autonomy,” as Alexander called it, benefits everyone, including Ryan. Considering his wife works as a flight instructor, it’s important for him to have the flexibility he needs to balance professional success with parenthood.
Capital One’s culture is a major motivator behind people’s decision to join the company — and come back. Alexander said he has seen many of his colleagues take roles at major tech companies, and then return to Capital One.
Ryan believes this magnetic effect is because of the amazing people at Capital One, who he describes as “well-rounded and multidimensional.”
“This job allows me to be the technologist and leader that I want to be, but it also allows me to have a multifaceted life,” Ryan said.
Capital One is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex (including pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions), race, color, age (40 and older), national origin, religion, disability, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender reassignment, citizenship, immigration status, protected veteran status, or any other basis prohibited under applicable federal, state or local law.
