Sr. Distinguished AI Engineer (Remote Eligible) at Capital One
Lansing, MI
$286,200–$326,700from the description
Jul 2, 2026
Lansing, MI
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior individual-contributor engineering role focused on building and optimizing large-scale AI infrastructure — covering foundation model training, LLM inference, vector search, guardrails, and observability. The work involves introducing cutting-edge optimization techniques to improve latency, throughput, and cost in production systems, while shaping the long-term technical direction of foundational AI platforms. Best suited to a deeply experienced engineer with a strong background in both AI/ML systems and low-level performance optimization.
Senior level · 10+ years · Remote · Bachelor's required · Full-time
Advertised as Principal, but the requirements read as Senior.
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 32 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 37,700 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 15,800–56,500
Applicant volume Heavy — This req sits in a large pool with little in its requirements to thin it, and auto-apply tools fire at everything in the occupation. Applying early and leading with the rare skills below is what gets read.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $138,970 (middle half $107,524–$175,762). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (7)
The title 'Sr. Distinguished AI Engineer' maps to Principal in advertised framing — 'Distinguished' is a top-of-ladder designation at most large tech companies. However, the actual requirements (10 years experience, individual-contributor scope) are consistent with a Senior band; the role does not describe org-wide technical authority or a true Principal/Fellow-level mandate, so seniority is set to Senior.
The SOC is a genuine toss-up: the role spans both software engineering (design, build, deploy AI systems) and data science/ML research (foundation model training, LLM optimization, state-of-the-art techniques). 15-1252 Software Developers is chosen as primary because the JD emphasizes building and deploying production AI infrastructure; 15-2051 Data Scientists is the close runner-up.
The compensation range shown ($286,200–$326,700/year) is the remote/national figure. Location-specific ranges (Cambridge MA, McLean VA, New York NY, San Francisco CA, San Jose CA) are higher; the remote floor is used as the baseline per caller instruction.
Python is listed as the primary required language; Go, Scala, and Java are listed as alternatives in the same requirement ('programming with Python, Go, Scala, or Java'). C++ and C# appear only under Preferred Qualifications.
Cloud platform experience (9 years) appears under Preferred Qualifications and is therefore not a hard gate, despite the specific years figure.
'AI/ML algorithms' is retained as a skill here only to capture the 10-year experience gate stated in Basic Qualifications; it is the role-level experience requirement expressed as a domain, not a named tool — the overall years minimum field also captures the 10-year floor.
Caller marked this a fully-remote role — scored against the national candidate pool.
Read the full posting
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