OPT AI Engineer Jobs
AI Engineer jobs are among the most actively sponsored roles for OPT students, with demand concentrated in tech, finance, and healthcare. Most positions require Python proficiency and machine learning fundamentals. Standard OPT gives you 12 months, but a STEM extension adds 24 more, covering most H-1B visa timelines.
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Get Access To All JobsINTRODUCTION
At Capital One, we are creating responsible and reliable AI systems, changing banking for good. For years, Capital One has been an industry leader in using machine learning to create real-time, personalized customer experiences. Our investments in technology infrastructure and world-class talent — along with our deep experience in machine learning — position us to be at the forefront of enterprises leveraging AI. From informing customers about unusual charges to answering their questions in real time, our applications of AI & ML are bringing humanity and simplicity to banking. We are committed to continuing to build world-class applied science and engineering teams to deliver our industry leading capabilities with breakthrough product experiences and scalable, high-performance AI infrastructure. At Capital One, you will help bring the transformative power of emerging AI capabilities to reimagine how we serve our customers and businesses who have come to love the products and services we build.
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
The Intelligent Foundations and Experiences (IFX) team is at the center of bringing our vision for AI at Capital One to life. We work hand-in-hand with our partners across the company to advance the state of the art in science and AI engineering, and we build and deploy proprietary solutions that are central to our business and deliver value to millions of customers. Our AI models and platforms empower teams across Capital One to enhance their products with the transformative power of AI, in responsible and scalable ways for the highest leverage impact.
What You’ll Do:
- Partner with a cross-functional team of engineers, research scientists, technical program managers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered products that change how our associates work and how our customers interact with Capital One.
- Design, develop, test, deploy, and support AI software components including foundation model training, large language model inference, agents and multi-agent workflows, similarity search, guardrails, model evaluation, experimentation, governance, and observability, etc.
- Leverage a broad stack of Open Source and SaaS AI technologies such as AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, VectorDBs, PyTorch, and more.
- Invent and introduce state-of-the-art foundation model optimization techniques to improve the performance — scalability, cost, latency, throughput — of large scale production AI systems.
- Contribute to the technical vision and the long term roadmap of foundational AI systems at Capital One.
- Own the end-to-end architecture for complex AI systems - ensuring maintainability, observability, and ethical alignment.
- Define and maintain service-level objectives (SLOs) for AI reliability, including latency, uptime, and model performance drift.
- Collaborate with infrastructure engineering to optimize GPU/TPU utilization and accelerate model inference pipelines.
- Lead cross-functional technical reviews for new AI system deployments, ensuring security, data governance, and compliance standards are met.
- Mentor Principal and Senior Associates on scalable design, performance tuning and research-to-production translation.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields plus at least 4 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies, or a Master's degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields plus at least 2 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies.
- At least 4 years of experience programming with Python, Go, Scala, CUDA, or Java.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience leading development AI systems with tradeoff decisions around cost, latency, throughput and accuracy.
- 6 years of experience deploying scalable and responsible AI solutions on cloud platforms (e.g. AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, or equivalent private cloud).
- Experience designing, developing, delivering, and supporting AI services.
- Experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies (e.g. LLM Inference, Similarity Search and VectorDBs, Guardrails, Memory) using Python, C++, C#, Java, CUDA, or Golang.
- Experience developing and applying state-of-the-art techniques for optimizing training and inference software to improve hardware utilization, latency, throughput, and cost.
- Experience in building agentic AI systems and agentic workflows.
- Passion for staying abreast of the latest AI research and AI systems, and judiciously apply novel techniques in production.
- Proficiency in designing distributed systems for model training, evaluation, and online inference at petabyte scale.
- Experience defining AI model governance processes, including producibility, lineage tracking, and automated retaining schedules.
- Demonstrated ability to influence architectural decisions across multiple AI product lines or platforms.
Capital One will consider sponsoring a new qualified applicant for employment authorization for this position.
COMPENSATION
- 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.
Cambridge, MA: $197,300 - $225,100 for AI Engineer 4
McLean, VA: $197,300 - $225,100 for AI Engineer 4
New York, NY: $215,200 - $245,600 for AI Engineer 4
San Francisco, CA: $215,200 - $245,600 for AI Engineer 4
San Jose, CA: $215,200 - $245,600 for AI Engineer 4
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 RecruitingAccommodation@capitalone.com. 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 Careers@capitalone.com.
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).
INTRODUCTION
At Capital One, we are creating responsible and reliable AI systems, changing banking for good. For years, Capital One has been an industry leader in using machine learning to create real-time, personalized customer experiences. Our investments in technology infrastructure and world-class talent — along with our deep experience in machine learning — position us to be at the forefront of enterprises leveraging AI. From informing customers about unusual charges to answering their questions in real time, our applications of AI & ML are bringing humanity and simplicity to banking. We are committed to continuing to build world-class applied science and engineering teams to deliver our industry leading capabilities with breakthrough product experiences and scalable, high-performance AI infrastructure. At Capital One, you will help bring the transformative power of emerging AI capabilities to reimagine how we serve our customers and businesses who have come to love the products and services we build.
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
The Intelligent Foundations and Experiences (IFX) team is at the center of bringing our vision for AI at Capital One to life. We work hand-in-hand with our partners across the company to advance the state of the art in science and AI engineering, and we build and deploy proprietary solutions that are central to our business and deliver value to millions of customers. Our AI models and platforms empower teams across Capital One to enhance their products with the transformative power of AI, in responsible and scalable ways for the highest leverage impact.
What You’ll Do:
- Partner with a cross-functional team of engineers, research scientists, technical program managers, and product managers to deliver AI-powered products that change how our associates work and how our customers interact with Capital One.
- Design, develop, test, deploy, and support AI software components including foundation model training, large language model inference, agents and multi-agent workflows, similarity search, guardrails, model evaluation, experimentation, governance, and observability, etc.
- Leverage a broad stack of Open Source and SaaS AI technologies such as AWS Ultraclusters, Huggingface, VectorDBs, PyTorch, and more.
- Invent and introduce state-of-the-art foundation model optimization techniques to improve the performance — scalability, cost, latency, throughput — of large scale production AI systems.
- Contribute to the technical vision and the long term roadmap of foundational AI systems at Capital One.
- Own the end-to-end architecture for complex AI systems - ensuring maintainability, observability, and ethical alignment.
- Define and maintain service-level objectives (SLOs) for AI reliability, including latency, uptime, and model performance drift.
- Collaborate with infrastructure engineering to optimize GPU/TPU utilization and accelerate model inference pipelines.
- Lead cross-functional technical reviews for new AI system deployments, ensuring security, data governance, and compliance standards are met.
- Mentor Principal and Senior Associates on scalable design, performance tuning and research-to-production translation.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields plus at least 4 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies, or a Master's degree in Computer Science, AI, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields plus at least 2 years of experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies.
- At least 4 years of experience programming with Python, Go, Scala, CUDA, or Java.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience leading development AI systems with tradeoff decisions around cost, latency, throughput and accuracy.
- 6 years of experience deploying scalable and responsible AI solutions on cloud platforms (e.g. AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, or equivalent private cloud).
- Experience designing, developing, delivering, and supporting AI services.
- Experience developing AI and ML algorithms or technologies (e.g. LLM Inference, Similarity Search and VectorDBs, Guardrails, Memory) using Python, C++, C#, Java, CUDA, or Golang.
- Experience developing and applying state-of-the-art techniques for optimizing training and inference software to improve hardware utilization, latency, throughput, and cost.
- Experience in building agentic AI systems and agentic workflows.
- Passion for staying abreast of the latest AI research and AI systems, and judiciously apply novel techniques in production.
- Proficiency in designing distributed systems for model training, evaluation, and online inference at petabyte scale.
- Experience defining AI model governance processes, including producibility, lineage tracking, and automated retaining schedules.
- Demonstrated ability to influence architectural decisions across multiple AI product lines or platforms.
Capital One will consider sponsoring a new qualified applicant for employment authorization for this position.
COMPENSATION
- 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.
Cambridge, MA: $197,300 - $225,100 for AI Engineer 4
McLean, VA: $197,300 - $225,100 for AI Engineer 4
New York, NY: $215,200 - $245,600 for AI Engineer 4
San Francisco, CA: $215,200 - $245,600 for AI Engineer 4
San Jose, CA: $215,200 - $245,600 for AI Engineer 4
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 RecruitingAccommodation@capitalone.com. 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 Careers@capitalone.com.
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).
See all 1,206+ OPT AI Engineer Jobs
Sign up for free to unlock all listings, filter by visa type, and get alerts for new OPT AI Engineer Jobs.
Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding OPT Sponsorship as an AI Engineer
Target STEM OPT-eligible roles explicitly
AI Engineer falls under CIP code 11.0101 (Computer Science) in most cases, qualifying you for the 24-month STEM extension. Confirm your degree CIP code with your DSO before applying so you can communicate your full 36-month authorization window to employers.
Lead with your authorization timeline, not just your status
Telling a recruiter you have 36 months of work authorization is more compelling than saying you're on OPT. Frame it as a long runway that covers multiple H-1B lottery cycles, which directly addresses the sponsorship risk employers are weighing.
Focus on employers with active H-1B filing histories
Companies that have consistently filed H-1B petitions for engineering roles are far more likely to sponsor you after OPT. Prioritize mid-size and enterprise tech firms with established immigration infrastructure over early-stage startups without prior sponsorship experience.
Specialize in a high-demand AI subfield
Generalist AI skills are increasingly commoditized. Employers sponsor OPT workers when they see skills that are hard to find. Depth in LLM fine-tuning, computer vision, reinforcement learning, or ML infrastructure makes you a more defensible sponsorship investment for hiring managers.
File your STEM extension application at least 90 days before OPT expires
USCIS allows you to apply up to 90 days before your OPT end date. Filing early protects your work authorization if USCIS processing runs long. Late filing can create gaps that jeopardize your employment, so coordinate with your DSO well in advance.
Quantify your ML work in concrete business terms
Recruiters and hiring managers respond to outcomes, not methods. Instead of listing model architectures, describe what your work produced: reduced inference latency by 40%, improved recommendation CTR, or cut data pipeline costs. Business impact makes the sponsorship case easier to justify internally.
AI Engineer OPT: Frequently Asked Questions
Can F-1 OPT students work as AI Engineers in the United States?
Yes. AI Engineer is a STEM-qualifying role, which means F-1 students with a degree in computer science, data science, or a related field can work in this role on standard 12-month OPT and then apply for the 24-month STEM extension. That gives you up to 36 months of work authorization without employer sponsorship during that period.
Does the AI Engineer role qualify for the STEM OPT extension?
In most cases, yes. STEM OPT eligibility depends on your degree's CIP code, not the job title itself. If your degree is in computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics, or a related STEM field, you'll almost certainly qualify. Confirm with your DSO before accepting an offer, since your school must authorize the extension and your employer must be enrolled in E-Verify.
How do I find AI Engineer jobs that sponsor OPT or H-1B visas?
Migrate Mate is built specifically for this search. It filters for employers with active visa sponsorship histories, so you're not cold-applying to companies that won't sponsor. AI Engineer roles on the platform are sourced from employers who have previously filed H-1B petitions for engineering positions, which is the strongest proxy for willingness to sponsor OPT workers transitioning to H-1B.
What happens to my OPT authorization if my AI Engineer job ends?
You have a 60-day grace period after your employment ends during which you can remain in the U.S. to find new work. If you're on STEM OPT, the same 60-day rule applies. You must report unemployment through your DSO. Extended unemployment beyond 90 days total during standard OPT (or 150 days during STEM OPT) can jeopardize your status, so act quickly.
Do AI Engineer employers typically sponsor H-1B visas after OPT ends?
Many do, particularly mid-size and large technology companies with dedicated immigration programs. The H-1B lottery runs in March for an October 1 start date, so timing matters. AI Engineers with specialized skills in areas like LLM development, MLOps, or computer vision tend to have stronger sponsorship cases. Starting the H-1B conversation with your employer six to nine months before your OPT expires gives both sides adequate planning time.