Staff Software Engineer (Message Delivery & Dispatch)

Overview Staff Software Engineer (Message Delivery & Dispatch)

As a Staff Software Engineer at Capital One, you will be a part of a community of technical experts working to define the future of banking in the cloud.

We are seeking a hands-on, founder-style platform leader to join our team. This organization powers how Capital One delivers real-time, personalized, and responsible customer experiences at national scale, across mobile, web, email, messaging, and beyond.

You will set the technical direction, rapidly prototype, and collaborate to deliver compliant and customer-safe experiences at scale. In this role, you will primarily be working with the Enterprise Message Delivery (Dispatch) organization. You will be responsible for defining the future of our omni-channel dispatch ecosystem, integrating AI to drive real-time, personalized messaging at scale, and partnering closely with Line of Business (LOB), product, and channel delivery teams.

What You'll Do:

• Architect at Scale: Own the end-to-end architecture for delivery across all our properties (site, emails, SMS, push notifications, messages, AdTech ecosystems, and inbound channels) enabled by AI. You will ensure a well-managed, highly resilient architecture capable of handling billions of messages a month with zero downtime.

• Governance & Compliance Stewardship: Serve as the primary technical authority on email governance and evolving regulatory standards, including UDAAP and state-specific regulations such as the FCCPA. Because dispatch is the last mile delivery before reaching customers, you will design and enforce safety protocols to protect the brand, LOBs, and customers, ensuring all communications adhere to enterprise compliance and risk frameworks. You will bring a cyber-security perspective to the delivery architecture.

• Drive Message Delivery Platform Convergence: Lead the technical strategy to modernize legacy messaging systems into a unified Enterprise Message Delivery platform. Drive the initiative to migrate off legacy systems, architect vendor-agnostic 'Built and Bought' solutions, and scale the orchestration layer to handle enterprise-scale traffic, AdTech pipeline integration, and B2B2C partner messaging (dealer-to-customer).

• Build Automations: Implement automations across various workflows to avoid expensive migrations and establish engineering standards.

• Vendor strategy: Help drive decision making around vendor strategy for build vs. buy.

• Cross-Functional Leadership & Mentorship: Act as the technical leader for engineering teams (Message Delivery, Orchestration, Integration) in the dispatch domain. Help Senior and Lead ICs and other developers grow by providing them with ample scope and guiding them through complex technical challenges in a highly regulated, high-availability environment.

• Stay current with industry trends and bring best practices and recommendations to drive innovation.

• Data Product Competency & Observability: Drive a data-first approach to platform health by treating delivery metrics as a first-class product. You will architect robust telemetry and analytics pipelines that enable real-time observability, predictive performance tuning, and data-driven optimization of delivery pathways, ensuring high-fidelity insights that directly improve operational efficiency and customer experience

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree

• At least 7 years of experience in software engineering and solution architecture

• At least 7 years of experience in Enterprise architecture and design patterns

• At least 2 years of experience of deploying and delivering platforms within cloud environments

• At least 1 year of hands-on experience with LLM systems, including RAG or embeddings, prompt or plan tooling, and model governance.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or Master's Degree in Computer Science or a related field

• 5+ years of experience of deploying and delivering platforms within cloud environments

• 3+ years of hands-on experience with LLM systems, including RAG or embeddings, prompt or plan tooling, and model governance

• 10+ years of professional experience coding in commonly used languages like Java, Python, Go, JavaScript or TypeScript, Swift, etc.

• 8+ years of professional experience in the full lifecycle of system development, from conception through architecture, implementation, testing, deployment and production support

• 5+ years of experience in modern cloud technologies (AWS, Azure, GCP), microservices architecture, real-time data streaming (Kafka), and applied machine learning.

• 2+ year experience in regulated domains to partner closely with Risk, Legal, and Compliance to ensure deterministic controls for regulated workflows.

• 2+ years of demonstrated ability to drive widespread adoption and standardization of platforms in the enterprise, leading to increased efficiency, reduced operational cost, and mitigation of vendor lock-in.

• Deep industry knowledge or experience in the Martech and Messaging domain.

• Deep industry knowledge of email governance, anti-spam regulations (CAN-SPAM, TCPA) and state-level compliance requirements (FCCPA), with a demonstrated ability to apply these controls at scale.

• Experience with AdTech ecosystems and platforms.

• Proficiency in AI skills, including leveraging and contributing to the enterprise AI Skills Marketplace. You will architect, build, and maintain custom AI extension including plugins, specialized skills, and automated workflow that integrate with AI agents (Claude Code, Windsurf) to automate developer tasks such as scaffolding, environment configuration, and CI/CD orchestration, driving consistent engineering standards and accelerating development velocity

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: $269,100 - $307,200 for Distinguished Engineer

New York, NY: $293,600 - $335,100 for Distinguished Engineer

Richmond, VA: $244,700 - $279,200 for Distinguished Engineer

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 View phone number on us.fitly.work or via email at View email address on us.fitly.work . 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 View email address on us.fitly.work

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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).